Like nearly all similar projects, axe-making had an obscure and humble origin. About the year 1798 Joseph and OUver Hunt built a small wooden shop on the site of the old axe shop lately demolished on Main street in East Douglas in which the carried on the general custom blacksmithing business. The old shop stood near the present residence of Rev. William T. Briggs. It would happen, as a mere matter of course, that among the miscel-
laneous work done at such an establishment a damaged axe would now and then be brought for reparation. Occasionally one of these indispensable implements to the farmer would need remodeling, a job which the Hunt brothers did not hesitate to undertake, and which the}- accomplished so successfully, making the renewed axe better than when bought, that their work in this line gradually grew on their hands ; and it was not long before axes of their own make became so popular as to require almost their sole attention to meet the demand for them.
After a few years, during which the quality of their tools, secured for them great public favor, a second establishment for their production was thought to be needed, and accordingly a new shop was built at the Center, with Ohver Hunt to manage it, Joseph remaining in the business at the old one. But the condition of the business was not quite equal to the capacity furnished by the two shops, and as a result, after a hard struggle against financial difficulties, the proprietors failed. Arrangements were made, however, whereby Joseph retained the old shop at East Douglas, and Ohver went to work for David Dudley, forging axes in the shop which the firm had lately owned.
Lindley & Morse then carried on the business for a while, and were succeeded by David Philipps. In 1814 a new partnership was formed by the indefatigable brothers, but it continued only for a short time, the property on this failure passing into the hands of Job Knapp and Jesse Baleome, but it was shortly purchased by Oliver Hunt, whose two sons, Warren and Otis, were soon at work again in the old shop with him, the sound of their hammers being heard early and late, iind the business soon taking on a new degree of prosperity. A few axes, among the first that they made, were taken to Providence, but they failed to find a sale. Mr. Benjamin Cragin then tried the Boston market, where the reputation of the Hunt tools had probably come to be better known, and through those extensive hardware merchants of that day, Messrs. Charles Scudder and W. T.
Eustis, they found read}' purchasers, and from this time it rapidly came to be true that neither the makers nor venders of these axes found them a drug either in the general business houses or at the retail stores in the rural districts. Indeed, one of the chief difficulties which had to be encountered, and which was quite inevitable in the then sparsely-settled state of the country, was the lack of ready transportation, not to say anything about its promptness. A forty-mile trip, over rude and rough highway's, with only a half ton even of freight, was a very different thing from such a venture today. All their tools must be got to market often by ox-teams,
and the raw material procured in the same manner. Mr. Asa Thayer relates that when he was about seventeen years of age he and Warren Hunt drove a span of horses to Boston with a load of hatchets. They were all night making the journey, arriving in town at daylight. As they passed along Beacon street numerous purchasers were found, and after considerably reducing the load the balance was disposed of to a merchant in Dock Square. They arrived home in season to take part in a grand muster which occurred on the following day, and which probably full}' explained the dispatch characterizing this possibly first express trip.
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