Blacksmith
Shop

The NH Farm Museum Blacksmith Shop was given to the museum by Mrs. Arthur Hill in memory of her late husband Arthur Hill.  Arthur Hill was a dairy farmer and used the shop to shoe horses and repair farm equipment at  his farm in Belmont.   

Photos Below:  Clayton Shibles, Blacksmith  (Click to Enlarge)

  
The shop was originally located in Winnisquam and owned by a relation of Arthur Hill.  Charles Cate worked as a blacksmith and woodworker and was most likely the builder of this shop in Winnisquam in the late nineteenth century.  Cate came from a long line of blacksmiths and many of the tools in the shop came from his family and date to the early and mid-19th century.  
 
Today, the blacksmith shop sits on the grounds of the New Hampshire Farm Museum and is overseen by Mr. Clayton Shibles.  Clayton Shibles grew up on a dairy farm in Maine where his family had a long history of blacksmithing. He demonstrates his smithing skills at the Farm Museum on many Saturdays during the open season.   Although the shop is not original to the Jones Farm it is representative of farm structures common to rural New Hampshire where farmers often adopted a skill such as blacksmithing so that they could repair their own equipment and diversify their income.