1. For the history and a proposed attribution of the Waldo chair, see Robert F. Trent, “The Waldo Chair: A Monument of Early Connecticut Joinery,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 48, no. 4 (fall 1983): 174–88. The author thanks Trent for his assistance in preparing this article and for providing photographs of various chairs. 2. Wallace Nutting, Furniture of the Pilgrim Century (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1921), pp. 175–76. Trent, “Waldo Chair,” pp. 174–88. 3. Most of the information on board-seated turned chairs presented here is based on unpublished research by Robert F. Trent, John Alexander, and Allan Breed. For a preliminary report on that work, see Trent, “The Board-Seated Turned Chairs Project,” Regional Furniture 4 (1990): 43–48. Other studies of turned chairs include S. Dillon Ripley, “An American Triangular Turned Chair?” in Pilgrim Century Furniture, edited by Robert F. Trent (New York: Main Street/Universe Books, 1976), pp. 31–33; Richard Ryder, “Three-Legged Turned Chairs,” Connoisseur 191, no. 766 (December 1975): 243–47; Richard Ryder, “Four-Legged Turned Chairs,” Connoisseur 191, no. 767 (January 1976): 44–49; Victor Chinnery, Oak Furniture: The British Tradition (Suffolk, Eng.: Antique Collector’s Club, 1979), pp. 87–101; and Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture 1630–1730 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), pp. 68–77. 4. As quoted in Chinnery, Oak Furniture, pp. 545–49. Also, see Forman, American Seating Furniture, pp. 383–84. 5. The three-legged chairs with early New England histories are the Harvard President’s chair and a chair in the Smithsonian Institution. The Harvard President’s chair is discussed in Jonathan Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent, eds., New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century, 3 vols. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1982), pp. 511–12. The Smithsonian chair (acc. 388001) is illustrated in Ripley, “An American Triangular Turned Chair?” It has a history of descent in a Topsfield, Massachusetts, family and came to the Smithsonian as part of the Greenwood Collection in 1951. The author thanks Rodris Roth for providing information on the Greenwood Collection. For Jacob’s inventory, see George Francis Dow, ed., Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts, 1635–1681, 3 vols. (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1916–1920), pp. 291–96. 6. Chinnery, Oak Furniture, p. 92, figs. 2:75, 2:75a; this chair has a board front stretcher with rectangular tenons. The shaved front stretcher on the Metropolitan Museum of Art chair is a replacement. The original one was tenoned into round mortises in the front posts. Both chairs are made of oak, and their rear posts are raked above the seat. The author thanks Victor Chinnery and Frances Gruber Safford for providing information on these objects. For another three-legged plain chair, see Richard Ryder, “Three-Legged Turned Chairs,” p. 246, fig. 6. New England joined chairs are typically made of oak, whereas turned examples from that region are usually made of ash, maple, or poplar. English turned chairs are typically made of ash, beech, or elm. Dutch turned chairs are often made of cherry. 7. A. C. Stanley-Stone, The Worshipful Company of Turners of London—Its Origin and History (London: Lindley-Jones & Brother, 1925), p. 121. For more on New England plain matted chairs, see Irving Phillips Lyon, “Square-Post Slat-Back Chairs,” in Trent, ed., Pilgrim Century Furniture, pp. 40–46. John Alexander, Make a Chair from a Tree (Mendham, N.J.: Astragal Press, 1994), details the process involved in traditional “stick” chairmaking. 8. For more on drawboring and seventeenth-century joinery practices, see Peter Follansbee and John D. Alexander, “Seventeenth-Century Joinery from Braintree, Massachusetts: The Savell Shop Tradition,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1996), pp. 81–105. 9. For references to overhanging jetties see Appendix 2 in Abbott Lowell Cummings, “Massachusetts and Its First Period Houses,” in Architecture in Colonial Massachusetts, edited by Abbott Lowell Cummings (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1979), pp. 193–221. Abbott Lowell Cummings, The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay, 1625–1725 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 126, 137–38, illustrates two pendants thought to be from Newbury, Massachusetts. Norman M. Isham and Albert F. Brown, Early Connecticut Houses: An Historical and Architectural Study (Mineola, N.Y.: Isham and Brown, 1965), pp. 231–36, illustrate two pendants that were not applied. For two turned examples, see Christie’s, The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eddy Nicholson, New York, January 27–28, 1995, p. 222, lot 1041. 10. For more on the Newbury cupboards, see Irving P. Lyon, “The Oak Furniture of Ipswich, Massachusetts,” in Trent, ed., Pilgrim Century Furniture, pp. 66–75, figs. 26, 27, 40; and Fairbanks and Trent, eds., New England Begins, 3:530–32. For typical examples of English cupboards with turned pendants, see Chinnery, Oak Furniture, pp. 491, 494; figs. 4:178, 4:183. 11. These observations about the rear structure of the Waldo chair and the mechanics of the bracing are based on discussions with members of the Interpretive Artisans Department at Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, Massachusetts. Their work involves reproducing seventeenth-century house frames with period tools and techniques. The author is especially grateful to Pret Woodburn, master house-carpenter at Plimoth. During the nineteenth century, English Gothic revivalist architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852) designed architectural tables with braced framing (Paul Atterbury and Clive Wainwright, eds., Pugin: A Gothic Passion [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994], pp. 134–41). 12. New England joiners used a variety of woods, including black walnut, tulip poplar, “true” poplar, sycamore, and cedar for decorative purposes or as secondary woods. The structural components of New England joined work are usually made of riven oak. Ash is common in turned chairs but only occasionally occurs in joined work. Several examples of New England joined furniture have posts made of maple, a diffuse-porous timber that rives better than cherry. Riven maple also often appears in seventeenth-century turned chairs. For examples of ash and maple in joined furniture, see Forman, American Seating Furniture, pp. 185–86. Philip Zea and Suzanne L. Flynt, Hadley Chests (Deerfield, Mass.: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, 1992), p. 30, record a variety of timbers used in western Massachusetts including maple and beech. English joinery often includes a mixture of primary woods. Furniture historian Victor Chinnery reports having seen a joined press with cherry and oak as well as a number of oak pieces with ash panels. 13. For more on joiners’ work habits, see Follansbee and Alexander, “Seventeenth-Century Joinery from Braintree, Massachusetts,” pp. 81–104; and Robert Tarule, “The Joined Furniture of William Searle and Thomas Dennis: A Shop Based Inquiry into the Woodworking Technology of the Seventeenth-Century Joiner” (Ph.D. diss., Graduate School of the Union Institute, 1992). 14. For English chairs with square-sectioned front stiles, see the discussion of Salisbury chairs and tables in Chinnery, Oak Furniture, pp. 448–54. Chinnery notes that most canted table and chair frames have angled blocks that allow the use of right-angle tenon shoulders. Inexplicably, the side rails of the Salisbury folding tables shown in figs. 4:77 and 4:78 are nailed to the front stiles, whereas those on the chairs are joined. An English table with three-legged joined construction is illustrated in figures 3:182a and 3:182b. On this object the stiles are shaped to conform to the table’s triangular plan. This construction allowed the rails to be flush with the stiles and have square-shouldered tenons. All three stiles have the same dimensions and cross-section. This arrangement would not have worked for the Waldo chair, because a rear stile of the same dimension as the front stiles would have resulted in an unstable, top-heavy chair. The wide rear stile of the Waldo chair makes it very stable. 15. One alternative to cutting the joints in this fashion would be to use a barefaced tenon to bring the side rails flush with the outer face of the stile. Pinning this joint would be problematic and may explain the approach used on the Waldo chair. 16. Although it is impossible to determine if the mortises of the Waldo chair were pre-bored without disassembling the frame, I tested several construction theories by making a reproduction chair with period-style tools. I attempted to chop the first angled mortise without pre-boring the waste and found it extremely difficult to maintain the proper angle and width. It became readily apparent that pre-boring would simplify the process. If the mortises for the side rails of the Waldo chair were pre-bored, they would bolster the argument that the maker was trained as a carpenter. 17. As quoted in Forman, American Seating Furniture, pp. 42–43; and Chinnery, Oak Furniture, pp. 41–48. The aldermen’s decision is quoted in full in E. B. Jupp, An Historical Account of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1887). The fact that these issues were debated in court indicates that guild restrictions were often violated. 18. For the reference to Francis Perry, see Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633, 3 vols. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995), 3:1438–41. In 1659, Ipswich carpenter William Averill agreed to build a table, a joined form, and a bench as part of a housebuilding contract. For more on Averill’s contract and the practice of multiple trades in New England, see Cummings, Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay, pp. 40–51. For an example of furniture attributed to carpenters, see Robert Blair St. George, “Style and Structure in the Joinery of Dedham and Medfield, Massachusetts, 1635–1685,” in American Furniture and Its Makers, edited by Ian M. G. Quimby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press for the Winterthur Museum, 1979), pp. 1–47. Robert F. Trent, “The Marblehead Pews,” New England Meeting House and Church (Boston: Boston University, 1980), pp. 101–11, describes joined pews attributed to carpenter John Norman. 19. Trent, “The Waldo Chair,” p. 179. Waldo Lincoln, Genealogy of the Waldo Family, 2 vols. (Worcester, Mass.: Charles Hamilton, 1902), 1:12–38. 20. Elderkin received a land grant in Lynn in 1638. Tradition maintains that he moved shortly thereafter. In a deposition later in the century, Clement Golda, “aged about 55,” testified that “the grant of the old mill was in July ye 12 1633 to Edward Tomlins . . . [then sold] to Mr. Howell, second owner of the Mill . . . did sell the same mill to John Elderkin; and John Elderkin did sell it to Mr. Bennett” (Alonzo Lewis and James R. Newhall, History of Lynn, Essex County, Massachusetts [Boston: John L. Shorey, 1865], pp. 143, 171–74). Elderkin apparently returned to the Lynn area by 1644. In a deed dated July 16, 1643, and proven on May 15, 1644, he sold Samuel Bennett a “new built Watermill in Linn for . . . £100” (Suffolk Deeds, 14 vols. [Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1880], 1:53). On June 27, 1646, Elderkin mortgaged “unto Mary Kinsley his halfe part of the Sawe Mill in Reading in Consideration of ten pounds” (ibid., p. 78). For Abigail’s birth, see New England Historical and Genealogical Register 4:359. Although he was primarily a carpenter and millwright, Elderkin kept a tavern in New London. For the Providence and Connecticut references, see Malcolm Freiberg, ed., The Winthrop Papers, 6 vols. (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1992), 6:42–43, 74, 76, 136–37. 21. Frances Manwaring Caulkins, History of New London, Connecticut (New London, Conn.: H. D. Utley, 1895) p. 108. “Articles of Agreement for Building a Meetinghouse in New London,” in Freiberg, ed., Winthrop Papers, 6:236–37. The meetinghouse was completed in 1655. 22. Freiberg, ed., Winthrop Papers, 6:236–37, 135–36, 139, 190–91. 23. Frances Manwaring Caulkins, History of Norwich, Connecticut (Chester, Conn.: Pequot Press, 1976), pp. 72–73, 119–20. 24. Caulkins, History of New London, p. 191. 25. Trent, “The Waldo Chair,” pp. 183–84. Carl Bridenbaugh, ed., The Pyncheon Papers (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1982), pp. 9–12. 26. Caulkins, History of New London, p. 231.