Bean, L. L. (13 October 1872–05 February 1967), retail merchant, was born Leon Leonwood Bean in Greenwood, Maine, the son of Benjamin Warren Bean and Sarah Swett, farmers. Orphaned at age twelve, he lived with his brother and four sisters in South Paris, Maine, and briefly attended Kent Hill Academy and Hebron Academy. Lennie Bean worked in his brother’s retail store in Freeport and in an Auburn clothing store from 1892 to 1907. In 1898 Bean married Bertha Porter, and they had two sons and a daughter. After his wife died in 1939, he married Claire L. Boudreau in 1940. Achieving little success in various business ventures, from selling soap to working in a creamery, in 1907 Bean moved to his wife’s hometown, Freeport, Maine, to take over his brother Ervin’s retail store....
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Bean, L. L. (1872-1967), retail merchant
Peter C. Holloran
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Blake, Lyman Reed (1835-1883), inventor
Charles W. Carey Jr.
Blake, Lyman Reed (24 August 1835–05 October 1883), inventor, was born in South Abington, Massachusetts, the son of Samuel Blake and Susannah Bates. In 1851, having completed his formal education at age sixteen, he went to work for his older brother Samuel, a “shoe boss.” After the employees in his brother’s shop cut out from leather the various pieces that comprise a shoe, the younger Blake put out these pieces to self-employed shoebinders—who hand-stitched together the uppers and then pegged or nailed the uppers to a sole—and collected the finished pairs, which his brother then sold....
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Capezio, Salvatore (1871-1940), theatrical and dance shoe manufacturer
Betty Kaplan Gubert
Capezio, Salvatore (13 April 1871–06 January 1940), theatrical and dance shoe manufacturer, was born in Muro Lucano, a small town near Potenza in southern Italy. His father was a construction engineer, but his parents' names do not appear in readily available sources of information. Not wishing to enter his father's profession, he emigrated to the United States. According to Capezio company information on the Internet and in most reference sources, the teenaged Capezio arrived in 1887 and opened a shoe repair shop on West Thirty-ninth Street in New York. In fact, the company is known as “The Dancer's Cobbler since 1887.” The date of his arrival, however, varies in public records: 1890 (1900 census), 1889 (1910 census), and 1883 (1920 census.) The discrepancies may reflect Capezio's difficulty with the English language or someone else's having incorrectly supplied the information. Perhaps most authoritative are the Ellis Island passenger records; they show the 21-year-old Capezio arriving on 30 April 1892 on the ...
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Douglas, William Lewis (1845-1924), shoe manufacturer and governor
Jill Massino
Douglas, William Lewis (22 August 1845–17 September 1924), shoe manufacturer and governor, was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the son of William Douglas, a sailor, and Mary C. Vaughan. Attending public schools sporadically throughout his boyhood, Douglas was sent to work for his uncle, a shoemaker, at age seven, two years after his father’s death at sea. As a shoe pegger, he worked long hours and faced habitual mistreatment, but by age eleven he began to train formally as an apprentice under his uncle. Becoming a journeyman shoemaker at age fifteen, he was first employed at a cotton mill in Plymouth, where he earned thirty-three cents a day. He continued in the shoemaking trade in Hopkinton and later South Braintree under the well-known bootmaker Ansel Thayer until 26 February 1864, when he enlisted in the Fifty-eighth Massachusetts Regiment. Wounded at the battle of Cold Harbor in that same year, Douglas spent months in army hospitals and was discharged in 1865. In 1866 he headed west to Colorado, settling in Black Hawk and later Golden City. There he received training in designing, drafting, cutting, and fitting shoes—knowledge that allowed him to be classified as a professional shoemaker—and opened a retail boot and shoe store. He returned to Massachusetts in 1868 and that year married Naomi Augusta Terry. They had three children....
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Evans, Henry (?– November 1810), free African-American preacher, shoemaker, and founder of the world's third oldest African Methodist Episcopal church
Monte Hampton
Evans, Henry (?– November 1810), free African-American preacher, shoemaker, and founder of the world's third oldest African Methodist Episcopal church, free African-American preacher, shoemaker, and founder of the world’s third oldest African Methodist Episcopal church, was born in Charles City County, Virginia. Little is known of his parents, upbringing, or eventual marriage....
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Heighton, William (1801-1873), labor radical and shoemaker
Bruce Laurie
Heighton, William (1801–1873), labor radical and shoemaker, was born in Oundle in Northamptonshire, England, and shortly before the War of 1812, came to the United States with his family, settling in Philadelphia. Little is known of Heighton’s early years. Around 1820 he married Ann Beckley, with whom he had at least four children. He supported his family on the paltry wage of a journeyman shoemaker....
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Hewes, George Robert Twelves (25 August 1742–05 November 1840), shoemaker and rank-and-file participant in the American Revolution
Alfred F. Young
Hewes, George Robert Twelves (25 August 1742–05 November 1840), shoemaker and rank-and-file participant in the American Revolution, shoemaker and rank‐and‐file participant in the American Revolution, was born in Boston, the son of George Hewes (1701–1749), tanner, soap boiler, and tallow chandler, and Abigail Seaver (1711–c. 1755). George Robert Hewes told a biographer that his education “consisted only of a moderate knowledge of reading and writing” (Hawkes, p. 17). An orphan at fourteen and short in stature—only five feet one inch tall at full height—he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, a trade for boys who could not handle heavy work. He eventually became owner of a small shop near Griffin 's Wharf, where he mended shoes and crafted them to order. In January 1768 he married Sarah Sumner, the daughter of a church sextant and a washwoman. They had fifteen children, eleven of whom survived childhood. In a trade that was low in status and prospects, Hewes remained poor; in 1770 he was imprisoned briefly for an unpaid debt to a tailor....
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Mackintosh, Ebenezer (1737-1816), shoemaker and mob leader
William Pencak
Mackintosh, Ebenezer (20 June 1737–1816), shoemaker and mob leader, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Moses Mackintosh, who served on occasion as a soldier during the 1730s and 1740s, and Mary Everet. The family name has also been spelled MacIntosh, McIntosh, and McKintosh. Mary died in 1751, and Moses left town, leaving young Ebenezer in the care of his uncle Ichabod Jones, a shoemaker to whom he was apprenticed. Ebenezer enrolled in the militia in 1754 and served on the British-colonial expedition to Fort Ticonderoga in 1758....
