During my ancestry research I found my 3 times Great Grandparents James Gale and Charlotte Heslop. James was born in 1797 in Lancaster, England and Charlotte was born in 1811 in Burnley, England. James came to America in 1818 and Charlotte came with her parents when she was a little girl. James and Charlotte married in 1829 in Pottsville, PA and moved to Johnstown, PA in 1832.
I am going to start with James Gale Heslop. Because of the time period when James and Charlotte lived, there was so much more information on the men than on the women. James learned the trade of blending and making colors/pigment for painting and staining wallpaper. He was under an apprenticeship in England as a boy/teen and became a gifted artisan at not only blending and making colors, but in his skill of using those colors to stain wallpaper. He made colors for oils, calico prints, and dyes.
James' skills were so rare that the British government would not let these specific artisans emigrate to America without an impossible to obtain special passport. Even though he was a master of his craft in England he was not compensated well and knew he could make more income in America. His Father, my 4 times Great Grandfather, knew a Captain of a vessel that was sailing to America and the two of them secretly and illegally shipped James as a cabin boy at the age of 21. When they docked at the port in Baltimore the Captain had to find a way to get James off the vessel. He sent James to shore to get him a twist of tobacco and gave him a small sum of money to purchase it. As James was starting to depart, the Captain grabbed his hand, said goodbye, and said quietly in his ear, that he never expected to see him again. James Gale Heslop was now free in America in 1818.
He found work easily in Baltimore and after some time moved to Philadelphia and worked for a manufacturer of wallpaper named Howell Brothers. In 1825 he moved to Pottsville, PA then married Charlotte in 1830, and then in 1832 the couple moved to Johnstown, PA. From 1832 until 1841 James worked for the transportation companies that operated in the region. He was a skillful letterer using his finely mixed colors to paint the names on canal boats, and company names on railroad cars. With the money he made from the transportation companies James opened his own establishment in Johnstown in 1841, at the corner of Vine and Market, staining wallpapers. James used a block of carved wood and with the vegetable or earth colors he applied the stain to strips of wallpaper.
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| A carved wood stamp from the 1800s. |
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| The back of the stamp. |
You can go to the Ron Hazelton link of the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown and see how wallpaper was made in the 1800's. They are using paint for their exhibits so you have to imagine the process that James had to go through first of using ink, plants, clay, minerals or other earth based items to make his stain colors. You will have to copy and paste the link below into your web browser. It is worth watching.
https://www.ronhazelton.com/projects/how_to_make_wallpaper_by_hand
It was a crude method compared to how our current wallpaper is made, but he was a man ahead of his time. When the cylinder press was invented and available to him, James had a hand in construction and manipulation of the cylinder press and turned out to not only being a master in making colors and staining, he was also somewhat of a mechanical engineer too. He not only installed the machinery for his former employers at Howell Brothers in Philly, but also for a company in Pittsburgh called James Howard and Company. James Gale Heslop had built quite a reputation in the state of Pennsylvania. In the late 1840's James stopped staining and opened a store on Main Street and became a seller of colors and wallpaper. He retired in 1853.
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| Not a clear picture, but this is wallpaper from around the 1830s. |
During his retirement, before the Civil War, James and Charlotte in their golden years became Abolitionists and a part of the Underground Railroad. Talk about a career change!
To be continued..........
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