Hindsight: Journal of Optometry History, Volume 47, Number 2  From the Editor 2016| Page 46 

 

From the Editor 
 

THEY WERE OPTOMETRISTS! 
 

f you happen to read an article of potential interest to optometric historians, I 
encourage you to write a review of it and submit your review to Hindsight. 
Alternatively, you could send the article of interest to me, and we will bring it 

to the attention of OHS members through the pages of Hindsight. OHS Advisory 
Committee member Chuck Haine recently sent me an article entitled “Spectacles, 
Cheaters, and Shades,” which appeared in the March/April, 2016 issue of Your Genealogy 
Today (volume 2, number 1, pages 33-36), written by a regular contributor to that 
magazine, David A. Norris. Dr. Haine wrote that he found the article to be “interesting 
but not exactly scholarly research.” 
 The author of the article wrote about the history of spectacles in the last few 
centuries because “hints about spectacles and eyeglasses during…genealogy 
research…might be a good way of finding new and personal information about our 
ancestors.” (p. 36) One of the various interesting tidbits was that two Mayflower 
passengers had pairs of spectacles mentioned in the inventories of their estates after their 
deaths in 1659 and 1672. The author also noted that the 1781 probate file of one of his 
ancestors mentioned one pair of spectacles. Spectacles were imported in Colonial 
America, and the American spectacle making industry did not arise until after the 
American Revolution. 
 Norris noted that early newspaper advertisements can provide clues concerning 
where our ancestors may have obtained their eyeglasses. Watchmakers, jewelers, 
booksellers, druggists, and other merchants advertised the sale of spectacles. Norris gave 
these examples:  
 

Torry and Company of Charleston, South Carolina advertised themselves as 
‘Opticians and Print Sellers’ in the early Federal era. A Philadelphia city directory 
of 1819 included the firm of ‘Fisher M. and Son’, who were listed as a ‘thermometer 
and spectacle maker.’ In early newspaper ads, ‘opticians’ also offered telescopes, 
microscopes, magnifying glasses, barometers, and other optical instruments 
besides spectacles. (p. 36) 

 
 What I found most interesting in the article was the reproduction of two 
advertisements for “opticians” from the 1880 Worchester, Massachusetts city directory. 
This was an era before the term optometry was in common usage, and persons who were 
practicing optometry referred to themselves as opticians or other monikers. 
 Henry Hofstetter often talked about optometry’s “centuries-long existence,”1 
emphasizing that the popularization of the term optometrist, the passage of licensure 
laws, etc., in the early twentieth century were stages, albeit highly significant stages, in 
the development of optometry, rather than indications of the de novo birth of a new 
occupation. The factor that we may view as distinguishing the refracting optician or 
optometrist from the dispensing optician is the conduct of some form of examination, 
however rudimentary it may seem by today’s standards. 

I 



 
 
 

 
Hindsight: Journal of Optometry History, Volume 47, Number 2  From the Editor 2016| Page 47 

 

 One of the 1880 advertisements was for “I.H. Stockwell, Optician.”  Further 
inspection of the ad suggests that he was practicing optometry because it says: “Spectacles 
adapted after an examination of the Eye.”  The multiple roles often filled by the nineteenth 
century optometrist are illustrated where the ad says: “Mathematical and Philosophical 
Instruments in great variety.”  
 The other advertisement was for “W.A. England, Watchmaker and Optician.”  In 
fine print the ad states: “Personal attention given to Fitting the Eye for Spectacles or Eye 
Glasses. Improved Instruments used.”  It is not as obvious whether W.A. England was 
also practicing optometry, but if we assume that the “improved instruments” were used 
in some type of examination, then we can assume he or she was also practicing optometry. 
 Although we can rightfully be proud of the advances in optometric knowledge and 
technology of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it would be arrogant on our part 
to think that optometrists of centuries past were less important to the persons they served. 
 
Reference 
 
1. Hofstetter HW. The OHS mission. Hindsight 1996;27:17-18. 
 
David A. Goss 
Editor, Hindsight: Journal of Optometry History