I believe at one point Robert the Mortician acknowledges that he was the owner of the blacksmith shop before it closed, no? I'll have to check his repair skill.. it would be pretty funny for him to be the only high level repair man in town when you're faced with the decision of having him jailed.
edit: Ignore that. He's talking about another house, not the blacksmith shop. I got confused because he describes it as a place that was overrun with undead, and the journal in the abandoned house's basement complains about the same thing.
