1. Dr. Robert A. Selig, “A German Soldier in New England during the Revolutionary War: The Account of Georg Daniel Flohr,” Newport History 65, part 2, no. 223 (1993): iii, 49–65, with his partial translation of Flohr’s “Description of America Based on the Travels Made by the Honorable Regiment of Deux-Ponts on Water and on Land from the Years 1780–1784.” See also Dr. Robert A. Selig, “A German Soldier in America, 1780–1783: The Journal of Georg Daniel Flohr,” William and Mary Quarterly 50, no. 3 (July 1993): 575–90. For discussions of the French occupation of Newport, see Alan Simpson, “The French in Newport: Paying Guests or Free-loaders,” Newport History 56, part 3, no. 191 (summer 1983): 100–103; and Alan and Mary M. Simpson, “A New Look at How Rochambeau Quartered His Army in Newport (1780–1781),” Newport History 56, part 2, no. 190 (spring 1983): 30–67. 2. Newport Mercury, May 26, 1781. 3. For the better historical articles on Newport cabinetmaking, see Margaretta M. Lovell, “‘Such Furniture as Will Be Most Profitable’: The Business of Cabinetmaking in Eighteenth-Century Newport,” Winterthur Portfolio 26, no. 1 (spring 1991): 27–62; Jeanne Vibert Sloane, “John Cahoone and the Newport Furniture Industry,” in New England Furniture: Essays in Memory of Benno M. Forman, edited by Brock Jobe (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1987), pp. 88–122; Joseph K. Ott, “Rhode Island Furniture Exports, 1783–1800, Including Information on Chaises, Buildings, Other Woodenwares and Trade Practices,” Rhode Island History 36, no. 1 (February 1977): 3–13. 4. John C. Pease and John M. Niles, A Gazetteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island (Hartford, Conn.: William S. Marsh, 1819), pp. 305–10. 5. John Banister to Captain John Thomlinson, May 28, 1739, Banister Copy Book, Newport Historical Society, Newport, Rhode Island, p. 174. Franklin B. Dexter, Extracts from the Itineraries and Other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles, 1755–1794 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916), p. 23. Godfrey, Jr., and John Malbone to Trecothick & Thomlinson, Newport, July 28, 1764, Malbone Papers, box 174, folder 12, Newport Historical Society; Lovell, “Such Furniture as Will Be Most Profitable,” pp. 28–29. 6. Elaine Forman Crane, A Dependent People: Newport, Rhode Island in the Revolutionary Era (New York: Fordham University Press, 1985), pp. 12–13, 21. Carl Bridenbaugh, “Colonial Newport as a Summer Resort,” Rhode Island Historical Society Collections 26, no. 1 (January 1933). 7. Richard Chilcott to Godfrey Malbone, Jr., Monseratt, June 21, 1750, Hunter-Malbone Papers, box 22, Newport Historical Society. 8. Charles E. Hammett, “Memoir of Rhode Island,” under the date of 1715, 2:3, as quoted in Antoinette F. Downing and Vincent J. Scully, Jr., The Architectural Heritage of Newport Rhode Island, 1640–1915 (2d ed., 1967; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 36, 474. Crane, A Dependent People, pp. 15–16, 20, 23–24. 9. For a discussion of the Jewish community, see Morris A. Gutstein, The Jews of Newport in Pre-Revolutionary Days, Touro Synagogue of Congregation Shearith Israel (Newport, R.I.: Friends of Touro Synagogue, 1948), passim. For the influence of family, see Lovell, “Such Furniture as Will Be Most Profitable,” pp. 41–43, 53–56, 58–61. Crane, A Dependent People, pp. 23–29; Sloane, “John Cahoone and the Newport Furniture Industry,” pp. 95–97. 10. Lovell, “Such Furniture as Will Be Most Profitable,” p. 29; Sloane, “John Cahoone and the Newport Furniture Industry,” p. 91. Lovell states that during the eighteenth century at least ninety-nine cabinetmakers, seventeen chairmakers, two upholsterers, four carvers, a turner, and sixteen joiners worked in Newport. Sloane notes that between 1745 and 1775 sixty cabinetmakers can be documented in Newport, whereas Boston in the same time period boasted sixty-four in a population well over twice the size of Newport. For “A Checklist of Joiners and Cabinetmakers Working in Newport Between 1745 and 1775,” see Sloane, “John Cahoone and the Newport Furniture Industry,” pp. 116–117. Job Townsend, Jr., Ledger/Daybook, Newport, R.I., 1750–1793, Newport Historical Society, vol. 504, p. 83. There were three furniture makers named Job Townsend in eighteenth-century Newport: Job, Sr. (1700–1765), Job, Jr. (1726–1778), and Job E. III (1758–1829). Job, Sr.’s, daughter, Hannah (1726–1804), married his probable apprentice, John Goddard (1724–1785), in 1746. See Lovell, “Such Furniture as Will Be Most Profitable,” pp. 54–55; Wendell Garrett, “The Goddard and Townsend Joiners of Newport: Random Biographical and Bibliographical Notes,” Antiques 121, no. 5 (May 1982): 1153–55. Not nearly as exotic as it sounds, swanskin is a fine woolen cloth of plain weave that was still extravagant to bury. See Florence M. Montgomery, Textiles in America, 1650–1870 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1984), pp. 354–355. 11. Morrison H. Heckscher, American Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art II, Late Colonial Period: The Queen Anne and Chippendale Styles (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 218–19; Michael Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport: The Townsends and Goddards (Tenafly, N.J.: MMI Americana Press, 1984), p. 44; American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Highland House Publishers, 1969–1992), 3: 732–33; Antiques 82, no. 6 (December 1962): 618–19; Antiques 91, no. 5 (May 1967): 638. The label on the back of the top drawer reads: “This chest of drawers with a marble top, known in the family as the marble slab, belonged to Robert Crooke before his marriage [1747] to Anne [sic] Wickham so dates at least to 1750 or probably much earlier. This couple were the great, great, great, great grand-parents of Maurice and Robert Fagan, children of Christiana and Maurice Fagan.” The line of descent is Robert and Ann Wickham Crooke to Rebecca Wickham Crooke Wood (1771–1846); to Rebecca W. C. W. Stanley (1810–1880); to Rebeccca W. C. S. Falkner (1845–1895); to Rebecca W. C. F. Sutherland (1878–1926); to Christina Katherine Sutherland Fagan (b. 1905); to Maurice (b. 1926) and Robert (b. 1928) Fagan; to Israel Sack, Inc.; to Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Gershenson; to Israel Sack, Inc.; to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 12. For an illustration of a dovetailed backboard on a dressing table associated with the Goddard shop, see Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport, p. 234. 13. Margaretta Markle Lovell, “Boston Blockfront Furniture,” in Boston Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, edited by Walter Muir Whitehill, Jonathan Fairbanks, and Brock Jobe (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1974), pp. 77–135. Michael Moses notes that Goddard was inconsistent in using letters on the backs of drawers to identify their position and that their presence cannot be used as an index of his work. See Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport, p. 209. 14. Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Elizabeth Bidwell Bates, American Furniture, 1620 to the Present (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1981), p. 177. 15. Thomas R. Hazard, Recollections of Olden Times: Rowland Robinson of Narragansett and His Unfortunate Daughter (Newport, R.I.: J. P. Sanborn, 1879), passim; Caroline E. Robinson, Gardiners of Narragansett (Providence, 1919), pp. 69–70, 251; Wilkins Updike, A History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island, 3 vols. (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1907), 1:545–46; Newport Mercury, November 1, 1773, p. 3. The descent of the Simons’ furniture is noted after Hannah’s death in 1773, but no estate inventory survives. The Simons’ daughter, also Hannah, married Dr. Joseph Bowen of Gloucester, Rhode Island, and the commode descended from them. See Providence Probate Index, Case A 1175, Rhode Island Genealogical Register, vol. 15, p. 54. 16. Some case furniture made by John Townsend and others has carved shells with fleurs-de-lis as the central motif, including a chest dated 1756 and a high chest of drawers dated 1759. Both objects were made while England and France were engaged in the Seven Years War. See Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport, pp. 27, 139, 177–78, 192–94; Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), pp. 74–77. Charles W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America (1885, reprint ed.; Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1985), pp. 255–329; Elizabeth Gardner Hayward, Jane Hawkes Liddell, and Corinne Ingraham Pigott, “Challenges in Salem, Boston, New Oxford, and Narragansett,” in Huguenot Refugees in the Settling of Colonial America, edited by Peter Steven Gannon (New York: Huguenot Society of America, 1985), pp. 102–27. Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690–1820, 2 vols. (Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1947), 2:995–96. For a description of the possible influence of the engravings of André Charles Boulle (1642–1732) and Jean Berain on Rhode Island furniture, see R. Peter Mooz, “The Origins of Newport Block-Front Furniture Design,” Antiques 99, no. 6 (June 1971): 882–86. See also, John T. Kirk, American Furniture & The British Tradition to 1830 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 125–28; “Speculations on the Rhode Island Block-Front in 1928,” compiled by Wendell D. Garrett, Antiques 99, no. 6 (June 1971): 887–91. For illustrations of related commodes made in Quebec Province, see Jean Parlardy, The Early Furniture of French Canada (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1965), pp. 312–30. 17. Townsend Ledger/Daybook, p. 141. 18. Ibid., pp. 142, 151. For example, see Newport Mercury, January 1, 1778, and January 8, 1778. 19. Charles Pym Burt to Godfrey Malbone, Jr, London, June 22, 1747, and John Tyrell to Godfrey Malbone, Jr., Devon, England, July 7, 1748, Malbone Papers, box 174, folder 7, Newport Historical Society. 20. Newport Mercury, September 9, 1765; November 23, 1780; August 7, 1918 [sic]. For a discussion of the four Wickham brothers, Captains Benjamin, Thomas, Samuel, and Charles, see Updike, History of the Episcopal Church in Naragansett, 1:490; “Wickham Family of Rhode Island,” Newport Mercury, March 31, 1900. Benjamin Wickham to Robert Crooke, Newport, August 6 and October 18, 1758, Vernon Family Papers, box 79, folder 18, Newport Historical Society. Examination of the available estate inventories of the Wickham brothers and Robert Crooke, all taken after the Revolution and a dramatic shift in their fortunes, does not reveal marble-top furniture. See Estate Inventory, Thomas Wickham, Newport, 1783, Wills and Inventories, Newport City Hall, 1:104–5; Estate Inventory, Samuel Wickham, Newport, 1784, Wills and Inventories, Newport City Hall, 1:191; Estate Inventory, Charles Wickham, Newport, 1787, Wills and Inventories, Newport City Hall, 2:179; and Estate Inventory, Robert Crooke, Newport, 1802, Wills and Inventories, Newport City Hall, 4:5, microfilm on file at the Newport Historical Society. Charles Wickham Receipt Book, Newport, 1751–1786, May 27, 1769, Newport Historical Society. 21. George H. Richardson, “Scrapbook,” Book 970, p. 24, on file at the Newport Historical Society; George Champlin Mason, Annals of Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island, 1698–1821 (Newport, R.I.: For the author, 1890), p. 85. Newport Mercury, July 21, 1781. 22. Parnel Desautel and Philip Dickinson, “Art and Engineering: John Goddard and the Ogee Foot,” Newport History 66, part 2, no. 227 (fall 1994): 78–91. For illustrations of Goddard’s house and shop, see pp. 82–83. See also, Downing and Scully, The Architectural Heritage of Rhode Island, pl. 7. For similar carved feet and legs documented to John Goddard, see the drop-leaf table made for James Atkinson in 1774 in Ralph E. Carpenter, Jr., The Arts and Crafts of Newport, Rhode Island, 1640–1820 (Newport: Preservation Society of Newport County, 1954), p. 87; Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport, p. 207. The correspondence that descended with the tea table is quoted in full in ibid, pp. 196–97. See also Nancy E. Richards and Nancy Goyne Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur: Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Winterthur Museum, 1997), pp. 238–40; Carpenter, The Arts and Crafts of Newport, p. 37. For a discussion of furniture made by John Goddard, see Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport, pp. 195–245. For a description of the characteristics of John Goddard’s documented workmanship, see ibid., pp. 195–208, 210. 23. Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport, p. 213. 24. Ibid., pp. 62-63, 237; Carpenter, The Arts and Crafts of Newport, pp. 46–47; Joseph K. Ott, The John Brown House Loan Exhibition of Rhode Island Furniture (Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1965), p. 22; Rodriguez Roque, American Furniture at Chipstone, pp. 180–81. See also Ralph E. Carpenter, Jr., “Discoveries in Newport Furniture and Silver,” Antiques 68, no. 1 (July 1955): 44–45. Richards and Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur, pp. 81, 132–33; Wendy A. Cooper, “The Purchase of Furniture and Furnishings by John Brown, Providence Merchant, Part 1,” Antiques 103, no. 2 (February 1973): 331. Account Book of Benjamin Baker, Newport, 1761–1792, Newport Historical Society, n.p. See also Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport, p. 194. Nancy Goyne Evans, “A Pair of Distinctive Chairs from Newport, Rhode Island,” Antiques 145, no. 1 (January 1994): 186–93. Evans notes Peter Ward-Jackson, English Furniture Designs of the Eighteenth Century (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1958), nos. 19, 101, 176. Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, 3d., ed. (1762), pl. 16. 25. For a photograph of the receipt for the slab table, see Antiques 24, no. 1 (July 1933): 2; Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport, pp. 203, 216, 219; Ott, John Brown House Loan Exhibition, pp. 52-53. Captain Anthony Low, the eldest son of John and Ann Holden Low, was married to Phebe Greene. See Updike, History of the Episcopal Church of Naragansett, 2:419, 554, 559, 565. 26. Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, 3d ed. (1762), pls. 56–61; William Ince and John Mayhew, The Universal System of Household Furniture (1762), pls. 11–12, see also pl. 73 for designs relating to the legs of the Cadwalader family slab table at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; John Bivins and Forsyth Alexander, The Regional Arts of the Early South (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 1991), p. 80. Historic Deerfield owns a round tea table with a marble top that may have been quarried in Lanesborough, Massachusetts. See Philip Zea, ‘Useful Improvements, Innumerable Temptations’: Pursuing Refinement in Rural New England, 1750–1850 (Deerfield, Mass.: Historic Deerfield, Inc., 1998), p. 26. 27. Endicott’s estate inventory and other references to slab or stone tables are quoted in Irving Lyon, The Colonial Furniture of New England (3d ed.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925), pp. 203–8. For a selection of slab tables owned in eighteenth-century America, see Morrison H. Heckscher and Leslie Greene Bowman, American Rococo, 1750–1775: Elegance in Ornament (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), pp. 191–93; Clement E. Conger and Alexandra W. Rollins, Treasures of State: Fine and Decorative Arts in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the U.S. Department of State (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991), pp. 89–90, 108–9, 121–22, 170, 174; Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown, Southern Furniture, 1680–1830: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection (New York: Harry N. Abrams for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1997), pp. 262–72; Heckscher, American Furniture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 155–63; Richards and Evans, New England Furniture at Winterthur, pp. 233–34, 246–52. Estate Inventory of Jonathan Nichols, Newport, September 14, 1756, Town Council Book 12, pp. 59–60 (microfilm on file at the Newport Historical Society). See also Downing and Scully, The Architectural Heritage of Newport, pp. 445–47, pls. 93–94. 28. Carpenter, The Arts and Crafts of Newport, pp. 99–100, including another slab table related to Goddard workmanship. See also Ralph E. Carpenter, Jr., “Newport, A Center of Colonial Cabinetmaking,” Antiques 147, no. 4 (April 1995): 554. 29. Thomas Chippendale, The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director, 3d ed., pls. 45, 66. George C. Mason, Reminiscences of Newport (Newport, R.I.: C. E. Hammett, Jr., 1884), p. 50; Walter A. Dyer, “John Goddard and his Block-Fronts,” Antiques 1, no. 5 (May 1922): 203–7; Morrison H. Heckscher, “English Furniture Pattern Books in Eighteenth-Century America,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1994), pp. 172–205, esp. pp. 185, 204. Goddard’s copy of the Director was considered a relic during the 1880s. Maxim Karolik purchased it about 1929 and subsequently donated it to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 30. Ann Putnam Malbone Browne, “Some Descendants of Peter Malbone, Jr.,” unpublished ms. on file at the Newport Historical Society, p. 5. Godfrey Malbone, Sr., was the son of Peter, Jr., and Elizabeth Godfrey Malbone. He was married to Catherine Scott, the daughter of John, Jr., and Elizabeth Wanton Scott, in 1719. John Cahoone Account Book, Newport, 1749–1760, Newport Historical Society, p. 36. As quoted in Lovell, “Such Furniture as Will Be Most Profitable,” p. 58. 31. Downing and Scully, Architectural Heritage of Newport, pp. 39–41, 60–61, 67, pls. 63–70; Desmond Guinness and Julius Trousdale Sadler, Jr., Newport Preserv’d: Architecture of the 18th Century (New York: Viking Press, 1982), pp. 75–76. Malbone’s country house apparently resembled to some degree the new Colony House, or State House, designed by Richard Munday (d. 1740) and built in Newport in 1739. Both of Malbone’s houses were among the most ornate in Newport. See Richard L. Bowen, “Godfrey Malbone’s Armorial Silver,” Rhode Island History 9, no. 1 (1950): pp. 37–51. Gentleman’s Progress, The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, 1744, edited by Carl Bridenbaugh (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), p. 103. Ezra Stiles, “Essay,” manuscript, original on file at the New Haven Colony Historical Society, copy on file at the Newport Historical Society. There is speculation that the mahogany staircase of Malbone Hall was salvaged for the house of Jonathan Nichols (Hunter House). See Downing and Scully, Architectural Heritage of Newport, pp. 442–43, pls. 88–94. 32. As quoted in Guinness and Sadler, Newport Preserv’d, p. 65. See also “A Newport Painter’s Bill,” Newport Historical Magazine 3, no. 1 (July 1882): 56. John Stevens Account Book 1, Newport, Rhode Island, 1717–1735, private collection, p. 43; John Stevens Account Book II, as quoted in Downing and Scully, Architectural Heritage of Newport, pp. 39–40, 474; pl. 74. Estate inventory, Godfrey Malbone, Sr., Newport, June 30, 1768, manuscript copies on file in the Malbone Papers, box 173, folder 1, and in the Hunter-Malbone Papers, box 14, folder 4, Newport Historical Society. 33. Allan I. Ludwig, Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and Its Symbols, 1650–1815 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1966), pp. 325–30; Dickran and Ann Tashjian, Memorials for Children of Change: The Art of Early New England Stonecarving (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1974), pp. 212–30; Esther Fisher Benson, “The History of the John Stevens Shop,” Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society 112 (October 1963): passim. The Stevens shop building still stands at 29 Thames Street in Newport. See Downing and Scully, Architectural Heritage of Newport, p. 11. Newport Mercury, September 15, 1781. 34. Ezra Stiles Collection, mss. 7, box 1, Newport Historical Society. Edward Scott to (uncle) Godfrey Malbone, Jr., Newport, August 4, 1746, Hunter-Malbone-Robinson Papers, box 14, Newport Historical Society. 35. Manuscript obituary of Godfrey Malbone, Jr., Malbone Papers, box 173, folder 1, Newport Historical Society. J. Frederick Kelly, Early Connecticut Meetinghouses, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), 1:36–51. Estate Inventory, Godfrey Malbone, Jr., Pomfret, Connecticut, March 11, 1786. Pomfret District, 2744, on file at the Connecticut State Library, Hartford; transcription of gravestone inscription, Godfrey Malbone, Jr., Brooklyn, Connecticut, 1785, Hunter-Malbone Papers, box 22, Newport Historical Society. Interestingly, Malbone’s estate inventory lists in the west chamber “1 Dutch Chest, containing Mr. Malbone’s wearing apparrel [£] 15,” which may be the serpentine commode. Just as likely, it may have been a wardrobe or a variant of the Dutch kast of the sort that influenced the early development of the chest of drawers in America. See Benno M. Forman, “The Chest of Drawers in America, 1635–1730: The Origins of the Joined Chest of Drawers,” with Robert F. Trent, “The Chest of Drawers in America, 1635–1730,” Winterthur Portfolio 20, no. 1 (spring 1985): 1–48; Peter M. Kenney et al., American Kasten: The Dutch-Style Cupboards of New York and New Jersey, 1650–1800 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), passim. A second “Dutch chest” was also listed by the appraisers among Malbone’s “Sundrys in the East Chamber.”