![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/history-of-seattle.jpg\" "\\"history-of-seattle\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nI have no idea how accurate this book is historically, but if it’s at all correct, John McDonald, who announced on April 5th, 1866 in the Puget Sound Semi-Weekly that he had opened a boot and shoe making shop on Yesler Way, was most likely the first shoe maker to set up shop in Seattle. That was 145 years ago!<\/p>\n
In 1866, Seattle was a small frontier town with a population of around 1,000 people (In 1870 for example, Seattle’s population was 1,107), and was about as far away from New England<\/a>, the shoe making center of the United States at that time, as one could get. It had only been one year earlier that The American Civil War had ended.<\/p>\n John McDonald most likely used a sewing machine to make his shoe and boot uppers<\/span><\/span><\/span>, which had been adapted for making shoe uppers<\/span><\/span><\/span> around 1851, but everything else involved in making shoes and boots would have been done by hand. The Blake\/McKay Machine<\/a> for stitching on soles had been introduced in 1958, but was very slow to be adopted, and the Goodyear Welt Stitcher wasn’t in use until the 1870’s. It’s a bit surprising, but the way that John McDonald made and I make shoes are for the most part the same!<\/p>\n John McDonald wasn’t alone for long. According to the book, in August of 1866, The Wold Brothers opened a shoe making shop and “would make boots at prices ranging from $8.00 to $13.00 per pair.”<\/p>\n $8 to $13 a pair? That’s so cheap, or was it?<\/p>\n According to measuringworth.com<\/a>, “if you are wondering how “affordable” this would be to the average person, use the GDP per capita, or a wage or average earnings index.” Ok, so how expensive would the Wold Brothers’ shoes and boots be today?<\/p>\n The Nominal GDP per Capita for $1 from 1866 would be worth $184.00 now, so the Wold Brothers would make boots at prices ranging from $1,472 to $2,392 per pair today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was searching the internet a while back and I came across a book titled History of Seattle from the earliest settlement to the present in Google Books, with a chapter called Boot And Shoe Making. I have no idea how accurate this book is historically, but if it’s at all correct, John McDonald, who ❯<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1747"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1776,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions\/1776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/getimage.exe.jpeg\" "\\"getimage\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.craigcorvin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/what-it-was-worth.jpg\" "\\"what-it-was-worth\\"")
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