Peddlers sold everything from specialized goods to specialized services. Native Americans in New York, for example, hung carved souvenir plates from their horses and traded them from settlement to settlement. Other specialist peddlers were carpenters, preachers, dentists, artists, and even breeders, who offered farmers the services of stallions and bulls for their mares and cows. But the true peddler tended to pack his back or wagon with many items, because it was more profitable to carry a large assortment of goods in anticipation of what people might want or need. Somewhere among all these items would be the famous Yankee notions, which were pins and needles, buttons, razors, brooms, books, window glass, and novelties. Most housewives put aside their "pin money" from the sale of eggs and other products in order to buy these notions, but the peddler would often offer credit or barter for furs and other valuable goods with those who didn't.
Peddling was a way out of poverty from colonial days onwards, and it is surprising how many notable Americans began their careers as peddlers. Like many other frontiersmen in the nineteenth century, Abe Lincoln's father was a part-time peddler.
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