1. Richard L. Morton, Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Virginia Historical Society, 1960), pp. 40–41. Frederick Morton, The Story of Winchester in Virginia (Strasburg, Va.: Shenandoah Publishing House, 1925), p. 37.
2. Morton, Story of Winchester, pp. 40–41. John W. Wayland, A History of Shenandoah County, Virginia (Strasburg, Va.: Shenandoah Publishing House, 1927), p. 47. Morton, Colonial Virginia, p. 539.
3. F. B. Kegley, Kegley’s Virginia Frontier (Roanoke: Southwest Virginia Historical Society, 1938), p. 33. Morton, Story of Winchester, p. 544.
4. Morton, Colonial Virginia, pp. 546–47. Disputes over the boundaries of these counties and the overlaid Lord Fairfax Grant (1685) continued from the 1720s to 1754, with some settlers purchasing land from Fairfax and others from the government of Virginia. The new name may have been derived from Wood’s birthplace, Winchester, England. For more on the development of towns in the Virginia backcountry, see Christopher Edwin Hendricks, “Town Development in the Colonial Backcountry—Virginia and North Carolina” (Ph.d. diss., College of William and Mary, 1991), see esp. pp. 64–78.
5. Morton, Colonial Virginia, p. 551.
6. John Kirke Paulding, Letters from the South Written During An Excursion In the Summer of 1816, 2 vols. (New York: James Eastburn & Co., 1817), 1:142–43.
7. The British government placed a bounty on the production of hemp, and certificates were issued and recorded in the county courts. The court order books of Frederick County and Augusta County contain annual entries recording the number of pounds produced by individuals. In 1770, Botetourt County was established from the lower part of Augusta. In that year, the new county produced 170,000 pounds of hemp. See Robert Douthat Stoner, The Seed Bed of the Republic, Early Botetourt (Kingsport, Tenn.: Kingsport Press, Inc., 1962), p. 47. Although records of the Indian trade in the Shenandoah Valley are scarce, some revealing examples survive. John Frazier set up a trading post at Franklin (Venango County, Pennsylvania) about 1740 but moved to Winchester after losing his establishment at the beginning of the French and Indian War. He married and ran a shop in Winchester during the late 1750s. He also guided and repaired arms for Washington and was involved in the disastrous defeat of Braddock’s forces. Frazier’s schedule of losses lists a set of armorers’ tools, dozens of knives, tomahawks, trade silver, saddles, gunlocks, a belt of wampum, rifles, smooth-bore guns, and gunpowder (see Man at Arms 16, no. 5 [September/October 1994]). The records of the Greenbrier store in present-day Greenbriar County, West Virginia (Virginia State Library [hereinafter cited as VSL], Richmond), show how imported goods were traded for deer skins during the 1770s. The Greenbrier store was a branch of Sampson and Matthew’s store in Staunton, Virginia. Goods were shipped by pack horse from Staunton to Greenbriar. The records of the Pitzer store in Covington, Virginia (private collection), document similar trading patterns during the 1790s. Deerskins, furs, guns, gunpowder, and flints were important trade goods in the backcountry throughout the eighteenth century.
8. Hendricks, “Town Development in the Colonial Backcountry,” p. 75.
9. The Virginia Magazine 77 (1969): 291–306. John Bivins, Jr., “Isaac Zane and the Products of Marlboro Furnace,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 11, no. 1 (May 1985): 20–23.
10. Morton, Colonial Virginia, pp. 84–86.
11. Fitz Knox, comp., Genealogy of the Fitzhugh, Knox, Gordon, Selden, Horner, Brown, Baylor, (King) Carter, Edmonds, Digges, Page, Tayloe, and Allied Families (Atlanta, Ga., 1932), pp. 19–20. The author thanks Wendy Cooper and Liza Gusler for this reference.
12. Fauquier County Personal Property Tax Records, 1799, VSL. The case of this desk is constructed with hidden dovetails at the top and bottom. These were originally covered at the top by a bookcase (small nail holes from the waist molding are visible.) At the bottom, the hidden dovetail is covered by the base frame. The base frame is approximately 3 1/2" wide and 1" thick. It is mitered at the front corners and continues to the back on the sides. Along the back, two frame elements butt to the sides and do not extend across the back, being only long enough to support the rear foot brackets. These frame elements are made of walnut and have the base molding cut on their outer edges. The case has walnut drawer rails that are notched at the corners to receive the quarter-columns (the columns cover the rail joints) and full- to 3/4-depth dustboards that are dadoed to the sides and tongue and grooved into the rails. The dustboards are flush with the drawer rails on the top and slightly thinner at the bottom. The dadoes for the dustboards are approximately 1/4" narrower than the rails. Drawer guides are glued on top of the dustboards at each side behind the quarter-columns. The vertical back boards are nailed into rabbets at the top and sides and face nailed to the bottom of the case. The fall board support partitions are blind-mortised into the bottom of the writing surface, and are though-tenoned into the drawer rail. The walnut supports for the fall board are faced with vertically grained walnut and edged with applied cock beading. The large case drawers also have walnut fronts and applied cock beading. The drawer sides have wide dovetails and pins. The top three drawers have three tails in front and two in back, whereas the bottom drawer has four front tails and three back tails. The drawer sides and front are grooved to receive the chamfered edges of the bottoms. The bottom boards run parallel to the sides of the drawer and extend past the drawer backs. The center section of the extended bottom is cut away to the edge of the drawer back leaving the sides extended to stop against the back boards. The bottoms are nailed along the back edges. The fallboard has battens that are mitered at the top on both sides. The interior drawer bottoms are set into rabbets in the front and sides, overlap the back, and are nailed with small wrought sprigs. The bottoms are flush with the back and have small blocks glued to them to serve as drawer stops.
The desk has had at least one campaign of restoration in which most of the original nails were lost and some repairs were made. Several pieces of wood in the dustboards and drawer bottoms have nail holes that are not related to the construction of the desk. Several of these appear to be in elements of the first construction and must represent the use of salvaged wood by Frye and Martin. The only conjectural restoration is the feet.
13. Winchester Personal Property Tax Records, 1794, VSL. Will of Christopher Frye, Sr., February 13, 1801, Frederick County, Virginia, Will Book 6 (1795–1802), pp. 642–44. Virginia Magazine of History, vol. 1, p. 389. For Frye’s military service and the reference to his being a farmer, see Virginia Magazine of History, vol. 1, p. 389, as cited in Mary Goodwin, Research Report Prepared for John Graham, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, February 14, 1969. In 1780, Christopher Frye of Winchester proved his service in Colonel William Byrd’s Seventh Company of the Virginia Regiment (Shenandoah Valley Pioneers and their Descendants—A History of Frederick County [Berryville, Va., 1963], p. 90, as cited in Goodwin, Research Report).
14. Frederick County Marriage Bonds, 1771–1825, VSL, as cited in Margaret Gill, Research Report Prepared for Wallace Gulser, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, May 18, 1973. John Hill, “The Furniture Craftsman in Baltimore, 1783–1823” (master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1967). Hill’s thesis includes references to the following James Martins: James Martin, cabinetmaker, Frederick, Maryland, n.d., p. 440; James Martin, Sr., cabinetmaker, Lovely Lane between Calvert and South Streets, Baltimore, 1796, p. 440; James Martin, cabinetmaker, Dugans Wharf, Baltimore, 1799, p. 441. The following individuals served apprenticeships with one of the Baltimore James Martins: Daniel H. Bateman, 1802, p. 366; John Henry Lancaster, 1802, p. 365; George Kennedy, 1794, p. 358; John Stricher, 1799, p. 360. The author thanks Philip Zimmerman for information from this thesis. Coffins provided by James Lee Martin of Winchester were generally more expensive than those furnished by his contemporaries, which suggests that he was at the pinnacle of his trade. The author thanks Dr. H. E. Comstock for this information.
15. Wallace Gusler interview with Mrs. Allen Bond (1973), the last member of the Lupton family to own the high chest illustrated in figure 14. Christopher and Mary Frye to David Lupton, January 16, 1790, Winchester City Deed Book 1, p. 8.
16. Inventory of James Lee Martin, June 6, 1815, Frederick County, Virginia, Will Book 9 (1810–1816), pp. 421–25, VSL. Winchester City Deed Book 3, March 14, 1815, p. 177, Winchester Corporation Records, Judicial Center, Winchester, Virginia.
17. Since 1973, the author has examined over forty-five pieces in this group. Only a small number are illustrated in this article.
18. This approach to cutting clearance channels across the bottom relates to similar cuts made in floorboards to level them on the joists, a practice common in house joinery. Several variations of this problem with proper installation of drawer stops have been encountered. In one instance, the stops were put on the bottom of the drawer blades, making it necessary to cut shallow notches in the top of the back of the drawer in order to clear the stops when installing the drawer. Sometimes support blocks were glued in the corner between the drawer front and the bottom of the bottom. This support block was then carved away to adjust the drawer fit.
19. In this article, I use “Frye-Martin shops” and “Frye-Martin group” to designate the products of the multigenerational shop tradition that included the Fryes, Martin, and their journeymen.
20. Wallace Gusler interview with Joe Kindig, Jr., 1970; Accession files, Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware.
21. John Haymaker was identified as a gunsmith when he sold his share of town lot 202 to his father, Adam (John Haymaker to Adam Haymaker, October 22, 1799, Winchester City Records, Deed Book 1, p. 165). This lot was the same one that Lord Fairfax granted to Adam Haymaker in 1753. Adam was a gunsmith who worked from the 1750s to his death in 1808. For references to Adam Haymaker’s work and apprentices, see Harold B. Gill, Jr., The Gunsmiths of Colonial Williamsburg (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1974). Goodwin, Research Report.
22. In the April 1, 1820, issue of the Winchester Gazette, George Krepps gave his location as opposite the courthouse and listed cabinetwork. For more on Krepps’s change of trades, see Daniel D. Hartzler, Arms Makers of Maryland (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: George Schumway, 1977), pp. 204–7.
23. John Whipple is listed as a tithable individual in Chandlee’s tax entry. Winchester City Personal Property Tax Records, March 25, 1787, Library of Virginia, Richmond.
24. For the Jacob Gabott apprenticeship, see Gill, Gunsmiths of Colonial Virginia, pp. 82, 90. All of Lauck’s apprentices disappear from the records by 1796 (Simon Lauck Personal Property Taxes, Frederick County Tax Records, 1794–1796, VSL). John Sheets is listed in the Augusta County tax records after 1796 and is cited as residing in Staunton in the governor’s papers, VSL. Jacob Funk and Henry Harding are listed together in the Shenandoah County Personal Property Tax Rolls of 1797–1800, VSL. A signed rifle by Funk is also dated 1796 and signed “Strasburg Va. State.” Nicholas Chisler is mentioned in correspondence during the War of 1812. He made rifles in Morgantown for the state of Virginia. Executive Papers, VSL. The Spitzer letter is in a private collection. The author thanks Dr. H. E. Comstock for this reference.
25. Derita Coleman Williams and Nathan Harsh, The Art and Mystery of Tennessee Furniture and Its Makers Through 1850 (Nashville, Tenn.: Tennessee Historical Society, Tennessee State Museum Foundation, 1988), pp. 65, 87, 99; see p. 65 for the desk-and-bookcase with the fluted finial. The authors did not associate these pieces and the Winchester school. The histories of the desk-and-bookcase and high chest are intriguing since the arched, stop-fluted quarter-columns of both pieces and the pediment rosettes, applied carving, and interior of the desk-and-bookcase are clearly associated with Winchester work. For the William Wright from Knoxville, Tennessee, see ibid., p. 323. For the William Wright from Shenandoah County, see artisan files, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
26. For the Nashville, Tennessee, Samuel Williams, see Williams and Harsh, The Art and Mystery of Tennessee Furniture, pp. 322. For the Frederick County Samuel Williams, see Inventory of James Lee Martin.
27. The desk-and-bookcase shown in figures 33–36 has interior drawers with nailed frames, indicating that a wide range of work existed in the Winchester area and that attributions based on such variations can be tenuous. For the Tennessee chest, see Williams and Harsh, The Art and Mystery of Tennessee Furniture, p. 88, pl. 24. Wallace Gusler interview with Joe Kindig, Jr., 1970. Mr. Kindig stated that he purchased the desk illustrated in figure 54 from Wytheville, Virginia, antique dealer Garland Stevens.
28. Joseph Nathan Kane, Facts about the Presidents, 5th ed. (New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1989), p. 29. Winterthur student Johana Ruth Harris was unable to identify positively the subject of the silhouette (Johana Ruth Harris, Research Paper, Winterthur Museum, 1995).
29. In the January 30, 1790, issue of the Virginia Gazette and the Winchester Advertiser, cabinetmaker William King advertised that he made Windsor chairs, common chairs, spinning wheels, and cabinet work and employed “well experienced hands from the city of Philadelphia.” Nashville, Tennessee, cabinetmaker Samuel Williams, who was probably a journeyman from James Lee Martin’s shop, advertised that he had “several of the best workmen from the shops in New York and Philadelphia” (Williams and Harsh, The Art and Mystery of Tennessee Furniture, p. 322). |