Boone County Tool Kit
A Boone County Tool Kit
Tools have been essential to the human inhabitants of the Plains for thousands of years. Below are examples of tools from various times in Boone County’s past.
(Above) Among the oldest tools in the Boone County Historical Society’s collection is an 11,000 to 12,000 year old Cody Knife, the large object on the left. These tools are from the age of mammoths, giant bison and many other now-extinct animals.
The stone tools pictured above, which include a “celt” or hand ax, knives, scrapers and projectile points, were found at the site of an unusually large Native American village site southeast of Albion. This village, dating back to approximately 1,000 years ago, appears to have been much larger than typical villages of that time, and the variety of stone used to make tools indicates extensive trading over hundreds of miles. Yet all the builders of this prehistoric “city” had to work with were stone, bone, wood, sinew and clay.
This gigantic pair of tin snips, wedge for splitting wood and hand-made carpenter’s plane were among the tools brought to Boone County by A.G. Mansfield, a farmer and tinsmith originally from London, who did much to help build the community of Albion.