The Old Nail Factory on North Bedford Street, Carlisle, PA

In the 1780s, John Duncan and Lewis Foulk both operated nail factories in Carlisle. Cask nails and sprigs of any size, flooring brads, shingle nails, and Double Tens Lathing were all hand wrought at their factories. Duncan advertised that he sought "a few good nailors” and offered them "generous wages.¹ Lewis Foulk also advertised that he wanted a number of nailors who would be paid “generous wages,” and he also wanted a “bred [sic] nailor.”²

Andrew Kerr may have worked for one of those men. Born in 1766, Andrew Kerr was a nailor by trade and most likely opened his own nail factory around the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Philips in 1791. Five years later he purchased the northern 3/4 of Lot #238 from the heirs of his deceased father-in-law William Philips. The lot ran for 60 feet on E. Louther Street and 160 feet along N. Bedford Street.³ A one-story log house 21’ x 21,’ a one-story log kitchen 21’ x 18,’ a log smith shop, 29’ x 14,’ and a log stable stood on this portion of the lot.⁴

Kerr employed journeymen and also trained apprentices. His apprentice, John Higgins (Hagen) ran away on Sunday March 18, 1804, and Kerr offered a reward of $8 to anyone who took him up and returned him to his master. Higgins was described as “about 5 feet high, of a light complexion, [with] sandy hair.” When he ran away, he had on a sailor’s jacket made of nankeen and trowsers of striped cloth.⁵

Andrew and Elizabeth Kerr had only been married for nine years when the U. S. Census was taken in 1800, so who were all the people in their household. Some of them must have been apprentices. The household consisted of sixteen people: three males under 10 years, three males aged 10-15, one male 16-25, one male 26-44, two males aged 45 and up, and six females.

Treasurer’s Reports printed in the newspaper in the first two decades of 1800 list the amounts of money Cumberland County paid to those who did work and provided services for the county. Andrew Carr [Kerr] was paid over the years for supplying nails for the public buildings, hauling water, etc. One of Kerr’s descendants had several receipts in his possession, dated 1803, for nails that Kerr made for the tavern house built by Charles McManus on North East Street which is still standing.⁶

Both the 1810 and the1820 U. S. Census records that there were twenty individuals in Kerr’s household. It is difficult to reconcile those numbers with the housing Kerr was taxed with for those years. Kerr was taxed for 2/3 of a lot and one stone house until 1829 when he was taxed for one stone house and one stone shop on North Bedford Street. In 1832 his occupation had changed on the tax assessment from a nailor to a farmer, and he was taxed for 2/3 of a lot, two stone houses, and a stable. It was not until 1835 that he was taxed for one stone house, two small stone dwellings and a frame barn.⁷

Andrew died in Carlisle on January 4, 1849, aged 83 years. He and his wife Elizabeth are buried in Carlisle’s Old Graveyard. The Bedford Street property descended to Andrew Kerr’s heirs who are listed as the owners on the 1872 Atlas of Cumberland County.

In 1915, Conrad Hambleton, the executor of John F. Kerr, of Carlisle, sold the property to contractor Charles Brown.⁸ The 1915 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Carlisle shows the buildings on Kerr’s northern portion of the lot. Stone buildings are shown in blue, brick in red, and wood or log in yellow.⁹

The April 1, 1916, edition of The Sentinel ran an article with the headline ‘Old “Nail Factory Houses” To Be Razed.’ Contractor Charles Brown sold at a private sale “the four one story stone houses south of his property on Louther and Bedford [across the street from the Carlisle Garment plant] to Joseph Morris, proprietor of the millinery department of the Imperial Department Store….These houses once constituted a nail factory in the years when they were made by hand and the buildings are about 150 years old. Mr. Morris will erect five fine brick modern houses after the old houses are razed.” The “five fine brick houses” are still standing.

The stone houses were razed two weeks after the sale, and by October 1916 five new brick houses were built and are shown on the 1923 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Carlisle.