Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date …
1952: Isaac Lorah, who lived at 820 Brazos St. in Portales, said he was about to retire from his trade as a blacksmith – “at the tender age of 85,” The Portales Tribune reported.
Lorah had been a blacksmith for 65 years.
“I could work a long day at the forge with the best of them,” he told the newspaper.
Lorah said he gave up blacksmithing for about six years after losing thousands of dollars “in the unstable Oklahoma country around Lawton – mostly due to the people moving in and out, without paying their blacksmith bill,” he said.
But his attempt at farming failed after a grasshopper plague and persistent drought. So he moved to Portales in the early 1930s and returned to the profession he knew best with his hammer and anvil.
Lorah said he was proud of his Pennsylvania-German ancestry and that he’d been born into a family of hard-working people. He worked as a blacksmith in Ohio, Illinois, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico after hiring out to do farm work in Pennsylvania at age 12.
Lorah died in 1968 in Clovis at the age of 101. He is buried in Portales.
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