1. Nancy Goyne Evans, American Windsor Chairs (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1996), pp. 237–41; William G. McLoughlin, Rhode Island (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), pp. 62–66.

2. J. P. Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the United States of America (Dublin: P. Byrne et al., 1792), p. 145; Edward Peterson, History of Rhode Island (New York: John S. Taylor, 1858), pp. 231–32; William B. Weeden, Early Rhode Island (New York: Grafton Press, [1910]), p. 345; Joseph Anthony to Aaron Lopez, January 27, 1779, and Aaron Lopez to Joseph Anthony, February 3, 1779, in Commerce of Rhode Island, 1726–1800, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 7th series, vol. 10 (Boston: by the society, 1915), pp. 49, 52; Wendell D. Garrett, “Providence Cabinetmakers, Chairmakers, Upholsterers, and Allied Craftsmen, 1756–1838,” Antiques 90, no. 4 (October 1966): 514; McLoughlin, Rhode Island, pp. 94–95; Newport Mercury (Newport), December 14, 1782; The New Democracy in America: Travels of Francisco de Miranda in the United States, translated by Judson P. Wood, edited by John S. Ezell (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), p. 143; Isaac Weld, Travels through the United States of America, 2 vols. (London: John Stockdale, 1800), 1:55. The Newport town records were on a vessel that sunk at Hell Gate on the British fleet’s passage to New York in 1779. Although recovered from the water, the documents were in a deplorable state when returned three years later.

3. Earl C. Tanner, “Caribbean Ports in the Foreign Commerce of Providence, 1790–1830,” Rhode Island History 14, no. 4 (October 1955): 97–99, 102-106; Jedidiah Morse, The American Geography (Elizabethtown, N.J.: Shepherd Kollock, 1798), p. 203; Providence Gazette (Providence), May 13, 1786, and January 5, 1782; Brissot de Warville, New Travels, p. 117; Weeden, Early Rhode Island, p. 335; M. Randolph Flather, “Four Hundred Dollars for a Hat When Inflation Raged in Rhode Island,” Rhode Island History 1, no. 4 (October 1942): 134–41; Olney Winsor to Hope Winsor, October 17, 1786, Letters of Olney Winsor, 1786–88, State Library of Virginia, Richmond.

4. Providence Gazette, July 29, 1786.

5. Providence Gazette, March 14, 1789.

6. For prewar production, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, pp. 237–43.

7. For a broader discussion of chairs of this pattern, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, pp. 248–50.

8. For additional chairs having the double-ended, swelled-baluster feature, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, p. 255.

9 For a discussion of the Tracy family’s sack-back chair production, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, pp. 291–94.

10. Both Nathan Fuller chairs are in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.

11. For the chairs with flared spindles, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, figs. 6-128, 6-167, 6-181.

12. For a discussion of the Tracy family’s fan-back chair production and for Rhode Island chairs with hook-type crests and a joined prototype, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, pp. 294–97 and figs. 6-27, 6-31, 6-32.

13. For a discussion of Hemenway’s work and Rhode Island chairs with ruler-straight crests, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, pp. 402–404, and figs. 6-27, 6-30.

14. Pauline W. Inman, “House Furnishings of a Vermont Family,” Antiques 96, no. 2 (August 1969): 228–33. The Monkton, Vermont, chair is in a private collection; the sack-back chair is in the John Strong, DAR Museum, Addison, Vermont.

15. The continuous-bow chair is in the John Strong, DAR Museum.

16. For woven-bottom chairs and American and English Windsor chairs with double-baluster turnings and for later chairs with Cumberland turnings, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, figs. 6-5, 6-7, 6-11, 6-12, 6-32 and figs. 5-34, 5-41, 7-12. The term “Cumberland” appears in the accounts of David Alling (fl. ca. 1800–1855) of Newark, N.J., New Jersey Historical Society, Newark.

17. For a double-baluster-turned chair with variant features, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, fig. 6-60. Another chair is in the collection of the Woodstock Historical Society, Woodstock, Vermont.

18. The fan-back chair with similar turnings was in the dealer market in the 1980s; related chairs are in private collections.

19. For the fan-back chair and one of the sack-back chairs with the compressed-ball turning in the upper leg, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, figs. 6-42, 6-124.

20. The second sack-back chair with the compressed-ball turning in the upper leg and a Sumner family history is in a private collection.

21. For one chair from the pair of fan-back side chairs, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, fig. 6-125. A second sack-back chair was in the dealer market some years ago.

22. For other peaked-crest chairs and a chair with maple turnings, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, figs. 6-22, 6-50, 6-133, 6-134, 6-179 and fig. 6-1. The classic Rhode Island chair with double-baluster turnings was in the dealer market some years ago.

23. Other double-baluster-turned chairs with northern New England associations include a set that descended in a Leominster, Massachusetts, family, a chair recovered in Vermont, and a chair from a house sale in Bennington, Vermont, all in the dealer market some years ago. For a chair said to have been carried from New Hampshire to Vermont at an early date, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, fig. 6-257.

24. Morse, American Geography, p. 201; Winsor to Winsor, November 28, 1786.

25. For the chair with similar tapered feet and swelled baluster turnings, see David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff, American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1998), fig. F257.

26. The high-back chair is in the Fonthill Museum of the Mercer Museum of the Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, Pennsylvania. For the plain-arm sack-back chair, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, fig. 6-44. For the second knuckle-arm sack-back chair, see Skinner, Americana, sale no. 1422, Bolton, Mass., January 11, 1992, lot 29.

27. The Hart chairs were in the dealer market some years ago and are now in a private collection. For an illustration of the Hart brand and a short biographical sketch, see Portsmouth Furniture: Masterworks from the New Hampshire Seacoast, edited by Brock Jobe (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1993), pp. 431–32.

28. For the Young chair, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, fig. 6-57. Of the remaining chairs noted, two were in the dealer market some years ago, one is privately owned, and one is at the Kent Corners site of the Vermont Museum, Montpelier.

29. For the Mayflower Society chair, see Ruth B. Hall, “The Mayflower Society Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts,” Antiques 126, no. 2 (August 1984): 297, pl. 7. For a second closely related chair, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, fig. 6-228.

30. For chairs with crests having concentric-circle-, rondel-, floret-, and blossom-type ornament, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, figs. 6-231, 6-227 (lf. and rt.), 6-162. For a chair with pinwheel crest ornament, see I. M. Wiese advertisement, Newtown Bee (Newtown, Conn.), December 1, 1972. A high-back chair with starlike crest ornament is in the Fonthill Museum; the “Duxbury” chair tradition is mentioned in a Robert Eldred auction notice, Maine Antique Digest (Waldoboro, Me.), July 1988; the fan-back side chair with the chestnut seat and the Bailey chair were in the dealer market some years ago; the bow-back armchair is in the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence.

31. Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1958, 1975), “Ebenezer Morse,” v. 10, pp. 211–17; “William Hunt,” v. 17, pp. 46–48.

32. Charles Chase, property records, 1776–1811, Nantucket County, Massachusetts, Registry of Deeds.

33. For a discussion of Charles Chase, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, pp. 380–82; see also Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., and Mary Grace Carpenter, “Nantucket Furniture,” Antiques 133, no. 5 (May 1988): 1163–64, 1166–67.

34. The second sack-back chair was in the dealer market some years ago. A long spool turning appeared in Rhode Island work just before the Revolution and continued in use following the war. For prewar and postwar chairs with this feature in a late nineteenth-century photograph of the Old Jury Room at Colony House, Newport, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, fig. 6-17.

35. For other Connecticut–Rhode Island border chairs with long spindles tapered sharply at either end, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, figs. 6-137, 6-139, 6-140.

36. The Hacker chair is in the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. The Ward chair is in the collection of the New Hampshire Antiquarian Society, Hopkinton, N.H.; see also William S. Hosley, “Vermont Furniture, 1790–1830,” in New England Furniture: Essays in Memory of Benno Forman , edited by Brock Jobe (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1987), p. 269, fig. 17.

37. Dr. Alexander Hamilton, Hamilton’s Itinerarium, Being a Narrative of a Journey, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart (St. Louis, Mo.: William K. Bixby, 1907), p. 120; “Records of the Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufacturers,” v. 1 (1789–94), Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence.

38. Joseph K. Ott, “Rhode Island Furniture Exports, 1783–1800, Including Information on Chaises, Buildings, Other Woodenware, and Trade Practices,” Rhode Island History 36, no. 1 (February 1977): 2–13; Walter Freeman Crawford, “The Commerce of Rhode Island with the Southern Continental Colonies in the Eighteenth Century,” Rhode Island Historical Society Collections 14, no. 4 (October 1921): 127.

39. McLoughlin, Rhode Island, p. 111.

40. The Dyer chair is in the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; the set of Cory chairs is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. For the set of twelve armchairs, some with the Case brand, see Tillou Gallery advertisement, Antiques 96, no. 4 (October 1969): 453; another branded armchair is in the Art Institute of Chicago. Asahel Case (1769–1828) was identified as a Norwich, Connecticut, furniture craftsman in Craftsmen and Artists of Norwich (Norwich, Conn.: Society of the Founders of Norwich, Conn., 1965), p. 6. The publication of William C. Ketchum, Jr., with the Museum of American Folk Art, American Cabinetmakers: Marked American Furniture, 1640–1940 (New York: Crown, 1995), p. 63, assigned the “a.g.case.” brand to Asahel Case of Norwich, Conn., without additional evidence.

41. The Tucke high-back chair was in the dealer market some years ago; the chair with the Charlestown/Cambridge history is in the collection of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston.

42. For a Philadelphia chair with similar carved crest scrolls and a branded Tucke chair with bulging side stretchers, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, figs. 3-34, 6-199.

43. For a branded Seaver side chair with a broad-front, shield-shaped seat and other Boston features, see Evans, American Windsor Chairs, fig. 6-203.

44. John Hayward, The New England Gazetteer, 8th ed. (Boston: by the author, 1839), n.p. (See Rhode Island town and county descriptions.)