Sam Smith, blacksmith and horseshoer, Newhall.

This 6x8-inch print is mounted on its original mat. Below the photograph is the hand-written date, 1888.

The location is not specified. Buildings were often moved around in early Newhall, but we have no reason to believe this was anywhere other than the west side of Spruce Street (later called Main Street) between Market and 8th. It would have been rather difficult to move the heavy furnaces of the smithy. In fact, as of 2013, they're still there, behind the shops that now occupy the building at 24313 Main Street.

This building was remodeled and expanded, perhaps in 1898, to look like this.

Somehow, local grocer Jim Gulley came into possession of the property. Whether it was before or after Smith's death, we don't know. Gulley appears to have started buying property in Newhall in the 1890s. In any case, in 1900, after Smith died, Gulley sold the shop, including its fixtures, for $400 to newcomer Tom Frew II, who became the town blacksmith.

Smith left behind a widow, Frances, who worked in the Second Southern Hotel beginning in 1898. She remarried to local liveryman Charles Delano, who died before the decade was out. In 1908, Frances became the SCV's first automobile owner. Around 1913 she married a third time, to Harry Phillips, and become Mrs. Frances Phillips. In 1917 she purchased the old Hardison & Stewart building and ran it as a boarding house. (See Perkins in The Newhall Signal, 8/26/1954.)

Meanwhile, the Frew blacksmith dynasty would last for three generations and 70 years — from horse and buggy days to the midcentury-modern market for artistic ironwork wall decor.

Apparently the Frew family obtained this photograph from Pearl (Pardee) Russell, because her name (and only her name) is hand-written on the back.

Further reading: The Accidental Blacksmiths Of Old Newhall by Ruth Newhall, 1996.

Footnote: Just to throw some cold water on this narrative ... In a 2003 interview, Tom Frew IV said he does not believe this is the shop his grandfather purchased. Tom IV said he does not believe this building was in the same location as his family's shop (which he ran until 1970). He speculated that Sam Smith's shop may have burned down.

However, in 1958, historian A.B. Perkins said was one in the same.