The village of Monticello’s Main Street of 1840 little resembled the Broadway of today and perhaps even less so the hustling and bustling thoroughfare of the 1950s and ‘60s the Dominican sisters from nearby St. Peter’s school called “the avenue” in cautioning young students to keep their distance.

After several rough years during which it had been the victim of serious neglect, by ten years after the village’s incorporation, Main Street was lined with tidy shops where townspeople gathered not just to conduct business, but to swap stories about the events of the day. Mercantile establishments alternated with clapboard residences and livestock still roamed freely and undisturbed.

The northeast corner of Main (it didn’t become Broadway until sometime around 1909) and Liberty Streets was a prime location, occupied for more than 125 years now by the Roman Catholic church which sponsored the aforementioned school, but home then to a rambling wood-frame shop memorialized in a poem by Alfred B. Street.

In “The Smithy”– not to be confused with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith,” written at about the same time and touching on many of the same sentiments – the simple shop of blacksmith Hugh Orr is described as a place where the most mundane of tasks is carried out with a dedication peculiar to the era. It is one of the few works the famed naturalist poet wrote about the village rather than the wilderness surrounding it, and it provides a rare glimpse of Monticello as it then existed.

Orr, a large man for his time - well over six feet tall, and powerfully built, with a grip like a vise and a long beard – usually performed his work before an audience. Edward F. Curley recalls in his “Old Monticello” that the Captain was known for his tall tales, and in the days before radio and television this ability to entertain visitors made his shop a popular spot.

“Could the rafters of this old shop speak they could relate some startling stories which were told beneath its roof, regarding horse deals, races, etc.,” Curley wrote in 1929.

“The Orr residence was in the rear of the shop on Liberty Street. Thus, the entire property running from Main Street to North Street on the east side of Liberty Street was owned by Mr. Orr. As time passed, the grim reaper called the village blacksmith to his reward, at an advanced age, and the sound of the anvil, once sweet music to the residents of that neighborhood, was silent.”

Though the anvil and the hammer meet no more, the vivid writing of Alfred B. Street has allowed Orr’s blacksmith shop to survive, at least in one’s imagination. And through the renowned poet’s facile pen we get to experience, as he did in his youth, not just the shop itself, but the entire village of bygone days.

“There was a little smithy at the corner of the road,

In the village where, when life shone fresh and bright, was my abode;

A little slab-roof’d smithy, of a stain’d and dusky red,

An ox-frame standing by the door, and at one side a shed;

The road was lone and pleasant, with margins grassy-green,

Where browsing cows and nibbling geese from morn to night were seen.

High curl’d the smoke from the humble roof with dawning’s earliest bird,

And the tinkle of the anvil, first of the village sounds, was heard;

The bellows-puff, the hammer-beat, the whistle and the song,

Told, steadfastly and merrily, toil roll’d the hours along,

Till darkness fell, and the smithy then with its forge’s clear deep light

Through chimney, window, door and cleft, pour’d blushes on the night.

 The morning shows its azure breast and scarf of silvery fleece,

The margin-grass is group’d with cows, and spotted o’er with geese;

On the dew-wet green by the smithy, there’s a circle of crackling fire,

Hurrah! How it blazes and curls around the coal-man’s welded tire!

While o’er it, with tongs are the smith and his man, to fit it when cherry-red,

To the tilted wheel of the huge grimed ark in the background of the shed.

There’s a stony field on the ridge to plough, and Brindle must be shod,

And at noon, through the lane from the farm-house, I see him slowly plod;

In the strong frame, chewing his cud, he patiently stands, but see!

The bands have been placed around him – he struggles to be free:

But John and Timothy hammer away, until each hoof is arm’d,

Then loosen’d Brindle looks all round, as if wondering he’s unharm’d.

Joe Matson’s horse wants shoeing, and at even-tide he’s seen,

An old gray sluggish creature, with his master on the green;

Within the little smithy, old Dobbin, Matson draws,

There John is busily twisting screws, and Timothy filing saws;

The bellows sleeps, the forge is cold, and twilight dims the room,

With anvil, chain, and iron bar, faint glimmering through the gloom.

I stand beside the threshold and gaze upon the sight,

The doubtful shape of the old gray horse, and the points of glancing light:

But hark! The bellows wakens, out dance the sparks in air;

And now the forge is raked high up, now bursts it to a glare;

How brightly and how cheerily the sudden glow outbreaks,

And what a charming picture of the humble room it makes!

It glints upon the horse-shoes on the ceiling rafters hung,

On the anvil and the leaning sledge its quivering gleams are flung;

It touches with bronze the smith and his man, and it bathes old dozing gray;

And a blush is fix’d on Matson’s face in the broad and steady ray;

One moment more and the iron is whirl’d with fierce and spattering glow,

And swank! swank! swank! rings the sledge’s smite, tink! Tink! The hammer’s blow.

 ‘Whoa, Dobbin!’ says Tim, as he pares the hoof, ‘whoa! whoa!’ as he fits the shoe,

And the click of the driving nails is heard, till the humble toil is through;

Pleased Matson mounts his old gray steed, and I hear the heavy beat

Of the trotting hoofs, up the corner road, till the sounds in the distance fleet:

And I depart with grateful joy to the King of earth and heaven,

That e’en to life in its lowliest phase, such interest should be given.”

Following Orr’s death, the shop was utilized by the village’s Neptune Engine Company to store their fire fighting apparatus. Then, in 1898, largely through the efforts of entrepreneur John O’Neill, it was obtained by the Roman Catholics, who had outgrown their first church farther up Liberty Street. The first Mass was celebrated in the new edifice by the Reverend James F. Raywood on July 9, 1899. Some years later, the Orr residence, which had been used as the church rectory, was razed and a new rectory was built by contractor Henry Washington. In 1929, a new catholic school was built on the far reaches of what had been Captain Hugh Orr’s property, on the corner of Liberty and North Streets.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian and a founder and president of The Delaware Company. Email him at jconway52@hotmail.com.