1. A Dutch trading post known as the House of Good Hope was established in the early 1620s. Native Americans on the east side of the Connecticut River included the Podunks and on the west side the Poquonocks, Saukiogs, Tunxis (see www.members.tripod.com/SCPickens/ windsor.html). Henry Stiles, The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut, 2 vols. (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood and Brainard Co., 1891), 1: 103–21. Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York (1821–22; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1969). Robert Blair St. George, “Artifacts of Regional Consciousness in the Connecticut River Valley, 1700–1780,” in The Great River: Art and Society of the Connecticut River Valley, 1635–1820, edited by Gerald W. R. Ward and William N. Hosley (Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum, 1985), p. 37. In an essay entitled “Timothy Dwight: Classroom Issues and Strategies,” Carla Mulford observed that Dwight “attempted to find a way to model or represent a civic culture that the populace could only pretend to imitate” (www. georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/dwight.html). Historian Kevin Sweeney noted that “the diversity, the turbulence, and the special character of the early history of the Connecticut River Valley are often overlooked,” in “From Wilderness to Arcadian Vale: Material Life in the Connecticut River Valley, 1635–1760,” in The Great River, pp. 17, 19, 21. According to Sweeney, 70–80 percent of residents in most towns were offspring of original settlers.

2. St. George, “Artifacts of Regional Consciousness,” pp. 29–39.

3. Patricia E. Kane, “The Seventeenth-Century Furniture of the Connecticut River Valley: The Hadley Chest Reappraised,” in Arts of the Anglo-American Community in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Ian M. G. Quimby (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975); Patricia E. Kane, “The Joiners of Seventeenth Century Hartford County,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 35, no. 3 (July 1970); Philip Zea, “The Fruits of Oligarchy: Patronage and the Hadley Chest Tradition in Western Massachusetts,” in New England Furniture: Essays in Memory of Benno M. Forman (Boston: Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, 1987); Philip Zea and Susan L. Flynt, Hadley Chests (Deerfield, Mass.: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, 1992); Susan Prendergast Schoelwer, “Connecticut Sunflower Furniture: A Familiar Form Reconsidered,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (Spring 1989); and Kevin M. Sweeney, “Furniture and the Domestic Environment in Wethersfield, Connecticut, 1639–1800,” in Material Life in America, 1600–1860, edited by Robert Blair St. George (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988).

4. Edward S. Cooke Jr., Making Furniture in Preindustrial America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

5. Roger Clap, Roger Clap’s Memoirs, With an Account of the Voyage of the Mary and John, 1630 (1731; reprint, Seattle; Pigott-Washington Printing Co., 1929); Frank Thistlethwaite, Dorset Pilgrims: The Story of West County Pilgrims Who Went to New England in the Seventeenth Century (Interlaken, N.Y.: Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1993), pp. 55–56. Reverend White recruited from his own family, including Roger Ludlow, a lawyer, member of the minor gentry, and cousin of White’s wife, Mary Cogan; children of his brother-in-law Reverend John Terry (rector of Stockton, Wiltshire); and the son and nephew of another brother-in-law, Reverend William Cooke, vicar of Crediton, Devonshire. White also turned to former Oxford classmates and fellow ministers. Reverend William Gillet, rector of nearby Chafcombe, sent two of his sons; and Reverend Edward Clarke, vicar of Taunton, sent a relative, Reverend Walter Newburgh, rector of Simonsbury, and Reverend John Stoughton, rector of St. Mary, Aldermanbury, London, who married Newburgh’s widow. Reverend Stoughton convinced his two sons, Israel Stoughton and William Stoughton, to join the group immigrating to Massachusetts.

6. Thistlethwaite, Dorset Pilgrims, p. 94. Thirty families and twenty bachelors totaling 140 men, women, and children sailed on the Mary and John. They changed the name of their settlement to Dorchester in honor of “the patriarch of Dorchester,” Reverend White.

7. Members of the Plymouth group formally complained first to Plymouth officials then to leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, of the many “injuries offered them . . . by those of Dorchester, in taking away their land” (The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649, edited by Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle [Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1996], pp. 35–37).

8. Hartford County Probate Records (hereafter HCPR), vol. 5, pp. 227–30, Connecticut State Library (hereafter CSL), History and Genealogy Unit (hereafter HGU), Hartford. Stiles, History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, 2: 29.

9. Randle Holme, The Academy of Armory, or, A Storehouse of Armory and Blazon (Chester, Eng.: By the author, 1688), pp. 86, 127. Holme noted that crowns of oak leaves were “given to them who had well deserved of the publick Estate, and managed Matters well for the conservations of their civil Affairs.” King Charles I reinforced these cultural associations when he hid from Oliver Cromwell in an oak tree, famously dubbed the “royal oak,” after the latter defeated him in the Battle of Worcester in 1651. At a local level, these associations were reinforced at a meeting in Hartford between Sir Edmund Andros, whom King Charles II had appointed governor of New England and New York, and outgoing Connecticut governor Robert Treat. Treat and other officials were expected to surrender Connecticut’s colonial charter, but Captain Joseph Wadsworth removed the document and reputedly hid it in a nearby oak tree, thereafter known as the “charter oak.” Matthew Grant Diary (hereafter MGD), typescript transcription by Jessie A. Parsons, p. 29, CSL, HGU. Hooker based his sermon on one that English Puritan divine Richard Sibbes (1577–1635) included in his 1630 religious tract, The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax.

10. Philip Ayres, Mythologia ethica, or, Three centuries of Æsopian fables in English (London: Printed for Thomas Hawkins, 1689).

11. Robert F. Trent, “The Concept of Mannerism,” in New England Begins, edited by Jonathan Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent, 3 vols. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982), 3: 368–79. Arthur Lotz, Bibliographie der Modelbücher: beschreibendes Verzeichnis der Stick- und Spitzenmusterbücher des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: A. Hiersemann, 1963). Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Furniture as Social Property: Gender, Property, and Memory in the Decorative Arts,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite and William N. Hosley (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 1995), pp. 39–69.

12. Windsor settler Nicholas Hoyt is believed to have passed this chest to his son David (1651–1704), who brought it with him and his family to Deerfield, Massachusetts. David was killed in the 1704, when a coalition of Native Americans and their French allies from Canada raided the town, burned much of the settlement, and took captives. The chest survived and continued to descend in the Hoyt family until Catherine W. Hoyt donated it to Memorial Hall, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, in 1886. Suzanne L. Flynt, Susan McGowan, and Amelia F. Miller, Gathered and Preserved, Memorial Hall, Deerfield, Massachusetts (Deerfield, Mass.: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, 1991), p. 22, cat. no. 26.

13. One of two related chests is in the Wallace Nutting collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum (see Wallace Nutting, Furniture Treasury, 2 vols. [Framingham, Mass.: Old America Co., 1928], 1: fig. 7). Its structure is consistent with that of the Hoyt and Phelps chests, and its decoration features several motifs present on the Hoyt chest. The Atheneum example appears to be from the second generation of this shop tradition. Its carving is less detailed and less elaborate than that on the Hoyt chest, and the trefoil design on the face of the front stiles is simplified like that on the Phelps chest. The top rail of the Atheneum chest has gouge-cut arcades, like that on the Hoyt chest; however, the carved design on the former chest lacks the angled convex rectangles present on the latter. A nearly identical chain motif is carved on the face of the façade muntins of both chests. Fine courses of step-groove-half-round molding are on the inner edges of the front stiles, the lower edge of the top front rail, and the sides of the front muntins of the Atheneum chest. This same molding appears on the side rails and till lid of the Phelps chest. The other related chest, which belonged to William G. Irving, of Washington, D.C. (ibid., fig. 15), appears to be the latest example. Its carving is simplified and schematized.

14. The men employed by Stiles are identified on a March 16, 1635, passenger list for the party’s ship, the Christian de London, in the Augmentation Office of the Rolls Court in Westminster Hall: Thomas Basset, Thomas Stiles, Thomas Barber, John Dyer, John Harris, James Horwood, John Reeves, Thomas Soulfoot, James Busket, Thomas Cooper, Edward Preston, John Cribb, George Chappell, Robert Robinson, Edward Patteson, Francis Marshell, Rich Heyley, Thomas Halford, Thomas Haukseworth, John Stiles, Henry Stiles, Jane Worden, Joan Stiles, Henry Stiles (child), John Stiles (child), and Rachell Stiles (James Savage, “Gleanings for New England History,” Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society [Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1843], 8: 252), February 28, 1639, Windsor Land Records (hereafter WLR), 1: 90, Office of the Town Clerk (hereafter OTC), Windsor Town Hall (hereafter WTH), Windsor, Conn. Sir Richard Saltonstall to John Winthrop Jr., February 27, 1635/36: “Good mr. Winthrop, being credibly informed that there has bene some abuse and Injury done me by Mr. Ludlow and others of Dorchester who would not suffer Francis Styles and his men to Impayle grounds wheare I Appoynt them at Connecticute, although both by patent which I took above 4 yeares since and prepossion. Dorchester men, being then unsettled and seeking up river above the falls for a place to plant upon but finding none better to their liking, they speedily came back againe and discharged my worke men, Casting lots upon the place where he was purposed to begin his worke, notwithstanding he often told them what great charge I had bene at In sending him and soe many men to prepare a house against my coming, and inclose grounds for my cattle, and how the damage would fall heavy upon thos that thus hindered me, whom Francis Styles Conceived to have best right to make choice of any place there. Notwithstanding, they resisted him, slighting me with many unbeseeming words such as he was not willing to relate to me, but Justifie upon my oath before authority when called to itt” (Saltonstall Papers, 1607–1815: Selected and Edited and with Biographies of Ten Members of the Saltonstall Family in Six Generations, edited by Robert E. Moody, 2 vols. [Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1972–1974], 1: 124–25).

15. On March 28, 1637, the newly formed Connecticut General Court ordered that “mr ffraunces Stiles shall teach Geo. Reeves Chapple Tho: Coopr Tho: barber his servants in the trade of a Carpenter accordinge to his pmise for there service of their terme behinde 4 dayes in a weeke onelie to sawe & slitt their owne worke & that they are to frame themselves wth their owne hands to gether wth himselfe or some othe mr workman the tyme to begin for pformance of this order 14 dayes hence wthout faile.” Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (hereafter PRCC), 1: 4 (March 28, 1637), 6 (Nov. 1, 1636), 33 (Sept. 5, 1639), 66 (Sept. 2, 1641), 76 (Dec. 9, 1641), 71 (May 11, 1642), CSL, HGU. Records of the Particular Court (hereafter RPC), 1: 5 (Oct. 3, 1639 and Sept. 5, 1641), 41 (June 29, 1646), 47 (May 29, 1647), CSL, HGU.

16. In late March 1637 Thomas Stiles, Thomas Barber Sr., John Dyer, and Edward Preston were members of troops that Captain John Mason led in an attack on the Pequots at Fort Mystic (John Mason, A Brief History of the Pequot War [New York: Readex Microprint Corporation, 1966], pp. 8, 22). Between 1635 and 1642 Thomas Cooper was tried in twelve separate misdemeanor cases, lost each, and received monetary fines. In 1643 he accepted a land grant in Springfield, and in 1645 he received the contract as head carpenter to build that town’s meetinghouse (PRCC, 1: 102, 127, 130, 133; 2: 14, 15, 523. Springfield Town Records, 1: 3, 37; City Clerk’s Office; Springfield City Hall, Springfield, Mass. WLR, 1: 47). In 1643 Thomas Basset lost a protracted three-year court battle with his neighbor over property boundaries and moved to Saybrook, Connecticut (RPC, 1: 25). Two years later Edward Preston moved to New London after losing a series of nuisance lawsuits brought by his neighbors (PRCC, 1: 102, 133; RPC, 1: 25). In 1647 Francis Stiles moved to Stratford, Connecticut, while bringing suits and countersuits against Saltonstall’s agents, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the Connecticut Colony (RPC, 1: 47, May 24, 1647). Before 1648 Thomas Stiles moved to Long Island. John Stiles died in 1648. George Chappel, also subject to heavy fines resulting from nuisance lawsuits, was listed as one of New London’s freemen in 1669 (RPC, 1: 25, 36, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 54, 58, 62, 63, 71, 82, 121, 130, 145, 166; 2: 29; PRCC 2: 523). In 1649 Henry Stiles was “accidentally” shot and died two years later (RPC, 2: 29). John Dyer moved to New London in 1651 (PRCC, 1: 218).

17. “6th: Decembr: 1649 Srgeant Barber for his disorderly Striking Leiftenant Cooke is Aiudged to Lay downe his place And is fined to the Country 5£ A Perticular Courte in Hartford 28th of march 1650. This Courte frees Tho: Barber from hi fyne of 5£ it appearing to them that hee is affected with his great Evill and rash passionate Carriage in striking the Lieftennant” (RPC, 1: 210; 2: 5). John Pynchon Account Books, 1652–1702 (hereafter JPAB), 2: 38, 126, Connecticut Valley Historical Museum (hereafter CVHM), Springfield, Mass. William Pynchon Account Book (hereafter WPAB), 1: 26, 106, CVHM. Northampton Town Records (hereafter NTR), 1: 26, City Hall, Office of the City Clerk, Northampton, Mass. RPC, 2: 184.

18. RPC, 2: 187–88.

19. Simsbury Town Record (hereafter SimTR), bk. 1, pp. 3, 14, 15, 27; bk. 2 1/2, pp. 5, 7, 8, 178, Office of Town Clerk, Simsbury Town Hall, Simsbury, Conn. PRCC, 4: 25, HCPR, p. 469.

20. HCPR, p. 469.

21. The authors thank textile historian Edward Maeder for information on the use of waxed linen.

22. HCPR, 1712.

23. Dr. Wales Buel, a direct descendant of William Buell, donated this box to the Oneida County Historical Society, Oneida, New York. The two related boxes are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery.

24. Albert Welles, History of the Buell Family in England, from the Remotest Times Ascertainable from Our Ancient Histories, and in America, from Town, Parish, Church and Family Records (New York: Society Library, 1881), pp. 20–21; Windsor Town Acts (hereafter WTA), 1: 8, 43; 2: 1, 4, 18, OTC, WTH. Buell received work from the town between 1652 and 1679. Windsor Grand List (hereafter WGL), pp. 52, 58, OTC, WTH. Samuel worked with his father on the Springfield meetinghouse, receiving credit in John Pynchon’s account books for helping “Old Goodman Buell” with “work about the galleries” and other tasks. JPAB, 2: 38, 126, 74, 365.

25. See, for example, JPAB, June 25, 1659, 2: 38. RPC, 1: 76.

26. HCPR, reel no. 483.

27. SimTR, bk. 2 1/2, p. 85.

28. Nutting, Furniture Treasury, 1: fig. 158. Luke Vincent Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 2 vols. (New York: Castle Books, 1921), 1: 27, fig. 10.

29. The top rail features bilaterally symmetric lunettes containing opposing, angled, convex, ovoid forms. Unlike the rosettes, this motif is not unique to the Buell shop. Joined chests produced by Braintree, Massachusetts, woodworker William Savell, who worked in a Saffron-Waldon, County Essex, tradition, have motifs of similar design and execution on their top rails. 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.

30. Family tradition maintained that Windsor resident Anne Millington, daughter of Thomas Millington and Anne Russell, first owned this chest and brought it to Fairfield, Connecticut, when she married Gershom Lockwood (1643–1719) (Lockwood, Colonial Furniture in America, 1: 26–27, fig. 10; Frederic Augustus Holden and E. Dunbar Lockwood, Descendants of Robert Lockwood: Colonial and Revolutionary History of the Lockwood Family in America from a.d. 1630 [Philadelphia: By the family, 1889], p. 16). On May 11, 1668, Anne Millington’s brother John received a contract from the town of Windsor to maintain the ferry over the Connecticut River (WTA, 2: 17–18).

31. Thistlethwaite, Dorset Pilgrims, p. 49. Stiles, The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, 1: 165, 2: 647–48. Henry Ensign Rockwell, The Rockwell Family in America (Boston: Rockwell & Church, 1873), p. 244. HCPR, p. 596. John Rockwell I and William Phelps appear to have been the only coopers active in Windsor between 1635 and 1645. Seven coopers worked there between 1646 and 1655, eleven between 1656 and 1665, and twenty-one between 1666 and 1675.

32. William Rockwell’s daughter Ruth (1633–1683) married Christopher Huntington (b. 1624), brother of Windsor woodworker Thomas Huntington (1626–1685). He moved to eastern Connecticut by 1660 (WTA, 1: 35).

33. Thistlethwaite, Dorset Pilgrims, pp. 147, 167.

34. John Rockwell II served the town as perambulator (maintained boundaries) for one term. Inventory of John Rockwell II, HCPR, 1673: “In copres [cooper’s] timber, in copres tooles of several kinds.” Inventory of John Rockwell III, HCPR, 1746.

35. Windsor’s five selectmen often asked Rockwell to provide rope for use in the town’s gates and ferryboat and to perform minor carpentry work. On October 31, 1668, he received a credit of 13s.9p. for making a rope for the Connecticut River ferryboat, run by John Bissell (WTA, 2: 12). Three months later, the selectmen, represented by Matthew Grant, requested that Samuel Sr. repair the boat (ibid., p. 14). Matthew Grant, Church Record (hereafter MGCR), p. 3, Connecticut Historical Society (hereafter CHS), Hartford. Samuel Rockwell Sr. served as way warden in 1671 and 1695, fence viewer in 1674, bounds goer in 1676, and assessor in 1700. Assessed at £74 in 1676, Samuel Rockwell’s personal wealth was only slightly above the £70 mean held by Windsor’s 187 taxable inhabitants (WGL, pp. 39–41).

36. Samuel Rockwell Account Book (hereafter SRAB), CHS.

37. Ibid., pp. 23, 47, 56, 102. Rockwell paid Grant £3.12 for felling and hewing timber, six and a half days labor constructing the house frame, and one day erecting it. Six additional days were dedicated to finish work including shaping and applying exterior brackets, shingling, and the fabrication and installation of flooring and doors (pp. 19, 56). In 1696 John Moore III sold Rockwell three taps and faucets for five pence each. Three years later John Moore III bought nine feet of oak plank from Rockwell for nine shillings. In 1705 Rockwell applied rims to nine wheels made by John Moore II On January 21, 1697, Rockwell credited John Moore II 5s.6p. for two chairs (p. 73).

38. Ibid., pp. 50, 6. Loomis was the brother-in-law of Rockwell’s sister Mary (1662–1738), and Ellsworth was the brother-in-law of Rockwell’s sister-in-law Martha Gaylord (1659–1721). Ibid., pp. 11, 47, 80, 121. An example of Rockwell’s later production is the bedstead he made for Jonathan Bissell (p. 102).

39. Rockwell’s purchase of Grant’s share is recorded in ibid., p. 5. In November 1700 Samuel Grant Jr. paid Rockwell sixteen shillings for 450 feet of boards. That same month, Thomas Ellsworth paid Rockwell sixteen shillings for 200 feet of slitwork (ibid., p. 55). HCPR, 1725. Stiles, History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, 1: 578, 873; 2: 649, 647–48.

40. Irving W. Lyon, “Notebook,” 1: 92, Winterthur Library, Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware. Hartford County Vital Records, CSL, HGU.

41. Windsor woodworkers who probably were trained in the Moore shop tradition include Samuel Bancroft (1667–1742), Josiah Barber (1653–1729), Benjamin Bissell (1669–1698), David Bissell (1681–1733), Ebenezer Bissell (1685–1750), Joseph Bissell (1663–1689), Joseph Bissell (1663–1713), Nathaniel Bissell (1640–1713), Thomas Bissell (1628–1689), Nathaniel Gaylord (1656–1720), Anthony Hoskins (1633–1706), Daniel Loomis (1656–1740), Daniel Loomis (1682–1754), David Loomis (1694–1752), Nathaniel Loomis Jr. (1656–1733), Andrew Moore (1649–1719), John Moore II (1645–1718), John Moore III (1665–1752), John Moore (1694–1787), Josiah Moore (1679–1751), Thomas Moore (1667–1735), and Thomas Moore (1678–1754). A chest made and owned by third-generation Moore shop woodworker Nathaniel Gaylord has a drawer with one, large half-dovetail joining each of the sides to the front. The drawer runs on its bottom. The drawer of another Moore shop chest that probably predates the Gaylord example runs on supports set into grooves cut in the drawer sides. The sides of this drawer are nailed into rabbets in the edges of the drawer front.

42. Variations in the size and shape of these punches serve as further evidence of diverse tool kits used by multiple craftsmen in executing the ornament of these objects.

43. The Drake shop box initialed “EB” (see fig. 49) also features a similar, though smaller, notch cut in the upper left interior corner of its backboard.

44. In the early seventeenth century, a fleet of fifteen to twenty fishing barques sailed from Southwold’s harbor annually to take part in the Icelandic fishing industry (Evan T. Jones, “England’s Icelandic Fishery in the Early Modern Period,” in England’s Sea Fisheries: The Commercial Fisheries of England and Wales since 1300, edited by David Starkey et al. [London: Chatham Publishing, 2003], pp. 105–10). John Moore received an initial land grant in Windsor of six acres and thirty rods “bounded north by Thomas moore” (WLR, 1: 84). Family tradition and genealogy indicate that John Moore immigrated with his father, Thomas, who died in 1645 (Stiles, History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, 2: 501). Thomas Moore and his children may have been related to Thomas Moore Sr. (ca. 1580–1636). The elder Moore was associated with the nonconformist ministry of Reverend John Youngs in Southwold. He emigrated with his family to Salem, Massachusetts, in the 1630s (The Journal of John Winthrop, p. 1). Situated next to the lot of John Brancor, Windsor’s schoolmaster, Thomas Moore’s home lot consisted of a six-acre thirty-rod parcel (WLR, 1: 83).

45. Thistlethwaite, Dorset Pilgrims, p. 138. February 24, 1640, WLR, 1: 84. In 1665 Matthew Grant recorded John Moore as one of only nineteen fully covenanted members of the Dorchester Church still living in Windsor: “A List of those members of the church that were so in Dorchester and came up here with Mr. Wharam and still are of us. of men John Moor” (MGCR, p. 9).

46. At least two other woodworking traditions with roots in Suffolk County, England, were active in seventeenth-century New England; John Thurston (1607–1685) practiced a Wrentham, Suffolk, tradition in Dedham and Medfield, Massachusetts, and Thomas Mulliner (d. after 1658) worked in an Ipswich, Suffolk, tradition in New Haven, Connecticut, and Southold, Long Island. Furniture attributed to both men features a shallow, foliate carving style similar in form and execution to that associated with John Moore. A chest that descended in the Fairbanks family of Dedham (Fairbanks House Museum) probably represents the work of Thurston’s principal apprentice, John Houghton (1624–1684). It has a center panel with abstract, tulip-form flower heads linked with a flowing vine. The central panels of a chest with drawer attributed to Mulliner have relief carving featuring a central vertical stem surmounted by a large flower head and abstract foliate forms extending from the sides. Thomas Osborne reputedly brought the chest from New Haven to Easthampton, Long Island, before 1650 (Patricia Kane, Furniture of the New Haven Colony: The Seventeenth-Century Style [New Haven, Conn.: New Haven Colony Historical Society, 1973], pp. 10–11, fig. 1). All of the aforementioned work demonstrates a Suffolk predilection toward abstract vegetal and foliate relief carving.

47. In 1666 Matthew Grant recorded that John Moore’s wife was one of seven fully covenanted female members of John Warham’s church in Dorchester who continued in Windsor (MGCR, p. 9). Abigail’s mother, Mary Hull, was the sister of Josiah Hull, who was married to Joseph Loomis’s daughter Elizabeth. Mary’s sister married Samuel Gaylord, brother of William Gaylord. In subsequent years, members of both the Gaylord and Loomis families became active members of John Moore’s shop tradition. In 1669 Moore and Newberry received eighteen pounds from the town for framing and raising a house for Job Drake (WTA, 2: 9). In his capacity as townsman, Newberry was empowered to negotiate with Moore for the contract to build the third ferryboat in 1674. Newberry apparently had to “grease the wheel” to make the contract go. On February 11, 1674, he paid 10s.“for liquer what was used to agree about ye fery boote” (WTA, 2: 28). Moore’s contract for the hafts and pikes is in WTA, 2: 9 (March 15, 1667), 39 (July 13, 1676).

48. The range of Moore’s documented work is suggested in WTA, 2: 5 (March 15, 1667), 7 (July 3, 1667), 8 (September 8 and 30, 1667), 9 (July 1667), 15 (Feb. 15, 1669), 28 (Feb. 11, 1674), 32 (March 27, 1674); and WGL, p. 20 (Jan. 23, 1675). In 1669 Moore received 2s.6p. for making three oars (WTA, 2: 15). In 1667 he contracted to build a second ferryboat for the town: “Also the day above said the townes men have agreed with deacon moore to make a new fery boat for the fery of good chestnut timber if it can be got to be fitted for calking by the middle of febuery nixt and he is to be paid in paye out of the towne rat it must be as much as to bigness in lenght and breadth as the ould” (WTA, 2: 7). That same year, he received £6.4 for building and raising a schoolhouse frame (with his sons) for John Witchfield (WTA, 2: 6). Moore’s work on the meetinghouse is in WTA, 2: 2. Moore received £10.3 for overseeing construction of a third ferryboat. His second son Andrew and brother-in-law Nathaniel Pinney performed the work (WGL, p. 20). Evidence of Moore’s monopolies can be found in WTA, 2: 6, 8, 9, 10. In 1675 Hartford merchant John Talcott paid Moore six shillings for a spinning wheel, eight shillings for a pair of cart wheels, and £1.6 for a cradle. This reference to a cradle, near the end of Moore’s life, is the only documentary evidence of his furniture production (“The Account Book of John Talcott, 1672–1712” [hereafter ABJT], p. 42c, CSL, HGU).

49. Early Windsor Records, p. 110, CHS. References to Moore’s reelection as townsman are in WTA, 1: 1, 17, 21, 48; 2: 28, 44, 77. For Newberry’s election and reelection, see WTA, 1: 1, 17, 21, 48; 2: 28, 44, 77. For more on Moore’s church service, see MGCR, pp. 10, 96–97. Moore died in September 1677.

50. WTA, 2: 14. PRCC, Early General Records (hereafter EGR), 2: 97, 168, 185. For the quote pertaining to John Moore I’s and Newberry’s duties, see PRCC, 2: 168 (May 9, 1672). On October 8, 1668, both men and Simon Wolcott petitioned the court to establish a separate and distinct plantation at Massaco. Moore and Newberry were appointed to survey and lay out Job Drake’s lands in Massaco in 1669 (PRCC, 2: 97), WTA, 2: 15.

51. Although no documentation conclusively identifies John Bissell as a woodworker, family connections strongly suggest that he trained with John Drake Sr. In seventeenth-century New England, fourteen was the customary age for a boy to begin his woodworking apprenticeship. HCPR, p. 469.

52. WLR, 1: 107 (Dec. 8, 1669); SimTR, 1: 5 (Jan. 28, 1674); WTA, 2: 57 (Dec. 30, 1687). After 1668 Windsor residents obtained most of their sawn timber from the sawmill on the east side of the river. Before that, they relied on pit-sawing. As late as 1664 Samuel Buell and John Maudsley received payment for “carting of tember out of ye woods and to ye pit and from the pit to ye mettinghowse” (WTA, 2: 2 [Dec. 8, 1664]).

53. John Moore I’s two sons occupied subordinate positions in their father’s shop during his lifetime. On April 1, 1667, the elder Moore received 8s.7p. for work done by them (WTA, 2: 6), and on March 13, 1669, John Moore I received £5.4 for his sons’ labor in finishing John Witchfield’s house (WTA, 2: 9). John I and Benjamin Newberry had framed and raised Witchfield’s house (ibid.). Like their father, the Moore brothers were ship carpenters. In 1674 Andrew Moore and his uncle Nathaniel Pinney each received £3.10.8 for constructing Windsor’s third ferryboat. John Moore I received £10.0.3 for supervising the project (WGL, p. 20). The Moore family appears to have had a monopoly on the construction, maintenance, and outfitting of the town’s ferryboats. On November 23, 1679, John Moore II received seven shillings for repairs to the ferryboat (WGL, p. 99). John II also worked independently as a house carpenter. On January 25, 1676, he received 15s.7p. for eight days’ work making repairs and improvements to the meetinghouse (WGL, p. 49). From his father, John Moore II acquired the skills and tools of a turner and wheelwright. On two occasions, the younger Moore made sets of cart wheels for Hartford merchant John Talcott. The first set cost £1.8 and the second £1.14 (ABJT, p. 42c). For the inventory of John Moore III, see HCPR, p. 561; SRAB, p. 73. Other artisans from the Moore shop tradition made tables. The inventory of Thomas Bissell listed “Table frames unfinished” (HCPR, 1688). Like his ancestors, John Moore III also produced cart wheels and spinning wheels. Samuel Rockwell Jr. paid him 7s.6p. for a cart wheel before January 1697 and 6s.4p. for a great wheel in 1709 (SRAB, p. 73).

54. HCPR, 1706. WGL, p. 28. On July 3, 1667, John Moore paid tax on behalf of “his man: Anthony Hoskens” (WTA, 2: 7). For Barber’s apprenticeship, see RPC, 1: 55, 56, 2: 187–88; WGL, p. 52. Like Thomas Bissell and John Moore II, Josiah Barber acquired the skills of a wheelwright during his apprenticeship with John Moore I. In 1682 John Talcott purchased a set of cart wheels valued at £1.11 from Barber (ABJT, p. 74c).

55. For the sawmills, see WLR, 2: 293 (Jan. 31, 1689), 362 (Feb. 17, 1696); and WTA, 2: 71 (Jan. 9, 1696). SRAB, 50.

56. For Thomas Moore’s inventory, see HCPR, p. 561. Genealogical information on the Barber and Loomis families was gleaned from Donald S. Barber, The Connecticut Barbers (Middlefield, Conn.: McDowell Publications, 1992); and Elias Loomis, The Descendants of Joseph Loomis (New Haven, Conn.: Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor, 1875). www.holcombeGenealogy.com/ data/p99.htm. The authors thank Frances Gruber Safford for calling this provenance to their attention. A handwritten note on the inside of the lid of the box illustrated in figure 47 is inscribed: “This chest brought from England 1638 by Joseph Loomis who settled, lived and died at Windsor. Conn. He was an ancestor of D. P. Loomis of Unadilla to whom this chest now belongs.”

57. WLR, 1: 24.

58. William Gaylord’s estate was valued at £473 and was the second largest amassed by an immigrant-generation woodworker in Windsor (RPC, 2: 108). MGCR, p. 9.

59. Elderkin came to New England with the Winthrop fleet and settled in Essex, Massachusetts, by 1630. He moved to Dedham, Massachusetts, by 1641, to New London, Connecticut, by 1652, and to Norwich, Connecticut, by 1662. Elderkin’s skills as a millwright and housewright were in constant demand throughout southern New England. Elderkin built a meetinghouse in New London in 1652 (Robert C. Winthrop Collection, vol. 3, doc. 258, CSL). He was working for John Winthrop in Saybrook in 1654 (Winthrop Papers, 1498–1649, edited by Francis J. Bremer, 6 vols. [Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929], 6: 132). Elderkin built a mill in Norwich before 1662 (PRCC, EGR, 1: 288), another mill in Hartford in 1663 (PRCC, EGR, 2: 189), and a third in Killingworth in 1671 (PRCC, EGR, 3: 30). Dated June 24, 1662, the contract transferring ownership of the mill Elderkin built with Jacob and John Drake is in PRCC, EGR, 1: 288.

60.WTA, 1: 15; HCPR, 1659. Of all the immigrant-generation woodworkers active in Windsor, Falstead, Essex, tradesman John Porter (1622–1688) amassed the largest estate (£673.2.4). Much of his wealth derived from mercantile pursuits and land speculation. In comparison, William Gaylord’s estate was valued at £473, Benjamin Newberry’s at £437, and John Moore I’s at £295 (RPC, 2: 108; HCPR, 1688, 1677). Land values increased after conflicts with Native Americans in the region ended. Between 1663 and 1686 the average value of rated estates in Windsor jumped £32, to £98. Drake’s estate was appraised before this increase.

61. For the General Court directives, see PRCC, EGR, 1: 397, 2: 97. The grants to John and Job Drake are recorded in SimTR, bk. 2 1/2, p. 178. For Moore and Newberry’s survey, see WTA, 2: 10, 15. The contract for Job Drake’s house is in WTA, 2: 9.

62. The contract for the stocks is in WGL, p. 99. Job and John Drake’s estates were valued at £71 and £45 respectively in 1663 (Windsor Town Rate 1663, WTA, 2: n.p.). After the Simsbury land grant in 1676, the same estates were valued at £238 and £214 (WGL, pp. 43–45). The inventories of John Drake Jr., Jacob Drake, and Job Drake are in HCPR, 1688 and 1689 (Jacob and Job).

63. John III’s contract for coffins is in SimTR, 3: 19. For John Drake III’s inventory, see HCPR, 1724, and SimTR, bk. 2 1/4, p. 178: “Shop toules as followeth: beetle and wedges 4-6 a narrow ax 3, broad ax 10, hatchet 4, 2 broad chisels 4, 2 gouges 3, a great aguor 3, a tenant saw 6, hand jointer with a iron in it 3-6, joiners plow 3, round plain 1-6, stock for a brass wimbol 1, 2 drills 2, drawng knife 9, small chizel 1-6, pair of compases 1-4, iron from [illegible] saw 1-6, pair of plyers 2, 2 small fills 1, irons for a layor 6, pound of wior 5, crooked knife 1, saw 4, old broad ax 3, ads 4, narrow chizzols 3, one hamor 1-6, small tapor agur 2-6, a square 5, 2 plains 4s, a hand jointor 2-6, 5 wimbols and bits 5, 4 other bits, small gouge 1, another drawing knife 2, gouge 2-6, spook shave 2, pair of nipers 16, rasp & file 16, vice 15, grindston with a iron winch 6, a small screw 1-6, a small chest not finishts, 300 and 60 foot of boards 14-6.” Evidence that Job and Joseph were woodworkers can be found in their inventories (HCPR, 1730, 1733) and SRAB, p. 94. John Higley’s sons were John III (1673–1741), Brewster (1675–1760), and Samuel Higley (1687–1737). The inventories of the younger Higleys are in SimTR, bk. 2 1/2, pp. 166, 169. Joseph Loomis III and his brother James were referred to as “carpenters” in WTA, 2: 61, 87. Job Drake Jr. and woodworker Samuel Cross (1641–1707) established a gristmill in Windsor in March 1703 (WTA, 2: 87).

64. See Victor Chinnery, Oak Furniture: The British Tradition (Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Baron Publishing, 1979), p. 333, pl. 11; and John T. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition to 1830 (New York: Knopf, 1982), pp. 44–82.

65. Oral tradition regarding the box indicates that it was originally made for Elizabeth Bissell. The earliest owner that can be documented with certainty was Sybil Montague (b. 1780), who married Eleazer Coles (1784–1849) in 1810 in Amherst, Massachusetts. Sybil’s lineage can be traced back to Elizabeth Bissell. A Place for Everything: Chests and Boxes in Early Colonial America (Winterthur, Del.: Winterthur Museum, 1986), pp. 9–13, cat. no. 1. For a shop-based inquiry of Dennis’s woodworking practices, see Robert Tarule, The Artisan of Ipswich: Craftsmanship and Community in Colonial New England (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004).

66. Ford’s land grants included a sixteen-acre home lot and two hundred acres of rich planting ground in Pine Meadow (WLR, 1: 3, 27). The relation between Mary Ford and Thomas Ford is unclear. Mary may have been Thomas’s daughter and therefore Cook’s stepsister. Cook moved his household to the home lot located outside the protected walls of the palisade when they married.

67. For court cases involving Cook, see RPC, EGR, 1: 55, 56, 159, 169, 170; 2: 15–17, 24, 27, 39, 43, 56, 77, 86, 110, 112, 127, 129, 131, 132, 136–39. Although the document recording Cook’s commission does not survive, Windsor town records refer to him as “Lieutenant” by 1653 (WTA, 1: 15). PRCC, 2: 35. Cook received 87 of 106 votes on May 28, 1665 (WTA, 1: 24).

68. Cook received fifty acres of a larger grant given to Thomas Ford: “Lieutenant Cooke is allowed fifty acres of meadow in Massacoe this Lt Cooke owns to be his father Fords improvement.” The grant specified that Ford had to settle on the land to gain title. Aaron Cooke served as his stepfather’s proxy in settling on the fifty-acre parcel. When Ford failed to take up his grant, the court issued two directives: “Capt Cook is required to desist in any further Labour on the lower Varme at Mussaco”; and “Respecting Capt Aaron Cooks grant at Mussaco This Court doth judge the grant is not in force” (PRCC, HGU, 2: 40, 141, 144). Northampton Church Records, p. 1, First Congregational Church of Northampton, Northampton, Mass. NTR, 1: 45. Miscellaneous Records of Early Westfield, p. 22, Office of the Town Clerk, Westfield Town Hall. A twentieth-century flood destroyed most of the seventeenth-century records. Miscellaneous surviving documents from multiple sources were bound together in a single volume. Although no document recording Aaron Cook’s appointment is known, he was referred to as “Captain” by 1660 (NTR, 1: 19). Stiles, The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, 2: 160.

69. Linda Auwers Bissell, “Family, Friends and Neighbors: Social Interaction in Seventeenth-Century Windsor, Connecticut” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1973), pp. 59–65. Hampshire County Probate Records, 1690, Office of the County Clerk, Hampshire County Courthouse, Northampton, Mass. In 1668 Northampton’s minister, Reverend Eleazer Mather, lay near death and members of the church drafted a church covenant that allowed for the baptism of church members’ unconverted children (the doctrine known as the Halfway Covenant). Cook moved to Westfield that year, perhaps in protest of the church’s softening policy on membership. In 1669 Reverend Solomon Stoddard was invited to become minister. Influenced by Scottish Presbyterian theology, Stoddard developed policies that further relaxed qualification for church membership and opened participation in ordinances such as communion to the community. In so doing, Stoddard downplayed the role of members in overseeing affairs of the church—breaching congregational conventions. The stipulations in Cook’s will represent his opposition to Stoddard’s position. Although the bowl was melted down in the eighteenth century, a silver cann made from the same silver is inscribed “The Gift of Maj. Aaron Cooke to the / Church of Christ in Northampton” (on loan from Northampton’s Congregational Church to Historic Deerfield). This suggests that the church continued “in the congregational way,” to the approval of Cook’s heirs. WGL, p. 48.

70. One inch of the radial cross section of each floorboard is sapwood. These boards were probably scrap produced from riving larger, heartwood stock. The sapwood made the boards unsuitable for panels.

71. Ward and Hosley, eds., The Great River, pp. 202–3, cat. no. 81.

72. In subsequent years, both chests passed to the children of David Hoyt and Mary Wilson. The low chest descended through successive generations of the Hoyt family from David’s son Jonathan (1688–1779). The chest with drawer (missing) was owned in the Wright family, after Judah Wright (1677–1737) married David Hoyt’s eldest daughter, Mary (b. 1684), in 1707.

73. Cutwork voids terminating with intersecting saw cuts occur on board case furniture with histories of ownership or recovery in the upper Connecticut River Valley but are rare on examples found in Hartford County.

74. Stiles, The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, 2: 721–24. In England, other members of the Stoughton family were ministers or were linked by marriage to ministers. Thomas and Israel Stoughton’s sister Elizabeth (b. ca. 1590) married the “pastor of the Parish of Stroud” in 1627. He was her second husband. Their brother John Stoughton (d. 1639) was appointed curate of Aldermansbury Parish, London, in 1632. His two wives were the widows of clerics.

75. WLR, 1: 16, 17.

76. WTA, 1: 34, 48; 2: 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19–23, 26–29, 31–35, 40, 43, 46, 49, 51, 55, 57, 59, 60–77. PRCC, EGR, 3: 186.

77. For Israel Stoughton’s will, see HCPR, 1736. The contract for the ironworks is in WTA, 2: 80.

78. Connecticut Archive: Ecclestiastica 1, 2: 103, CSL, HGU. Stiles, The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, 1: 553–57. PRCC, 4: 255.

79. Since 1958 furniture historians have attributed this group of objects to the shop of woodworker Peter Blinn. Houghton Bulkley, “A Discovery on the Connecticut Chest,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 23 (January 1958): 17–19.

80. See Robert Blair St. George, The Wrought Covenant: Source Material for the Study of Craftsmen and Community in Southeastern New England, 1620–1700 (Brockton, Mass.: Brockton Art Center, Fuller Memorial, 1979), pp. 56–59, figs. 61–67. Hannah Talcott’s cousin Mary Wadsworth, daughter of her aunt Sarah Talcott Wadsworth and uncle William Wadsworth, married Thomas Stoughton III in 1655. Her cousin Dorothy Talcott, daughter of her uncle John Talcott and aunt Helena Wakeman Talcott, married Thomas Stoughton IV in 1691.

81. For the inventory of Timothy Edwards, see HCPR, 1771.

82. Only notes of the sermon survive. They were recorded by twenty-six-year-old Windsor resident Henry Wolcott, brother-in-law to woodworker Job Drake.

83. Gloria L. Main, Peoples of a Spacious Land: Families and Cultures in Colonial New England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 45. Ludlow’s “great disappointment in not being elected governor in 1635 caused him to protest the election of Winthrop [John Haynes defeated Ludlow]; and this so offended the freemen [of Dorchester] that they left him entirely out of the magistracy. This was more than his proud nature could endure, so he joined the party which emigrated to Windsor, Connecticut, later in that year” (William Dana Orcutt, Good Old Dorchester: A Narrative History of the Town, 1630–1893 [Cambridge, Mass.: University Press, 1908], quoted in www.dorchesteratheneum.org/page.php?id=108.

84. Thistlethwaite, Dorset Pilgrims, p. 113. In appreciation, the inhabitants named their settlement Windsor, probably to honor Ludlow by commemorating his paternal grandmother, Edith Windsor, daughter of Sir Andrew Windsor and Elizabeth Blount. Main, Peoples of a Spacious Land, pp. 42–43. Paul R. Lucas, Valley of Discord: Church and Society along the Connecticut River, 1636–1725 (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1976), p. 9. In 1635 six of the grantees entered into an agreement with John Winthrop Jr. to form Connecticut colony, with him serving as governor. Winthrop negotiated with representatives from Connecticut River Valley towns to stike a bargain with Warwick’s grantees: the grantees would recognize the validity of Connecticut’s settlements and allow Winthrop to be governor, and Connecticut would acknowledge the legitimacy of their claims.

85. Trent, “The Concept of Mannerism.” Robert F. Trent, Peter Follansbee, and Alan Miller, “First Flowers of the Wilderness: Mannerist Furniture from a Northern Essex County, Massachusetts, Shop,” in American Furniture, edited by Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2001), pp. 52–53. According to Trent, no seventeenth-century Boston case furniture is ornamented with carving. A seventeenth-century Boston table with carved brackets (Chipstone Foundation) and a fireback cast from a pattern with simple relief carving have survived.

86. John White, The Planters Plea or The Grounds of Plantations Examined, and Usuall Objections Answered (1630; reprint, New York: Theatrum OrbisTerrarum and Da Capo Press, 1968), p. 34.

87. MGD, pp. 29, 39.

88. Thistlethwaite, Dorset Pilgrims, p. 137. Thistlethwaite noted, “however well-to-do the family, size of homelot was designed to be comparable. The pattern of settlement, like that of Dorchester, was an oligarchy with a strong egalitarian base.”

89. WTA, 1: 50.

90. For timber restrictions, see Middletown Town Records, February 6, 1653, OTC, Middletown Town Hall, Middletown, Conn., 1: 7. On February 1, 1641, the General Court at Hartford, led at the time by Magistrates John Talcott and William Wadsworth, declared that “for the better Presearveing of Tymbr that the Country may have pvisions of Pipe Staves for the furthering the said Trade of Cotton Wool, It is Ordered that no Timber shall be felld fro wthout the bownds of these Plantations wthout Lycence fro the Court.” This declaration went on to impose fines for default on any violator (PRCC, 1: 57).

91. For Sanford’s petition, see WTA, 1: 41. Clark’s contract is mentioned in Hartford Town Votes, 1: 43, Hartford City Hall, Hartford, Conn. “Considering the low Estate of Willm Clark & his family do order to pay to him from ye public Treasurey 40s p yeare foure yeares” (PRCC, 2: 59, Feb. 23, 1660).