As often as other members of his family went barefoot, the pioneer farmer himself, for the rough work of chopping and clearing the forest and to keep his feet from freezing in the winter, needed a pair of boots. While his wife could make him new clothing she could not replace her husband's boots when they gave way, and to repair a leather boot properly required special tools and skills.

Leather from local tanners was cut into pieces, which were sewn by village women in their homes to form the uppers. The bottoming was done by the shoemaker in his shop using waxed linen thread and needles made of pig bristle. After about 1830, the new fangled way to assemble shoes with wooden pegs became popular in the Genesee region.

While the shoemaker was capable of providing the community with a wide range of choices in foot wear, from elegantly finished riding boots for gentlemen to lightweight fabric slippers for ladies, the most common type of shoe was the "coarse shoe" with an inch-thick sole.

A village of sufficient size offered a livelihood for the journeyman bootmaker who would settle down and open a shop. The workshop could be almost anywhere, even in a corner of his house. The bootmaker's work required very little space, enough for his benchs and perhaps a table.

About 1820 in East Avon, N.Y., a young lawyer built this small frame building and established his practice. According to local legend, the lawyer left the village on horseback one day with an important sum of money. While the horse returned, the lawyer and the money were never seen again. A bootmaker later occupied the place.