| 1. Samuel Maverick, “A Brief Description of New England and the Severall Townes Therein, Together with the Present Government Thereof,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2d series, 1 (1884–1885): 237.
2. Stylistic theories evolved into statements of fact as subsequent surveys repeated and reinforced earlier hypotheses. The authors are grateful for the pioneer observations and archival work of Ralph E. Carpenter, Joseph Downs, Benno M. Forman, Benjamin Ginsberg, Bernard Levy, S. Dean Levy, V. Isabelle Miller, and Joseph Ott. Morrison Heckscher, William Hosley, Jr., Brock Jobe, and Jeanne Vibert Sloane have also been generous with their time and knowledge, and their most recent writings indicate that they were troubled by the history they had inherited. Jobe’s research on Thomas Fitch and Samuel Grant laid the foundation for much of the material presented in this article. Alan Miller attributed the carving on the Apthorp chairs and many of the objects illustrated here to Boston and to carver John Welch while working on an article titled “Roman Gusto in New England: An Eighteenth-Century Boston Furniture Designer and His Shop,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1993), pp. 161–201. These attributions were the foundation for the arguments presented here.
3. John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), as quoted in Timothy H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690–1776,” Journal of British Studies 25, no. 3 (October 1986): 473. Brock Jobe observed that during the mid-1740s Boston exported nearly a thousand chairs per year (Brock Jobe, “Boston Furniture Industry, 1725–1760” [master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1976], p. 105). Lieutenant Governor Gooch letter to the Board of Trade, October 5, 1732, Colonial Office Papers 5.1323, Public Record Office, London (hereinafter cited COP and PRO).
4. Edmund Burke, An Account of the European Settlements in America, 2 vols. (1758; reprint ed., New York: Research Reprints, 1970), 2:172–73. Economist Curtis Nettles observed that “Sailings between Boston and England were so much more frequent than sailings from New York that New York carried on a great deal of its correspondence with Europe through Boston.” Many New York traders simply endorsed their bills to Bostonians, who then passed them along to London collectors (Curtis Nettles, “The Economic Relations of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, 1680–1715,” Journal of Economic and Business History 3, [1930–1931] pp. 187, 195). On April 26, 1708, the Boston Weekly News-Letter reported: “Any merchant or others that have any money at New York, and want to remit the same by bills of exchange to Boston, let them apply themselves to Benjamin Faneuil at New York, where they may be supplied.”
5. Sir Josiah Child, A New Discourse of Trade (London, 1693), as quoted in William M. Fowler, Jr., “Trye All Ports: The Port of Boston 1783-1793,” in Massachusetts and the New Nation, edited by Conrad Edick Wright, (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), p. 35. James F. Shepherd and Gary M. Walton, The Economic Rise of Early America (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 47–48. Bernard Bailyn, The Great Republic: A History of the American People (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Company, 1981), p. 191. The importance of shipping and shipbuilding in New England is further suggested by Massachusetts Governor Jonathan Belcher’s (1682–1741) March 2, 1736/37, letter to the Lords Commissions for Trade and Plantations: “The Quantity of shipping cleared last year at the several offices was near thirty Thousand Tuns 12,000 of which may have been built the last year in this Province” (COP, PRO). William Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements and Present State of the British Settlements in North America, 2 vols. (Boston: Rogers and Fowle, 1749–1752), 1:539–40.
6. George Clarke, president and commander-in-chief to the General Assembly of the Province of New York, October 14, 1736, COP 5.1093. Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America 1743–1776 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), p. 73. As quoted in Bruce MacMillan Bigelow, “The Commerce of Rhode Island with the West Indies, Before the American Revolution” (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1930), part 1, p. 2.
7. For colonial population figures, see Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625–1742 (New York: Roland Press, 1938), pp. 6n, 143, 303; and Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp. 5, 216. Bridenbaugh derived much of his information from Evarts B. Greene and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the Federal Census of 1790 (1932; reprint ed., Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1966). The figures for Boston are taken from Myrna Kaye, “Eighteenth-Century Boston Furniture Craftsmen,” in Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, edited by Walter Muir Whitehill, Brock Jobe, and Jonathan Fairbanks (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1974), pp. 267–302. The figures for New York are taken from Lois Olcott Price, “Furniture Craftsmen and the Queen Anne Style in Eighteenth Century New York” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1977), pp. 145–58. The figures for Newport are taken from Wendell D. Garrett, “The Newport Cabinetmakers: A Corrected Check List,” Antiques 73, no. 6 (June 1958): 558–61; Joseph K. Ott, “Recent Discoveries Among Rhode Island Cabinetmakers and Their Work,” “More Notes on Rhode Island Cabinetmakers,” and “Still More Notes of Rhode Island Cabinetmakers and Their Work,” Rhode Island History 28, nos. 1, 2, 4 (winter, spring, and fall 1969): 18–24, 51–52, 116–21; and Jeanne A. Vibert, “Market Economy and the Furniture Trade of Newport, Rhode Island, The Career of John Cahoone, Cabinetmaker: 1745–1765” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1981), pp. 91–93. The figure for Newport is astonishing considering that, by the 1760s, furniture exports were an important part of Newport’s economy. Vibert concluded that, during the first half of the eighteenth century, “Newport . . . had a need for imported chairs” (Jeanne A. Vibert, “Rhode Island–Attributed Queen Anne Chairs” [unpublished seminar paper, University of Delaware, 1978], p. 4).
8. For more on Grant, see Brock Jobe, “Boston Furniture Industry, 1720–1740,” in Whitehill, Jobe, and Fairbanks, eds., Boston Furniture, pp. 26–48. For more on Grant and his family, see W. Henry Grant, Ancestors and Descendants of Moses Grant and Sarah Pierce (Lebanon, Pa.: Sowers Printing Company, n.d.), pp. 3, 9, 10, 12. Grant apprenticed with Boston upholsterer Thomas Fitch (1669–1736) and probably took over many of his master’s accounts after Fitch’s death. Robert Campbell, The London Tradesman (1747), as quoted in Audrey Michie, “Charleston Upholstery in All Its Branches, 1725–1820,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 11, no. 2 (November 1985): 22. Brock Jobe and Myrna Kaye, New England Furniture: The Colonial Era (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1984), p. 11.
9. Samuel Grant’s Journal, November 25, 1728 to December 31, 1737. Massachusetts Historical Society (hereinafter cited as MHS).
10. Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel: From the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day, 3 vols. (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1896), 2:143. Samuel Grant Account Book, 1737–1760, December 26, 1740; May 15, 1749; April 19, 1749; February 5, 1746; October 25, 1736; May 13, 1741; May 18, 1748, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. Because the term chair was also applied to riding chairs or chaises, figures listed here and elsewhere do not include references to less than six chairs or “parcels” of chairs. Between April 1, 1744, and April 1, 1745, Grant shipped 809 chairs to other coastal ports and the West Indies (Jobe, “Boston Furniture Industry 1725–1760,” p. 123). British Colonies in America, Customs, Boston Clearances 1744–1748, Boston Atheneum.
11. Grant Account Book, April 17, 1744. Boston Clearances 1744–1748, April 21, 1744.
12. For similar arrangements, see merchant Benjamin Bagnall’s purchase of “12 Chairs @ 43/Canvas to pack 7/ . . . 26.3.46,” on July 29, 1738; merchant Peter Faneuil’s purchase of “54 Chairs @ 33/ pack 8 54/ . . . 91.16.0,” on September 26, 1738; New York ship captain Robert Griffen’s purchase of “12 Chairs @ 32/ozanbrigs 6/ . . . 19.100,” on October 17, 1740; and merchant Joshua Winslow’s purchase of “12 Wallnutt Chairs 65/ . . . 39.0.0,” on April 25, 1745 (Grant Account Book). Ibid., March 6, 1743/44, and April 17, 1744. Boston Clearances 1744–1748. This was probably New Providence in the Bahamas. The harbor clearances listed in the Boston Weekly News-Letter of April 26, 1741, confirm that “Power” cleared for “New Providence.”
13. Boston Clearances 1744–1748.
14. Pennsylvania Gazette, September 23, 1742, and June 14, 1744, as quoted in Alfred Coxe Prime, comp., The Arts & Crafts in Philadelphia, Maryland and South Carolina 1721–1785, 2 vols. (Topsfield, Mass.: Wayside Press for the Walpole Society, 1929), 1: 201–2.
15. Breen, “An Empire of Goods,” p. 497. For the Oldmixon quote, see Esther Singleton, Furniture of Our Forefathers (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1908), pp. 372–73. In his History of New-England . . . to the Year of Our Lord 1700 (London, 1747), Daniel Neil wrote, Bostonians’ “customs and manners are much the same as with the English . . . In the concerns of civil life, as in their dress, tables, and conversations, they affect to be as much English as possible; there is no fashion in London but in three or four months is to be seen in Boston” (as quoted in ibid.). See Neil D. Kamil, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Disappearance and Material Life in Colonial New York,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1995), pp. 193–94. Kamil notes that by 1700, “appraisers in every colony were specifically referring to leather chairs as either Boston, New England, or Boston-made” and that such chairs were considered “novelties of English metropolitan style.” The chairs discussed in this article carried the same cultural associations.
16. Morrison H. Heckscher, American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol.I—the Late Colonial Period: Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Random House, 1985), pp. 63–64.
17. Foote, Annals of Kings Chapel, 2:142–44. The colonial credit and barter systems hinged upon a high degree of trust, and family ties reduced risk. In the absence of kinship, bonds of nationalism, religion, politics, or former apprenticeship were tapped with similar expectation.
18. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Paul Revere’s Boston, 1735–1818 (Boston: by the Museum, 1975), p. 44, no. 49. Typical was Sir William Pepperell’s request of 1737 to a London correspondent for chairs “of ye Newest fashion” (Singleton, Furniture of Our Forefathers, p. 332).
19. Inventory of the Estate of Charles Apthorp, January 7, 1759, Suffolk County Probate, no. 11871, p. 1. At least three of the chairs have remnants of their original yellow damask upholstery: Chipstone Foundation, acc. 1993.2; Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. 1984.21; and private collection. The chair at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is illustrated and discussed in Heckscher, American Furniture, pp. 63–64, no. 22.
20. Welch worked for several chairmakers and upholsterers such as Grant. On April 4, 1746, Grant recorded, “To sundry Bills paid etc. . . . Jonathan Welch, carvers 11.10.0” (Grant Account Book). For more on Welch’s frame carving, see Barbara M. Ward and Gerald W. R. Ward, “The Makers of Copley’s Picture Frames: A Clue,” Old-Time New England 67 (July–December 1976): 16–20; Luke Beckerdite, “Carving Practices in Eighteenth-Century Boston,” in New England Furniture: Essays in Memory of Benno Forman, edited by Brock Jobe (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1987), pp. 142–62; Morrison H. Heckscher and Leslie Greene Bowman, American Rococo, 1750–1775 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), pp. 137–42; Morrison H. Heckscher, “Copley’s Picture Frames,” in John Singleton Copley in America, edited by Carrie Rebora, Paul Staiti, Erica E. Hirshler, Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995), pp. 143–59. Copley referred to Welch and Boston japanner Stephen Whiting in an October 12, 1771, letter to his stepbrother, Henry Pelham: “I have parted with two small frames, but cannot give orders for more because I would have none come but what are engaged. . . . let me know what you paid Welch for carving and Whiting for Gilding and Give my compts. to Capt. Joy.” Copley was working in New York at that time (Beckerdite, “Carving Practices,” p. 148). For a discussion of the desk-and-bookcase, see Miller, “Roman Gusto,” p. 189.
21. The Grant references are cited in Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), p. 286. Grant used the term “feet” for both feet and legs. Evidently “horsebone feet” was synonymous with cabriole legs.
22. The Dalton table is illustrated and discussed in Sotheby’s, Important American Furniture and Folk Art, New York, October 14, 1989, lot 321. The claw-and-ball feet of the Apthorp chairs and the Dalton table are also related to the winged paw feet of two Boston tall clock cases (Miller, “Roman Gusto,” pp. 179–84; see fig. 27 in this article). For more on the concertina-action table, see ibid., p. 195, fig. 51.
23. Grant Account Book, May 20, 1738, and May 25, 1739. Gooch was listed as the owner of the sloop Eunice, which departed for the West Indies on February 4, 1745, with “6 Desks, 4 Tables, 2 Easy Chairs.” He was also listed as the “file owner” for the Snow Blackanne, which departed for the West Indies on May 29, 1746, with “one desk, 5 book cases” (Boston Clearances, 1744–1748). Grant Account Book, June 8, 1736, December 2, 1741, May 24, 1744.
24. The chairs are illustrated in an advertisement by the Caldwell Gallery in Antiques 137, no. 1 (January 1990): 177.
25. Faneuil owned “1 English Walnutt Desk” valued at £10 and “12 Carved Fineerd Chairs & a Couch” valued at £105 (Inventory of Peter Faneuil, March 28, 1743, Suffolk County Registry of Probate, no. 7877). Thomas Hancock to Francis Wilkes, Hancock Letterbook, 1735–1740, December 20, 1738, Baker Library, Harvard University.
26. Colonial Williamsburg conservator Leroy Graves was the first to observe this unusual detail. Grant Account Book, August 24, 1747. The high cost of Prescott’s chairs (£79.10) probably stemmed from their upholstery. By comparison, the “6 Black Walnut Chairs” that Thomas Hancock purchased the following October cost £37.10 (ibid., October 24, 1747).
27. Grant Account Book, February 3, 1741/2. The authors thank Jeanne Vibert Sloane for this reference. See Grant Account Book, November 2, 1743, May 23, 1745, January 6, 1746, and passim. On November 2, 1743 , a “Mr. Palmer” exchanged “9 Round [probably pad] feet carv’d chairs” for “9 better @ 40.”
28. Madam Winthrop’s Old Faces from the Parlor Wall incorrectly identified Margaret as the daughter of Thomas Fayerweather and Jerusha Groce (1690–1760), New England Historic Genealogical Society (hereinafter cited NEHGS). Thomas was her brother (John B. Carney, “In Search of Fayerweather: The Fayerweather Family of Boston,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vols. 144 (1990), 145 (1991), 146 (1992). This error was perpetuated in subsequent publications. The seat inscription is noted in Paul Revere’s Boston, p. 89, no. 104. For more on Fayerweather’s business, see William B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Company, 1891), 2:588–89. The Fayerweather family papers at the NEHGS contain documents in which John Fayerweather is referred to as “Captain” (John B. Carney to Joan Barzilay Freund, August 24, 1995). On September 8, 1732, Grant charged Fayerweather £11 for “8 Black Wallnutt chairs cushns of Leathr” and £11.2 for “6 Maple Chairs chushn Seats of green cks.” (Grant Daybook, September 8, 1732, as quoted in Forman, Seating Furniture, p. 287).
29. For more on the Allen desk, see Miller, “Roman Gusto,” pp. 170–72. The high chest is illustrated and discussed in William Voss Elder III and Jayne E. Stokes, American Furniture 1680–1880, From the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1987), pp. 78–79, no. 53. The Baldwin chair is illustrated in Bernard Levy and S. Dean Levy, “Opulence and Splendor”: The New York Chair, 1690–1830 (New York: Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc., 1984), p. 4.
30. Another very similar clock case from the same shop also has carving attributed to Welch. It reportedly belonged to Boston merchant Gilbert Deblois (1725–1791). For more on this group, see Miller, “Roman Gusto,” pp. 160–200.
31. Ibid. Bernard Levy and S. Dean Levy, Made in America (New York: Bernard & S. Dean Levy, Inc., 1988), pp. 50–51, illustrates a Boston chair with single-crook stiles, a compass seat, turned stretchers, and a carved crest rail with imbricated scrollwork similar to that on the Apthorp chairs.
32. See the frames for Copley’s portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Smith (Beckerdite, “Carving Practices,” p. 154, fig. 38); the upper shell drawer of the Massachusetts blockfront chest-on-chest illustrated in Israel Sack, Inc., American Antiques from the Israel Sack Collection, 9 vols. (Alexandria, Va.: Highland House Publishers, 1974), 4:1056–57; the appliqué of the bookcase illustrated in Miller, “Roman Gusto,” pp. 169–70, figs. 10, 11; and the drawer of the dressing table illustrated in Christopher Monkhouse and Thomas S. Michie, American Furniture in Pendleton House (Providence: Rhode Island School of Design, 1986), p. 78, fig. 24.
33. Alexandra W. Rollins, ed., Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), p. 92, no. 11. Philip L. White, ed., The Beekman Mercantile Papers (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1956), p. 315. Clearances In and Out of New York, COP, 5.1227. For more on the Aspinwall family, see Algernon Aiken Aspinwall, The Aspinwall Genealogy (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, Co., 1901). Aspinwall amassed a considerable fortune and retired at Flushing, New York (Virginia D. Harrington, The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution [1935; reprint, Glouster, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1964], p. 27).
34. Grant Account Book, January 11, 1742, February 1, 1745/46, and February 13, 1746/47. Similarly, Grant credited Edmund Perkins’s son Henry £158.3 for “chair frames” on December 28, 1739 (ibid.).
35. Grant Account Book, August 20, 1743, and September 4, 1743. On April 27, 1747, Grant furnished Perkins with “82 1/2 feet Wallnutt” valued at £37.2.6 (ibid.). Virginia walnut appears in the accounts of eighteenth-century London cabinetmakers and carvers such as Samuel Norman (P. A. Kirkham, “Samuel Norman: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Craftsman,” Burlington, August 1969, p. 503).
36. Perkins lost a total of £690 in tools and lumber, indicating that his shop was one of the largest in Boston. Jobe, “Boston Furniture Industry, 1725–1760,” p. 83.
37. Julius M. Block, Leo Hershkowitz, Kenneth Scott, and Constance D. Sherman, eds., An Account of Her Majesty’s Revenue in the Province of New York, 1701–1709: The Customs Records of Early Colonial New York (Ridgewood, N. J.: Gregg Press, 1966), p. 35. The letter from Fitch to Wendell is cited in Forman, Seating Furniture, p. 284: Forman observed that Boston-made leather chairs owned by New Yorkers “have long been believed to have been of New York origin; [because] they have been there since a week or two after they were made.” The same is true of several chairs discussed in this article. Wendell subsequently moved to New York City, where he established a successful mercantile business. He also opened a branch in Boston, which was managed by his son. The Boston operation became so successful that Wendell eventually moved there (Harrington, The New York Merchants, p. 218).
38. Jobe, “The Boston Furniture Industry 1720–1740,” p. 28. Jobe counted 141 chairs delivered by Grant to Jacob and John Wendell between 1728 and 1740 (p. 33).
39. Grant Account Book, October 14, 1729. New-England Weekly Journal (Boston), October 6, 1729, and October 20, 1729. “Schermerhorn’s Wharf” is included in James Lyne’s 1728 map of New York. He received the land for the wharf from his father-in-law, Johannes Beekman (Richard Schermerhorn, Jr., Schermerhorn Genealogy and Family Chronicles [New York: Tobias A. Wright, 1914], p. 154).
40. Grant Account Book, August 9, 1736. The Faneuil reference is from William B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620–1789, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1891), 2:615–16. Faneuil also had regular business dealings with New York merchant Gulian Verplanck. Grant Account Book, November 28, 1748. Henry Bromfield Account Book, January 8, 1747/48, Bromfield Papers, vol. 16, p. 116, NEHGS. Bromfield seems to have been very familiar with the New York market. On September 26, 1748, he debited Bostonian “Robert Pateshall’s New Yk a/c” £91 and credited the same to “Isaac Lattouch’s New Yk a/c for Cash he paid him at Sundry times.” Pateshall’s name appears frequently in Bromfield’s accounts. Weedon, History of New England, 2:616. Under the heading “May 1736,” the “Charles Apthorp Ledger Book,” vol. 12, 1732 through November 1736, notes, “Benjamin Burroughs pd for a Certificate of a box sent Letouche therin to N. York 5/ pewter 18 0.6.0.”
41. New York: Shipping Returns 1731–1738; New York: Shipping Returns 1735–1752; and New York Treasurer’s Accounts 1739–1754 in COP 5.1225, COP 5.1226, and COP 5.1227, respectively. Listings of less than six chairs were not included in this tally. As quoted in Esther Singleton, Social New York Under the Georges, 1714–1776 (New York: D. Appleton, 1902), p. 375.
42. Henry Lloyd II to Henry Lloyd, September 24, 1748, and Henry Lloyd II to Henry Lloyd, May 27, 1749, both in Papers of the Lloyd Family of Manor of Queens Village, Lloyd’s Neck, Long Island, New York 1654–1820, 2 vols. (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1927), 1:410, 424. Henry II also shipped Boston chairs to other New Yorkers. On May 22, 1752, he asked his father to “take care of a Dozen Chairs for Mr. Welles of Stamford to be deliver’d to you at Queens Village” (ibid., p. 497).
43. William Smith, Jr., The History of the Province of New-York, Volume One: From the First Discovery to the Year 1732, 2 vols. (1757; reprint ed., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 2:226. Henry Lloyd II to Henry Lloyd, December 1, 1758, in Papers of the Lloyd Family, 2:733.
44. Several letters in the Lloyd papers document their association with Beekman. For example, see Papers of the Lloyd Family, 1:254, 255, 270. Thomas Fitch Account Books, March 13, 1724, and May 25, 1724 (microfilm), MHS. New York: Shipping Returns 1735–1752 and 1739–1754, COP 5.1226 and COP 5.1227. Beekman’s ships made three round trips between March 25, 1739, and September 29, 1740, alone.
45. The portrait is illustrated in Rebora, et al., eds., Copley in America, p. 91, fig. 81. This combination of woods is not found in New York upholstered furniture of the same period. A later Boston settee at the Metropolitan Museum in New York has the same secondary woods, and both objects have birch crest rails (See Heckscher, American Furniture, pp. 140–41, no. 83). On May 3, 1739, Grant sold John Potwine of Hartford “1 Settee green Harrateen . . . 23.18.0” (Grant Account Book). It cost almost twice as much as similarly upholstered easy chairs.
46. The splat was enlarged by directly quoting the profile of the side chair splat and then broadened along the outer edge by 1/2 inch in width and 3/4 inch in height.
47. See Luke Beckerdite, “Origins of the Rococo Style in New York Furniture and Interior Architecture,” in Beckerdite, ed., American Furniture (1993), p. 42, for an armchair with eagle head arm terminals attributed to the shop of New York and Charleston, South Carolina, carver Henry Hardcastle. Hardcastle probably moved from New York to Charleston during the summer of 1755.
48. The chairs are thought to commemorate the 1742 marriage of Judge Robert R. Livingston and Margaret Beekman (Levy and Levy, , p. 7). A turret-top card table that descended in the Verplanck family is illustrated in Heckscher, American Furniture, pp. 174–75, no. 105. A china table that descended in the Halstead family of Milton Neck or Rye, New York, is illustrated in Charles F. Hummel, A Winterthur Guide to American Chippendale Furniture: Middle Atlantic and Southern Colonies (New York: Rutledge Books, 1976), p. 45, fig. 37.
49. Garrett, “A Corrected Check List,” pp. 558–61. In a 1763 letter to John Goddard, Moses Brown mentioned “The cherry Table & Leather Chairs I sent ye Money for” (Ralph E. Carpenter, Jr., The Arts and Crafts of Newport, Rhode Island 1640–1820 [Newport, R.I.: Preservation Society of Newport County, 1954], p. 37). On December 27, 1766, Job Townsend billed Stephen Aryault £180 for “6 chairs made of Black Walnut” (Mabel M. Swan, “The Goddard and Townsend Joiners: Part I,” Antiques 50 [April 1946]: 230). The aforementioned references are cited in Vibert, “Rhode Island–Attributed Queen Anne Chairs,” p. 10. Virginia Shipping Returns, COP 5.1443-47. (The Virginia Returns are fragmentary and deal with six different ports.) Similarly, a survey of shipping returns for Charleston, South Carolina (returns for 1738–1752 missing), revealed that over seventy-five chairs arrived on Boston vessels between 1736 and 1763, but no chairs were listed on Rhode Island ships before 1759 (Shipping Returns: S. Carolina, 1736–1754, COP 5.510).
50. Carl Bridenbaugh, ed., Gentleman’s Progress. The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, 1744 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), pp. 85, 221.
51. New York Shipping Returns: 1735–1752, COP 5.1226. The Government of Rhode Island Answers to General Inquiries Sent . . . Relating to that Colony, November 9, 1731, COP 5.1268. Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, p. 56.
52. Gerard G. Beekman to Stephen Greenleaf, August 11, 1746, and Gerard C. Beekman to John Channing, September 1, 1746, both in White, ed., Beekman Mercantile Papers, 1:5. The chairs mentioned in Beekman’s letter were shipped with Captain Robert Griffith, a New York mariner who frequently sailed to Boston and Rhode Island and who did business with Samuel Grant. For example, Griffith purchased “1 crimson easie chair & packing . . . 12.18.0” on September 2, 1740, and “1 crimson easie chair [and 1] blew ditto . . . 25.14.0,” “1 couch frame squab & pillow . . . 8.11.7,” and “12 chairs @32/ 6 oznabrigs 6/ . . . 19.10.0” on October 17, 1740 (Grant Account Book). William Johnston is cited in Kaye, “Boston Furniture Craftsmen,” p. 285. Thomas Johnson’s label appears on a Boston tall clock case with a movement by Boston clockmaker Benjamin Bagnall (Joseph Downs, “American Japanned Furniture,” Old-Time New England 28, no. 2 [October 1937]: 65). For more on the Claggetts, see Richard L. Champlin, “High Time: William Claggett and His Clockmaking Family,” Newport History 47, pt. 3 (summer 1974): 157–90. Gerard C. Beekman to Stephen Greenleaf, December 22, 1747, and Gerard C. Beekman to John Channing, September 4, 1747, both in White, ed., Beekman Mercantile Papers, 1:5–28.
53. The authors were not allowed to remove the Thomas Claggett movement from the case to verify its originality. The staggered hood is made of separate, stacked elements like many Boston examples. It seems more experimental because the sides forming the frieze above the cornice are wider than the sides below the cornice, and the step does not return to the more narrowed dimensions of its base. This feature appears to have been an afterthought, perhaps to widen the sides and front of the frieze to accommodate the putti spandrel appliqués. A related clock case (at Cherry-Hill) with the brand of Albany merchant Philip Van Rensselaer (1747–1798) documents the shipment of Boston clock cases to New York during the same period as the chairs discussed in this article. The veneered clocks are illustrated in Helen Comstock, American Furniture: Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Century Styles (New York: Viking Press, 1962), n.p. no. 186; and Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), pp. 87–89. The Chipstone clock reportedly descended in the Bull family of Rhode Island.
54. Grant Account Book, February 1, 1744/45; May 20, 1737. When Dr. Hamilton visited Newport, he “took lodging att one Mrs. Leech’s, a Quaker, who keeps an apothecary’s shop, a sensible, discreet, and industrious old woman” (Bridenbaugh, ed., Gentleman’s Progress, pp. 151, 246, no. 341). Grant Account Book, August 30, 1746. Also see Church’s purchases of “1 Looking Glass” for £21 on May 29, 1742, and “6 Wallnutt Chairs” for £25.10 on October 23, 1746. Charles Church, son of Benjamin and Alice Church, was born on May 9, 1682, in Bristol, Rhode Island (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, International Genealogical Index 3.05 North America, 1994).
55. Joseph K. Ott, “Abraham Redwood’s Chairs?” Antiques 119, no. 3 (March 1981); 672. Redwood also purchased fabrics in Boston. On October 20, 1735, “J. Boutineau, Boston” wrote: “Inclosed is severall paterns of floured Damask both silk & worsted with the pryces on the papers. They . . . look much better in the peice than patern if any of them suits you let me know which & the quantity & shall send them to you by first opportunity” (J. Boutineau to Abraham Redwood, October 20, 1735, Redwood Papers, Newport Historical Society). For more on Greenleaf acting as Redwood’s agent in Boston, see Bigelow, “The Commerce of Rhode Island,” part 1, pp. 14–15. Bigelow noted that “it was customary for Newport merchants to have their sons educated in Boston and also have them serve business apprenticeships with merchants in that town.” The archives at the Newport Historical Society contain numerous letters between Boston merchants, such as Peter Faneuil, James Boudoin, and Jan Boutineau, and Newporters such as Stephen Ayrault and Abraham Redwood.
56. The Smith chairs are illustrated in Joseph K. Ott, The John Brown House Loan Exhibition of Rhode Island Furniture (Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1965), p. 8, no. 8. Leigh Keno and Joan Barzilay Freund are preparing an article on the impact of Boston’s furniture exports on Newport’s furniture industry from the 1720s to the early 1750s for a future volume of American Furniture. Vibert, “Rhode Island–Attributed Queen Anne Chairs,” p. 10.
57. Breen, “An Empire of Goods,” p. 491. James B. Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantations, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1952–1968), 1:8. As quoted in Bigelow, “The Commerce of Rhode Island,” p. 29. In a May 28, 1739, letter to Thomas and James Hayward of London, Banister wrote, “the people of this Colony being resolved to Brake of their Dependence from Boston therefore have generously purchased the Greatest part of my Cargoe allready” (ibid.).
58. Henretta, “Colonial Boston,” p. 81. Andrew Burnaby, Travels through the Middle Settlements in North-America in the Years 1759 and 1760, 2d ed. (1775; reprint ed., Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1960), pp. 103–4. Henry Lloyd II to Henry Lloyd, October 23, 1754, Papers of the Lloyd Family, 2:522. Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, p. 5.
59. Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp. 48, 45. Burnaby, Travels through the Middle Settlements, p. 81.
60. Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, p. 49. Benjamin Franklin, “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge Among the British Plantations in America” (Philadelphia, 1743), as quoted in ibid., p. 243.
61. Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, p. 72. Vibert, “Market Economy of Newport,” pp. 91–93.
62. Port of Annapolis Entries, 1756–1775, Maryland, vol. 1 ms. 21, Maryland Historical Society. Vibert, “Market Economy of Newport,” p. 23.
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