Among the "workmen of the road" who made their peripatetic way about the Genesee Country were the candlemaker, the tailor, the weaver, and the cobbler. Another nomad appeared as soon as the condition of the roads permitted -- the tin peddler, the original "Yankee peddler." Doing very little tinsmithing himself, he was a peddler, not a craftsman. However, journeymen tinsmiths did set up shop in some Genesee Country villages.

The tinsmith retailed some of his shiny output; some was painted and decorated, and wholesaled to the storekeeper. Now characterized as folk art, particularly fine and rare examples of "tole" -- as painted tin is called -- have brought as much at auction as an honest tinsmith might earn in a year, or a sharp Yankee peddler in six months.

The lengthy but vain search for an old tinsmith shop led to the substitution of an abandoned blacksmith's shop from Buckbee's Corners, a crossroads west of Rochester, New York.