and local histories attest the early beginnings of leather manu- 

 facture in New England, where well before 1650 tanneries were 

 being operated at Lynn, Salem, Boston, Charlestown, Watertown, 

 and Newbury .'^ In 1642, Massachusetts passed the first regula- 

 tory law governing the production of leather and appointed 

 searchers in every town that supported a tannery/ Connecticut 

 as well as Massachusetts attempted to control its tanneries and 

 to regulate bv legislation the unpleasant aspects of the craft. 

 The price of raw hides and finished leather was fixed, and the 

 depositing of foul-smelling animal remains in "tann hills" was 

 forbidden, a regulation most likely impossible to enforce.^ 



By 1653, a New England tanyard, tanning West Indian hides, 

 was valued at ?2000.^ But the domestic hides were more impor- 

 tant than the imports, since the early leather business was depend- 

 ent on stock husbandry. In mid-1 7th-century New England, 

 "Towns began to increase roundly" and Edward Johnson in his 

 Wonder-JVorkuig Providence noted the increasing "trade by sea" 

 and the flourishing conditions of tanners and shoemakers who 

 seemed capable of producing leather in quantities and at prices 

 beyond what they had commanded in England. The leather 

 workers were high on Johnson's list of those whose labors had 

 turned "one of the most hideous, boundless and unknown Wilder- 

 nesses in the world" into "a well-ordered Commonwealth." ^" Two 



^ ShurtlefF, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. 1, 

 pp. 238, 256; vol. 2, pp. 18-20, 31, 168, 215-216; vol. 3, pp. 11, 85, 225; vol. 4, part 1, pp. 41-42, 93; 

 vol. 4, part 2, pp. 147, 303, 513, 564. Coffin, Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, andWest 

 Newburv, p. 52. Hoighton, "Leather, Tanned, Curried, and Finished," p. 703 in vol. 9 of Twelfth 

 Census .... {1900). Bryant, Shoe and Leather Trade of the Last One Hundred Years. Dewson, 

 Tanning Industry of the South Shore of Massachusetts, p. 6. "Town Records of Salem, 1634-1659," pp. 

 89-90 in vol. 9 of Historical Collections of the Essex Institute. Lewis and Newhall, History of Lynn, 

 vol, 1. p. 112. Hoover, Location Theory and the Shoe and Leather Industries, p. 126. 



^ Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, vol. 2, p. 19. 



* Trumbull, td.. Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, vol. 1, pp. 285-287. Connecticut's first 

 action (p. 60) to govern the supply and dressing of hides occurred in February 1640. See also vol. 2, 

 p. 325; fol. 3, pp. 14, 23, 236; vol. 4, pp. 74-75, 82-83. See Phillips, compil.. Town Records of Derby, 

 Connecticut, 1655-1710, pp. 219, 262; and Dexter, ed.. Ancient Town Records: New Haven . . . 1649- 

 1684, vol. 1, pp. 131, 159, 161, 189, 219, 338, 366; vol. 2, p. 50. The General Court at New Haven 

 in these years heard with great frequency corriplaints against Jeremiah Osborne, the town tanner; 

 accusations included the sale by Osborne of spoiled and poorly tanned leather and the unlawful 

 felling, on the Commons, of trees for tanbark. By 1653 New Haven hides and leather were com- 

 modities of trade between the town and "Vergenia and other places." 



^ Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, vol. 1, p. 167. Cites the Suffolk Probate 

 Records. 



1° In Original Narratives of Early American History . . . , ed. J. F. Jameson, p. 248. 



