Acknowledgments
The author thanks Luke Beckerdite for suggesting that he publish these New York schränke, and Gavin Ashworth for his superb photography. Others who have helped in the preparation of this article include Roderic Blackburn, Dennis Bakoledis, Dean Failey, Amanda Jones, Neil and Madeline Kamil, Nancy Kelly, Noe Kidder, Wolfram Koeppe, Leslie Lafever-Stratton, Jack Lindsay, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Livingston, William E. Lohrman, Kim Orcutt, Steve Regan, Donna Reston, John Scherer, and Alvin Sheffer.

1. The area known to the English-speaking world as the Palatinate is referred to as the Pfalz in Germany. Geographically the Palatinate comprises two regions of Germany, the Rhenish or Lower Palatinate (Ger. Rheinpfalz or Niederpfalz) and the Upper Palatinate (Ger. Oberpfalz). The Rhenish Palatinate extends from the left bank of the Rhine and borders in the south on France and in the west on Saarland and Luxembourg. Traditionally, it has been an agricultural area, famed for its wines, and the majority of the Palatines who came to New York were from this geographic region. The Upper Palatinate is a district of northeast Bavaria on the right bank of the Rhine, separated in the east from Czechoslovakia by the Bohemian Forest. The name of the two regions came from the office known as count palatine, a title used in the Roman, Byzantine, and Holy Roman empires and elsewhere, notably in England, Hungary, and Poland (The New Columbia Encyclopedia [New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1975]). The only other published works on New York Palatine furniture are by Mary Antoine de Julio, whose research focuses on painted chests. See Mary Antoine de Julio, German Folk Arts of New York State (Albany, N.Y.: Albany Institute of History and Art, 1985), pp. 3-17; and Mary Antoine de Julio, "New York German Painted Chests," Antiques 127, no. 5 (May 1985): 1156-1165. In her essay and article de Julio provides the name of only one possible maker, a Johannes Kniskern, who by family tradition is said to have made identical chests for his twin daughters. She does not present conclusive evidence, however, that Kniskern was a joiner.

2. Walter Knittle, Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Emigration (Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Printing Company, 1965), pp. 41-42.

3. Henry Z. Jones, Jr., The Palatine Families of New York, A Study of the German Immigrants Who Arrived in Colonial New York in 1710, 2 vols. (University City, Ca.: By the author, 1958), 1: ii. Knittle, Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Emigration, p. 3. Jones, The Palatine Families of New York, 1: iii.

4. Ulrich Simmendinger, Warhoffte und glaubwürdige Verzeichnüss jeniger Personen; welche sich ano 1709 aus Teutschland in Americam oder neue welt begeben, translated by Herman Vesper (1717; reprint, St. Johnsville, N.Y.: L. D. Macfiethy, 1934), p. vii. The "golden promise of the English letters" probably refers to the so-called "Golden Book" which the British government circulated throughout southern Germany before 1709. This book depicted British North America as the promised land. For more on the "Golden Book" see Jones, The Palatine Families of New York, 1: iv.

5. Knittle, Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Emigration, pp. 71, 72.

6. Jones, The Palatine Families of New York, 1: xii. For more on Graffenreid, see J. Russell Snapp's entry in John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, American National Biography (New York and Oxford, Eng.: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 370-71. Snapp states that Queen Anne offered to pay £4,000 to transport 1,000 Palatines to North Carolina. Graffenreid ultimately settled about 650 in 1710.

7. Jones, The Palatine Families of New York, 1: xii.  

8. Simmendinger, Warhoffte und glaubwürdige Verzeichnüss jeniger Personen, pp. vii-viii.

9. Ruth Piwonka, A Portrait of Livingston Manor 1686-1850 (New York: Friends of Clermont, 1986), pp. 30-33; and Jones, The Palatine Families of New York, 1: xiii-xvi. A smaller number of Palatines involved in the naval stores project settled directly across the Hudson from Livingston Manor at a place called West Camp. Some of these West Camp settlers moved back across the Hudson onto the Beekman Patent when the project collapsed and settled in and around Rhinebeck with their fellow countrymen from East Camp.

10. The author thanks William E. Lohrman and Steve Regan for bringing the schränk illustrated in fig. 4 to his attention, and Dennis Bakoledis for information pertaining to its history (Dennis Bakoledis to Peter Kenny, February 15, 2000.) The author also thanks Nancy Kelly of Rhinebeck, New York, who interviewed Mrs. Ada Harrison, whose sister Muriel Goodwill and brother-in-law Harold Goodwill consigned the schränk for auction in 1995. According to Mrs. Harrison, the schränk belonged to her grandparents, William Rynders and Samantha Traver. Samantha was the daughter of Stephen L. Traver. Mrs. Harrison told Mrs. Kelly that the schränk was a marriage gift to daughters in her family. If this tradition is correct, Samantha would have received the schränk from her mother Rosina Mead Traver (1826-1902). Rosina's mother was Elizabeth Pink Mead (m. 1804), who may have inherited the schränk from her mother Catharina Holsapple. Given the probable date of the schränk, it may have originally belonged to Susanna Link who was born at Livingston Manor on February 27, 1734, or her mother. This genealogical information is derived from inscriptions in a bible owned by Mrs. Ada Harrison. Conversation between the author and Amanda Jones, Director, Ulster County Historical Society, Marbletown, New York, April 10, 2000.

11. The current owner of the Traver family schränk had the surface analyzed by Chris Shelton, Conservator of Furniture and Painted Surfaces at Bayou Bend, Houston, Texas. This analysis confirmed that the schränk was originally coated with a reddish varnish. Over this surface is a later grain-painted layer in imitation of curly maple, which may have been applied in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. A later nineteenth-century varnish is the uppermost layer. Letter from the owner of the schränk shown in fig. 4 to Peter M. Kenny, April 13, 2000. Original microscopy samples and infrared photographs of the surfaces were made available to the author.

12. For more on Germanic construction characteristics, particularly wedged dovetails and pinned drawer bottoms, see Benno M. Forman, "German Influences in Pennsylvania Furniture," in Arts of the Pennsylvania Germans (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1983), p. 123, fig. 71; pp. 158-59, fig. 98.

13. For the Elting-Beekman makers of Ulster County, see Peter M. Kenny, Frances Gruber Safford and Gilbert T. Vincent, American Kasten, The Dutch-Style Cupboards of New York and New Jersey, 1650-1800 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), pp. 23-26. Jan Elting (1632-1729), progenitor of the Elting family of furniture makers at Kingston, was from the province of Drenthe, which borders Germany in the northeastern part of the Netherlands. It is possible that he introduced the wedging, pinning, and splining techniques manifest in Ulster County kasten. Many kasten from the Elting-Beekman shops have wooden pegs, or "trunnels" (tree-nails) as they are sometimes called, securing the paneled front stiles to the sides and the backboards to the back edges of interior shelves and the sides.

14. Knittle, Early Eighteenth Century Palatine Emigration, pp. 39, 42, 243.

15. Nathaniel B. Sylvester, History of Ulster County, New York (Philadelphia: Everts and Peck, 1880), p. 30. The History of Ulster County, New York, edited by Alphonso T. Clearwater (Kingston, N.Y.: W. J. Van Deusen, 1907), p. 71.

16. The English Board of Trade Lists of 1709 are reprinted in New York Genealogical and Biographical Records, vol. 40 (1909), 49-54, 93-100, 160-67, 241-48 and vol. 41 (1910), 10-19. In addition to the twenty-one joiners, ninety carpenters are listed. Although carpenters often made case furniture, the sophisticated style and construction of the schränke suggest that they are the products of furniture joiners. Accordingly, only members of the latter trade have been researched in the course of this study. The men who compiled the lists for the British government understood the distinction between the two trades. For more on Dinant, see Jones, The Palatine Families of New York, 1: 171.

17. Jones, The Palatine Families of New York, 2: 728-29.

18. New York dealer Morgan Macfihinnie purchased the schränk at C. G. Sloan and Company in Washington, D. C. on October 3, 1982 (lot 1517) and advertised it in the March 1985 issue of Maine Antique Digest. The author thanks the owner for information pertaining to the auction and Frances Gruber Safford for sharing her correspondence with Morgan Macfihinnie and her notes on the schränk. The author also thanks Alan Miller for his observation that the applied moldings on the door panels and drawer fronts were made with a scratch stock rather than a plane. Wolfram Koeppe, my colleague in the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum, theorized that the molding designs on this piece and many German wäscheschränke may derive from fortification plans.

19. For witwerkers, see T.H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, "The Dutch and Their Homes in the Seventeenth Century" in Arts of the Anglo-American Community in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Ian M. G. Quimby (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974), pp. 14-15. Scheurleer states that the witwerkers became part of the Josefs Guild of furniture makers in Amsterdam in the late seventeenth century. According to him many artisans came to Amsterdam from Belgium and Germany in the seventeenth century and were incorporated into the Josefs Guild.

20. The Burghers of New Amsterdam and the Freemen of New York 1675-1866, in Collections of the New-York Historical Society for...1885 (New York: By the Society, 1886), p. 94. Jones, The Palatine Families of New York, 2: 1156.