This small building was moved to the homestead and has been equipped as a working forge containing a unique oxen lift.
About the Peabody Blacksmith Shop
This blacksmith shop was built in Thomaston in the 1880s by Jesse W. Peabody (1852-1909), son of blacksmith Jesse Peabody II. It was originally located next to the Starr Building, adjacent to the Creek Bridge. Jesse W. was also the Town Constable and Chief of Police. He operated this shop until April 2, 1892 when he sold the contents to W. R. Feyler and leased him the building, which operated as a smithy until the 1920s. Peabody’s youngest son Albert was also a blacksmith and worked for his father and at several other blacksmith shops, including Myles Watts and Jacobs and Hatch.
At one time, there were eight or ten blacksmith shops operating in Thomaston. A local historian claims that in the 1800s there would have been one blacksmith shop for every 500 residents. Blacksmiths were in high demand in that period, because not only did they shoe horses and oxen (this specialty is called a farrier), they supplied iron work for ships and buildings. They also built iron fences, gates and other decorative items.
This is the only shop that survives from that time, and its survival is an interesting story. At the outbreak of World War II, the internationally famous Croatian violinist Zlatko Balokovic and his wife, the former Joyce Borden (heiress to the Borden family fortune) settled their family at Hillside Farm in Camden. They became involved with many war-time political efforts (his nephew by marriage was Adlai Stevenson) and were instrumental in obtaining medical and other supplies to the Yugoslavian resistance during the war. He and his wife were deeply committed as well to the various historical conservation efforts in the Midcoast area. Upon learning that the old Peabody blacksmith shop was going to be demolished, they had it carefully dismantled and erected on their Hillside Farm property by Walter Shaw of Camden, a local blacksmith. After Balokovic’s death in 1965, the shop was donated to the Camden-Rockport Historical Society and moved to its current site in 1967.
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