The History of the Nails

The nail was once a huge part of a global trade. The materials and the skill to make the nails were both scarce things. In 1619, a law was actually passed in the state of Virginia to ban people from burning their own houses down. So if somebody was leaving one house and going to go away and move to a new place or build another house, they actually burned their houses down. They extracted all the nails, bag them up, kind of swung it over their shoulder and then went on to build their next house.