There is an exellent book "American Knives" by Harold Peterson, published by Charles Scribner's sons, New York. It is out of print, but there may be a copy on E-bay floating around. It deals with just what you are loking for, the 18th and 19th centurys.
Before the American Revelution, most of the tools came from England. In fact thee were laws forbiding the American colonies from constructing foundries or steel works. After the over throw of the British Crown things change rapidly. Small steel works popped up, and the production of steel and iron tools were manufactured in the new country.
By the time the west was being opened up, America had its own knife company, with the John Russell Company, in Greenfield Massachusetts. According to Mr. Peterson, Russell on the average from 1840 to 1860, shipped five thousand dozen butcher knives west. This was the Russell butcher knife number 15, a six inch blade knife. Also shipped west was the number 1586 carving knife that had an eight inch blade.
Most folding knives of the period from the American revelution to the 1840's were of the simple large single blade jack type. I've seen lots of these types in the museums around Washington like the Smithsonian. By the time of the civil war (1861-65) things did not seen to chnge much. In the museums at Gettysburg, Sharpsburg, and Manassas, they have pocket knives recovered from the battle sites. Almost all of them are the simple single blade knife, not unlike a sodbuster. Once in a while you would see a barlow.
Bowie knives had a relitive narrow time period of real use. The advent of the Colt revolver after the Mexican War reduced the role of the large knife a great degree. They were never popular with the mountain men, who favored a practical working knife, and they were not popular with the people who made up the great migration west, like the homesteaders who needed practical working tools that did not cost alot. And contrary to Hollywood, cowboys did not carry them because being bucked off a horse while wearing a large sharp bowie knife presents a dangerous situtation in itself. In fact the stockman was birthed by the cattle knife, which came from a simple clasp knife. Way safer on a horse.
The heyday of the Bowie knife was about 1835 to about the first year of the civil war.
I read an article sometime back that from 1850 to 1880 the most popular folding knife shipped west was the John Russell barlow. After 1880, more specialized types of pocket knives started to appear.
Butcher knives, barlows, and simple clasp knives seem to be what most people really used then.
Sounds like just the thing for real using people today!
