Depiction of the Keystone Shovel & Sheet Ironworks owned by George Griffiths, from the Hexamer General Surveys, Volume 27, circa 1892.
In research for episode 5 of The Alley Cast, I came across a seemingly simple piece of information:
Robert Morton and Charles Wilson, residents of house #135 in 1930 worked at a shovel factory.
This single fact took me down a few serious rabbit holes, and I learned some really interesting stuff, but the episode ultimately wasn’t about the shovel factory and I couldn’t ever nail down any more specifics of Morton’s and Wilson’s employment. But I wanted to share my little research journey here, because I think it’s interesting!
I started with a simple question: where was the factory?
The blocks around Elfreth’s Alley were filled with factories by 1930 and so I started by looking at maps of the area. Fire Insurance maps seemed the most likely, as buildings on these maps are often listed by function especially if that function (e.g. metalworking) might involve a fire risk. Unfortunately, none of the fire insurance I had access to (i.e. were digitized online) showed the neighborhood in 1930 and I couldn’t locate a shovel factory among them. I was able to find, thanks to a search of the PhilaGeoHistory website, Hexamer depictions of two shovel factories in the city. One was Rowland’s Spade and Shovel Works, located along Pennypack Creek in the Northeast, the other Keystone Shovel and Sheet Iron Works at S. 8th and Jackson Streets in South Philadelphia. I found a map of public transportation routes from 1930 which suggested that Morton and Charles could have commuted to either of these factories, but neither was close.
The 1940 census showed another Elfreth’s Alley resident, Henry O’Drain, working as a night watchman at a shovel factory, so it seems likely to me that the factory would have been quite close to the Alley.
I got a bit of luck when I searched the name George Griffiths, the owner of the Keystone factory. The 1862 McElroy directory locates George Griffiths as living at 312 McIlwain, but having a business in “shovels, spades, etc.” at 1 Fetter Lane. Even though this was nearly 70 years prior, it seemed like a potential lead. But where was Fetter Lane? Using the Historic Street Name Index, I learned that Fetter Lane became Cherry Street in 1897, the same year Elfreth’s Alley also became Cherry St. Like Elfreth’s Alley, Fetter Lane only took up one block, between 3rd Street and Bread St. It was less than a block away from the Alley as the crow flies!
So, it’s possible that Griffith’s company outlived him and still operated a satellite location in Old City. It’s also possible that the factory listed as “shovel mfg” on the census was called something else on the fire insurance maps. The Sanborn insurance map from 1916 shows several “Sheet Metal” factories in the blocks around Elfreth’s Alley, which are also likely candidates.
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The other question I had was “what would work be like at a shovel factory in 1930?”
I decided one starting point was to learn how shovels are made today. Here’s how one company forges shovels today:
There is a lot of machinery involved in this video! Maybe more machinery than was readily available to factories in 1930? Well, actually, it seems like the Rowland Spade works was a real hub of innovation in their shovel making. In 1899, they filed three separate patents regarding shovel manufacturing. One was a new way of screwing a handle onto a shovel, and the other two were for production machines. Here is an image of their Buffing and Polishing Machine for Shovel Handles (on the right). It basically consists of two sanding belts in between which a worker would hold a shovel handle.
The third patent of 1899 is a machine for flattening the spade’s blade. While the illustration is looks like the machinery used in the video above, the description of the process actually sounds much more complicated (transcription below image).
“The method of forming shovel-blanks which consists in cutting out blanks of substantially identical form and each of a thickness substantially equal to half of the finished shovel-blade, then welding the tangs to the blanks, then securing said blanks together in pairs, their welded sides lying in contact with a layer of flux between the parts to be welded together and a layer of material adapted to prevent welding interposed between the plates where the handle-socket is to be formed, and then welding the blades of the two blanks together without material reduction in the thickness of the blanks.”
What did all that mean? I don’t really know. But, I think, given the level of mechanization that Rowland Shovel Works was using in 1899, that it is fair to assume that whatever shovel factory or sheet metal factory employed Robert Morton and Charles Wilson, it probably used similar heavy machinery to what the video showed. Possibly there was more hammering to cut the metal. Certainly the work was hot and physically taxing.
I’m left with more questions than answers: Where did the iron ore come from? Who else worked at the factory alongside Robert and Charles? What were the workers paid? Where were the shovels sold and how much did they cost? Were they good shovels?
But, all the same, I feel like I learned quite a lot chasing this particular rabbit trail, and I hope you did too! Thanks for reading!
-TM