Following the family trade
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Posted By BILL HENRY, SUN TIMES STAFF
Updated 2 months ago
Local 28 Blacksmith Shop-ww-8713.JPG Siblings Jack Rice, Yvonne Lawrence, Lois Johnson, Gilbert Rice and Brian Rice watch as Michael O'Neill the great grandson of George Rice works in the reconstructed Masssie blacksmith's shop after the official opening Saturday at Grey Roots Moreston Villlage. Willy Waterton/The Sun Times
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Michael O'Neill has the pedigree.
The great grandson of Massie blacksmith George Rice also has what his mentor, Grey Roots volunteer smithy Jim Underwood, calls "the keen."
"If he sticks at it for another three or four years, he'll be a pretty good blacksmith," Underwood said Saturday, as the teenager worked the forge at Grey Roots.
The five children of George Rice, including O'Neill's grandmother, had just snipped the ribbon together with museum officials to formally open to the public the timber frame blacksmith shop named for their father.
With Rice's tools a part of the museum collection since the 1960s, the George Rice Blacksmith Shop now replicating his 1920s shop and forge at Massie was a natural addition to Grey Roots, Rice's son Brian said Saturday.
The Rice family donated his tools and half the cost of the project, matched by the Grey County museum committee. Work began in 2007 and the building has been used selectively for special events since December.
The official opening Saturday came as the museum also opened its Moreston Village for the summer season of public tours. On Canada Day, Thursday, Grey Roots will officially open another new Moreston pioneer building, the replica one-room schoolhouse built over the last several years in partnership with retired teachers in the area.
Saturday, five Rice siblings, Gilbert Rice, Brian, Jack and their sisters Lois Johnson and Yvonne Lawrence were all there to cut the ribbon on the new blacksmith shop.
George Gilbert Rice and his father William Edward Rice, their grandfather, arrived in Owen Sound in 1910. They started blacksmithing together in Massie soon after that.
George Rice was an active blacksmith into the 1950s and early 1960s, although more as a woodworker in later years as demand dropped for blacksmith skills, his sons said.
Gilbert and Brian said the new, timber frame building is smaller than their father's shop, with space enough for two teams of horses, and with woodworking area added at the back.
They first worked there as children, and said they remember taking turns climbing on a stool to crank the blower to fire the forge.
Gilbert said his first jobs were delivering water and messages between the house and the shop, one of several businesses in the thriving, early 20th century farming community of Massie.
"I started down in the blacksmith shop when I was four years old. I had a pair of coveralls on and I've worn coveralls ever since, and I turned out to be a mechanic and I still work with metal," Rice said.
The brothers said the family is obviously proud the shop is named in their father's memory.
"Probably the most important thing is that people can see in the future the tradition of blacksmithing and the fact that they were an integral part of our whole development," Brian said. "Without that skill there's an awful lot of things would never have happened."
Lois said she was surprised and pleased when she learned her grandson had taken up blacksmithing, and his role now at the museum adds importance to the family's contribution.
"It's just wonderful," she said.
Volunteering to help build the shop piqued his interest in blacksmithing, O'Neill said Saturday as he worked on a metal fire hook, to be used for cleaning the forge and working the fire.
He trained with Jim Underwood and is among smithies who work the forge and demonstrate the blacksmith arts now that the building is open to the public.
"It's working with your hands and being able to make stuff you need," he said. "It's just really great work. You learn a lot and you get to teach kids how they did it."
The George Rice Blacksmith Shop at Grey Roots Moreston Village joins a log cabin, log stable, log house, early frame farmhouse, timber-frame barn, sawmill and automotive garage moved from the former Grey County museum.
With the schoolhouse opening Thursday, and the new Order of Good Cheer bandstand, plans call eventually for about 20 period building and a narrow-gauge railway.
