James Black Bowie Heritage Festival by Ed Sanow

The James Black Bowie Heritage Festival is this weekend. KNIFE Magazine Publisher Mark Zalesky is on the road right now, or potentially is already in Arkansas. He is exhibiting at the festival

KNIFE Publisher Mark Zalesky to Exhibit at 4th Annual James Black Bowie Heritage Festival

Writer Ed Sanow wrote about the festival in our July 2024 issue…

James Black Bowie Heritage Festival
By Ed Sanow

The James Black Story
The story has long been a mixture of fiction and fact: James Black, the legendary knifemaker of Washington, Arkansas, celebrated in TV shows, novels, and on the big screen. Inventor of the bowie knife! (Unlikely.) Knifemaker to James Bowie! (Maybe.) Made it out of a meteorite! (Certainly not.) An early and important maker of coffin-handled bowie knives? (With confidence, yes!)
James Black’s history is scant on details, but some of it can be documented and other parts were related by Black himself. Born in May 1800, James Black’s mother died when he was young, and his father remarried. He did not get along with his stepmother, so at eight years old, he left his Hackensack, New Jersey home. Black became an apprentice to Stephen Henderson, a Philadelphia silverplater, who had emigrated from Sheffield, England, the knifemaking capital of the United Kingdom.

You can read the whole thing in the flipbook below.