Shoemakers

Please add your shoemaking ancestor profiles: must be set to public. Project collaborators, please feel free to update the project page, add resources, documents, and images ... and invite more collaborators.

the shoe trades

Include ....

• Cobblers
• Cordwainers

What is a shoemaker?

From Wikipedia

Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand. Traditional handicraft shoemaking has now been largely superseded in volume of shoes produced by industrial mass production of footwear, but not necessarily in quality, attention to detail, or craftsmanship.

Shoemakers may produce a range of footwear items, including shoes, boots, sandals, clogs and moccasins. Such items are generally made of leather, wood, rubber, plastic, jute or other plant material, and often consist of multiple parts for better durability of the sole, stitched to a leather upper.

Trades that engage in shoemaking have included the cordwainer's and cobbler's trades. Today shoes are often made on a factory basis rather than a craft basis.

The patron saint of shoemakers is Saint Crispin.

resources

• Shoemakers and Cordwainers
• Order of the Knights of St. Crispin
• Daughters of St. Crispin the first national women's labor union in the United States
• Shoemaking tradition continues
• 'The City of Leicester: Footwear manufacture', in A History of the County of Leicester: Volume 4, the City of Leicester, ed. R A McKinley (London, 1958), pp. 314-326 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/leics/vol4/pp314-326 [accessed 31 December 2015]. (nice description of the rise of the factory made shoe)