American Yesterday Author:Eric Sloane In the days of our great-grandfathers there were farmers and lawyers, butchers and bakers, of course. But there were also barber-surgeons, tithingmen, sawyers, nailers, charcoal-men, plumbum-men, wheelwrights, drovers, dowsers; there were fence-viewers and pump-makers, sellmongers and dry masons, and artisans in great variety. To us today many o... more »f these old-time occupations bring no recognition, and yet they played their important part in times gone by.
Curiously enough, most antiquarians have passed by these occupations in their delving into the religious, social, and economic cultures of earlier generations. Eric Sloane has here brought together engrossing facts and anecdotes and, with his observant pen, has illustrated the activities, customs, the things that were created by the people who made their living in what some of us today are prone to call antique ways. As always in Eric Sloane's books of Americana, the reader, young and old, is delighted and charmed with America yesterday.« less