Rebecca Hobart writes: "In addition to several blacksmith shops in Dennysville, there was also one in Edmunds. Charles A Smith, generally known as "Chick", was a busy man who not only shod horses and repaired vehicles but also made tools and other iron implements. He was a large man, well respected for his size and strength, as well as for his ability at the forge and anvil. The fact that he had a wooden leg did not hamper him in his work. "When Chick was fourteen years old he started doing a man's work in the mill. The finishing mill with the planer was in the lower part of the building, but Chick worked on the upper level taking boards from the saw. His father, F. Warren Smith, warned him not to step in a hole in the floor as he walked back with the pieces of lumber. Chick, being either forgetful or careless, put his foot in the one day just as the planer got there. Because his badly crushed foot had to be amputated between the ankle and the knee, Chick made himself a peg leg which he wore the rest of his life. The artificial leg and foot which he bought when he was sixty years old (about 1910), never as satisfactory as the one he made himself, was worn only on Sunday when he sat and watched the cars go by. One week he counted thirty-five cars and wondered where all l the people came from. Many years later, when debris was being removed form an old well on the former Smith property, a peg leg, complete with straps and braces, was brought to the surface. "Charles A. "Chick" Smith's blacksmith shop stood beside his house where he lived with his wife Susannah. The house had been built by William Kilby in the 1780s in Dennysville and purchased by Thomas Shaw in 1829, who moved it across the Dennys River on the ice to Edmunds, erecting it on a new foundation on the Edmunds side. In 1854, the dwelling was occupied by F. Warren Smith, father of Charles A., who resided there until his death in 1903, when he was ninety-two years old. Customers waiting for work to be done at Chick's blacksmith shop often dropped in to see Susannah Smith busily weaving at the old loom that had been in the family for fifty years. Her clever manipulation of the shuttle produced colorful rag carpets in the "go-as-you-please" design. The last of the Smiths to live in the house was Jessie, daughter of Charles and Susannah. For many years she was engaged in selling dry goods at the former G.A.R. Hall on Store Hill, and later moved the business to a building on her own property in Edmunds. A few years after her marriage to Edwin Niles, she moved to Cooper. The house then became the property of James and Rita (Kilby) Howard, returning again to the possession of a member of the Kilby family, Rita being a direct descendent of William Kilby who built it." From Rebecca W. Hobart, "Dennysville 1786-1986 . . . and Edmunds, Too!", 2nd ed., Dennys River Historical Society, 1993, p. 103.

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