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American Colonial Furniture: The Pilgrim Century Early American Colonial Furniture History

 

Early American Colonial Furniture its history in the United States begins, not with Captain John Smith’s company of gentlemen adventurers in Virginia or with the Hollanders who swapped nineteen dollars worth of beads, hatchets and rum for Manhattan Island, but rather with the austere, nonconforming Englishmen who settled New England. It was they who brought the trade of furniture making from old England and in these new environs were, by 1675, making tables, chairs and chests of distinctly American design. In fact, furniture making in New England can with certainty be said to date from that bleak December day in 1620 when the Pilgrim Fathers with their families, numbering one-hundred persons all told- forsook the Mayflower and scrambled onto Plymouth Rock and dry land. Their ship was only of 120 tons burden and had to carry their provisions and supplies for the colonizing expedition as well as for two trips across the uncharted Atlantic. The Mayflower was 82 feet long, 22 feet beam, and 14 feet from keel to main deck. Into her told Christopher Jones, master of the ship, had to stow the casks of provisions, the supplies and the Pilgrim Father’s chests of household gear.

What room was left for all the antiques that are now reputed to have come over in this historic vessel? The answer is obvious; likewise careful study of these reputed Mayflower relics discloses the majority to be either of American make or of English origin of a later date. But these very casks of food and drink, which precluded bringing much of any furniture required under the Tunnage Acts then in force that somebody be abroad the ship who could make casks to be sent back on the return voyage. To comply so that they may sail from Southampton the Pilgrims added John Alden of “Speak for Yourself, John” fame to their number. He was a cooper of twenty-one years. This is how Governor William Bradford in 1650, in his History of the Plymouth Settlement listed him:

“John Alden, Mr Alden was hired at Southampton as a cooper. Being a likely young man he was desired a settler; but it was left to his own choice to stay or return to England; he stayed and married Pricilla Mullins.”

Thus it happened that the first trained wood-worker came to an English speaking colony on the American Continent. Moreover, Alden prospered and seems to have devoted the 67 years before his death to office holding, farming, trading with the Indians and doing a little furniture making, Occasionally he is referred to in colonial records as a “joyner.” This does not mean that he devoted himself to the affairs of Plymouth’s Chamber of Commerce, Rotary club or lodge of Elks, Instead it was the style of the day for a craftsman who made the 1st early American Colonial furniture.

Four years after the founding of Plymouth, Alden moved to Duxbury, eight miles for Plymouth. This was America’s first suburban development. Here he cleared a farm of 169 acres and in 1653 built the house that is still standing. By 1665 Alden, after many years of membership in the colonial council, was appointed Deputy Governor. Not bad for a man whose only reason for sailing on the Mayflower was to care for the casks of salt meat, beer and water. When he died he left 33 shillings worth of early American colonial furniture to wit, one table, one form (i.e. bench), one cupboard, tow chairs, bedsteads, chests and boxes. Probably most of these pieces were of his own make but unfortunately none of them has survived that can be identified as genuine John Alden furniture. On the other hand, It is fairly safe to consider that what he did make was just about like the pieces of  early American colonial furniture made prior to 1687, the year of his death.

John Alden was not the sole citizen of Plymouth trained to furniture making, about 1629 there arrived from the Old Country Kenelm Winslow, brother of Governor Edward Winslow who played such an important part in the affairs of the Pilgrims even for the days of the Leyden sojourn. Kenelm who was one of the youngest of the five Winslow brothers all of whom left their native Droitwich in Worcestershire, England for the Plymouth settlement. He was born on April 29th, 1599, and thus was thirty years old when he reached the New World. Evidently he had learned his trade in the homeland and did not adopt a new calling on reaching Massachusetts, for there is an entry dated January 6, 1633, in which he styled “joyner.” It shows that he was prosperous enough to have a helper for it concerns the indenture to him of Samuel Jenney as an apprentice.

Further study of this second Plymouth furniture maker discloses him to have been chosen, in 1640 town surveyor. The next year for neglect of highways he is fined ten shillings. Then he quit Plymouth and betook himself to Marshfield where in 1637, he had obtained a grant of land. With this shift of abode Kenelm seems have abandoned his trade for thereafter the records refer to him as a planter and sometimes interested in shipping. On September 13, 1672, while on a visit to Salem he died and was buried there.

Like Alden with whom he may have worked for all we know, Winslow did not mark the product of his hand, So we do not know for certainty just what  he made. There is a possibility that a sample of his skill may still survive. In Pilgrim Hill Plymouth is Governor Edward Winslow’s wainscot chair. This the catalogue describes as “made in Cheapside, London in 1614” but careful students may question the statement. They are prone to feel that instead of being made of English oak the wood is New England light oak. If this be true, then quite possibly it was made by no other person than the Governors brother, Kenelm. To prove or disprove this beyond doubt is a task that should be undertaken by some qualified student of early American colonial furniture. It is a challenge not to be overlooked.

But while Alden was quietly going on his way on his Duxbury farm and Winslow was concerning himself with crops and ships at Marshfield, things were happening in other parts of New England and happening with startling speed. Between 1629 and 1640 there was a mighty wave of migration from the western countries of old England to the Massachusetts Bay colony and other parts of New England. Well-to-do merchants, land-owners, artisans and professional men left the mother country in alarming numbers. In 1643 the United Colonies of New England made up of thirty nine towns with a total population of 24,000 came into being. Soon their settlements reached from Greenwich Conn., Maine and coastal New England was a region of boom towns with work and opportunity for everybody who would abide by the strict meeting house dominated   oligarchy that was the law of the land.

By 1650, the probate courts were handling as large as two thousand pounds sterling relatively as such money as half a million dollars today. Skilled labourers were paid 16 shillings a day and prosperous joiners were coming over from England with their families and apprentices. Roger Mason arrived in Boston in 1635 with his wife and four children and in 1637, Samuel Dix, Joyner, with his wife, two children and two apprentices, William Storey and Daniel Lindsey. This same year Edward Johnson of Canterbury, England reached Boston with his wife, seven children and three servants. Quite evidently, Johnson was a early American colonial furniture cabinet maker of definite worldly wealth.

So it went. The records are full of the arrival of furniture makers of this sort. Sometimes, like Sergeant Stephen Jacques, the man who built the meeting house at Newburyport, these men are described as builders as well as makers of early American colonial early American colonial furniture. Unfortunately what pieces they made out of the oak, maple, pine, chestnut and ash that grew, so to speak, right beside their workshops, can only be determined by those examples that are now preserved in museums. These include tables, chairs, stools, benches, settles, chests big and little, as well as writing boxes and Bible boxes.

Although bedsteads were in common use in New England from the start they were evidently very simple frames, for, in 1633, in Plymouth old bedsteads are valued as low as two shillings each, and none of these early examples seem to have survived. The earliest the writer knows of, is the folding bedstead dating back from around 1700, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It is made of maple with two small posts and the framework at the head to support the voluminous hangings that were considered part of every well furnished bed. A study of the antique shows one how the lower part swung up under the framework that supported the headboard draperies. In the Metropolitan there is also a cradle of American make, of oak with panelled sides not unlike the chests of the period. It dates from 1625 to 1675 and shows how simple were the tastes of the day. Except for the turnings of the corner posts and parallel lines of beading on the rails it is without ornamentation. Simplicity of the early American colonial furniture is again is the keynote of the oldest known American table. It dates from about 1650 and may also be seen in the same museum. The top is a single plank of pine, twelve feet long and the three part understructure connected by a long pinned-in stretcher is of oak. It is not know just where in New England this table was made, but it can be considered typical of the dining table in use for a long time throughout all the American colonies. It is distinctly Elizabethan if not Gothic in line its execution is simplicity itself.

Simplicity of the early American colonial furniture craftsmen also ruled in the matter of the stools, benches and settles that took the place of chairs in the average New England house before the dawn of the eighteenth century. The stools were simple three or four legged affairs of the general sort that had been used in England for several hundred years. The benches and settles were plain broad structures, the latter with high backs and side pieces designed for warding off the chill drafts that were prevalent in those silly built and inadequately heated New England homes. Of chairs there were two varieties. The “great” chair, a carved wainscot constructed piece of early American colonial furniture elaborately ornamented, was evidently only possible for a man of means. Such is the one known as the Brewster chair a veritable archiepiscopal throne for the man who ruled the Plymouth colony for a generation. Then there were the simpler arm chairs made of turned uprights and spindle backs, with either a rush seat or one of woven splint. Later slats replaced the spindles of the backs and the slat back chair came into being. The typically American type continued to be made throughout New England until about the time of the Mexican War.

Chests became of the manifold uses to which they were put, were the chief pieces of furniture in New England homes for the first 75 years. At first there were many that were brought over from the old country, but the frequency with which the earliest of the New England homes burned down seems to account for the rarity of English made chests of this period. At first the -this country produced chests were practically like those from the old homeland, only simpler. Then suddenly in the hinterland of the Connecticut River valley, chest making along lines that were distinctly original commenced. For many years it has been known that two distinct types of these chests were made. One was called the Connecticut and the other the Hadley. Careful study of the carved ornamentation of these two examples led to the belief that they were the work of two different men, but who they were and where they live remained unknown until but a half dozen years ago when Luke Vincent Lockwood of New York obtained possession of a two drawer chest ornamented with an elaborately carved all over design on the front. On the back of the lower drawer of the chest is written in seventeenth century handwriting; “Mary Allyns Chistt and joined by Nich, Disbowe,”

This is the earliest piece of early American colonial furniture of proven origin. Mary Allyn, for whom the chest was made, was the daughter of Colonel John Allyn, secretary of the colony. She was born in Hartford in 1657 and died in 1724. In 1686 she married William Whiting. Of Nicholas Disbowe we can only find the following data; He was born at Walden, Essex County, England in 1612-13 and was a property owner in Hartford, Conn., by 1639, where he lived at the north end of Burr Street, now North Main Street. He married Mary Bronson in 1640 and twenty years late obtained permission to build a 16 foot square shop on the highway. For service in the Pequot War on May 11th 1671, Disbrowe was granted 50 acres of land. Likewise he held the office of “chimney viewer” in 1647, 1655, 1663 and 1669, In 1665 Disbrowe was surveyor of highways, and on March 6th 1672-73 at the age of 60, he was freed from military service.

In 1669 Disbrowe married Elizabeth, widow of Twaithe, Strickland. He died in 1683 leaving a total property of £210 a sizable estate for Hartford in that year. At one time Disbrowe was charged with practicing witchcraft. This charge apparently arose from a disputed bill for a chest. In Mr. Lockwood’s opinion Disbrowe was no ordinary carver and his design is distinguished by undulating bands of carved tulips flowing from stiles to rails without breaking. In writing about the Allyn chest in his book, on early American colonial furniture he points out the Disbrowe’s designs were carefully worked out to fit the individual piece and no two pieces are identical.

Of the Hadley early American colonial furniture the chests Mr Lockwood states that they were made by Captain John Allis of Hadley Mass. Capt. Allis’ mother was niece of Nicholas Disbrowe, thus the maker of the Hadley chest was Disbrowe’s great-nephew. The Hadley chests were similar to the Disbrowe style and quite possibly Allis saw the Mary Allyn chest as well as others made by his mother’s uncle. Allis survived Disbrowe by only six years, and then his widow married Samuel Belden , and his son Ichabod not only married his step father’s daughter but went into partnership with him, forming the firm of Belden & Allis, builders in 1702, of the meeting house at Hadley, Mass. Thus the first American furniture of identified craftsmanship is more or less a family affair and was produced in a region which, but a few years previously, had been a trackless wilderness. At the same time that these two men were at work making and carving their chests, some other joiners unfortunately unknown were making another improvement. Under their hands the chest was becoming a chest of drawers. An example of the new chest of drawers of oak with carved ornamentation covering the entire front is in the Metropolitan Museum It was made sometime between 1675 and 1700.