King Richard at Bosworth Field

Horseshoe nails are not something most of us think about on a regular basis.  In fact, when I ran across my great-uncle King Wilson’s description of their manufacture, I was momentarily surprised.  But then I reflected a bit about the letter I was reading, written by him to my Great Aunt Dora in 1902.  It was a time when horses and their shoes were still a crucial part of everyday life.  It put me in mind of the old nursery rhyme:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

            The poem is meant as a proverb, of course, pointing out that each of our actions, no matter how small, will have a consequence.  The proverb first showed up in relation to King Richard III’s death during the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 – later memorialized in Shakespeare’s history play, “Richard III.”

Capewell Horse Nails Shipping Box

Uncle King was on a part-business-part-pleasure trip in June 1902 when he visited the Capewell Horse Nail Company in Hartford, Connecticut.  In a letter home to Dora in Lake Oswego, Oregon, he wrote:

They say they sell more nails than all their competitors.  I shook hands with Mr. Capewell.  He patented the machine that does the work.  The iron is purchased as wire after it is tempered and made of uniform size it goes in this machine and comes out nails.  There are 100 of these machines, and a compete machine shop to keep them in repair. To make the nails bright they are put in an iron barrel with sawdust, and the barrel is rolled over and over.  They are then inspected, each nail separately by girls, then they are weighed in boxes of 5 pounds each.  These boxes are pasteboard.  5 of these boxes are put in a wooden box for shipment.  Two hundred fifty men work for the company and about that many girls.

Alexander King Wilson – “Uncle King”

Such an interesting ‘dated’ paragraph!  Not only the subject, itself, but the manufacturing methods described, the use of the term ‘pasteboard,’ and the reference to ‘girls’ in the workforce.  Thank goodness someone had the foresight to save (and bind into a book!) these letters.  They provide a fascinating peek into our past.

And thank goodness for Uncle King’s interest in describing everyday sorts of things in everyday language!  So much more enlightening than the dry explanations in history texts or old encyclopedias.  The letters actually seem to illustrate the horse shoe nail proverb.  Certainly King Wilson could never have dreamed that his detailed description in a letter to his wife would be read and pondered over by his great niece by marriage more than a century later!