Calico Jack's Trading Company

 HELPING YOU BRING THE PAST TO LIFE. 

 The original Calico Jack, John Rankham, was a pirate who terrorized the Atlantic coast during the early eighteenth century.  I am not him! I am a college professor from a small northern Michigan college and a writer. I have a masters degree in American history, specializing in the colonial fur trade. I have also been involved in muzzleloading and living history for more than a quarter of a century.

     For most of my life I have studied day to day life on the American frontier.  I made my first hunting pouch over thirty years ago.  Long hours of research and study, as well as trial and error, have gone into learning to make the pouches and accoutrements that I make.  I use nothing in the manufacturing of these goods that was not available to a craftsman of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.  All of these items are made with an eye to fuctionality and practicality.  In the past a man's life could depend on how well the things he carried worked; my work is done with that in mind.

     I specialize in making leather goods of all types: Hunting Pouches, Small Bags, Knife Sheaths, haversacks and leg ties