Part 3
Although Dunmore's tools and lumber were probably destined for the plantation he was seating near Warm Springs as a private venture, the possibility cannot be dismissed that some furniture work was done at the Palace. At one spot on the grounds several items of cabinet hardware have been excavated. And the amount of furniture in an establishment as big as the Palace could no doubt have kept a man busy just repairing the everyday wear and tear.
Whatever the situation under the royal governors, however, the practice in 1776 was to have such work done in the shops of the town's private entrepreneurs. When Patrick Henry was about to take up residence as the independent commonwealth's first chief executive, the state government issued warrants to several Williamsburg cabinetmakers for making or repairing Palace furniture. Honey and Harrocks received a little more than £19 for mending 28 chairs there; £21 went to a certain Richard Booker (about whose identity there remains great uncertainty) for making some chairs; and our friend Edmund Dickinson took in £92 "for furniture furnished the Pallace."
Judging by Bucktrout's charge of £25 per dozen for straight chairs and £16 for a mahogany desk and bookcase, Dickinson was dealing with something on the order of 35 chairs or their equivalent in other kinds of furniture. It would appear that his shop, the same one where Anthony Hay and Benjamin Bucktrout had earlier plied their craft, was the largest such establishment in Williamsburg at the time. It has now been reconstructed, its dimensions precisely fixed by surviving foundations, and furnished as an operating craft shop according to indications of the Dickinson inventory, archaeological findings on the site, and other information.
The original shop was built about 1750 on the bank of the small stream that still flows through the Nicholson Street property. Hay bought it in 1756 and some ten years later built an addition on piers over the stream. His reason for this seemingly awkward arrangement cannot now be ascertained. No evidence indicates that he ever installed a water wheel, and in any event the stream's flow could have operated a lathe only in the very wettest weather.
It's an ill waterway, however, that flows nobody good! This one served a double end. In the first place, it provided a convenient place for the cabinetmakers' apprentices to dump the trash that accumulated in the shop. And in the second place, the damp silt of the stream bed effectively preserved that trash against decay, transforming it into a twentieth-century treasure trove for today's archaeologists.
Mention has already been made of the woodworking tools and fragments of cabinet hardware excavated at the site of the shop. Diggers also found a few component pieces of a table and chairs. Indeed the Anthony Hay shop, house, kitchen, and well have proved to be the richest archaeological dig in Williamsburg. Besides cabinet items, the colonial artifacts include domestic glass and ceramic wares, harness hardware, shoe buckles, garden tools, table utensils, and a large number of gun flints. The last, along with bits of several weapons, recall the period during the Revolution when the shop was converted into an armory.
_WORKERS IN THE SHOP_
The formal duties of an apprentice and his master toward each other were spelled out in an indenture signed by each when the apprenticeship began. Dickinson was probably an apprentice to Hay and may have been a journeyman employee of Bucktrout in the same shop before himself becoming its master. In turn, Dickinson took on an apprentice by the name of James Tyrie who would help him and be taught the cabinetmaking craft. In the agreement between them the master undertook that:
... his said Apprentice in the same art of a Cabinet Maker which he useth by the best means that he can shall teach and instruct or cause to be taught and instructed finding unto the said Apprentice sufficient Meat Drink Washing Lodging &c during the said term of five years.
For his part, Tyrie pledged that he:
... his said Master shall faithfully serve his secrets keep his lawful commands every where gladly do, he shall do no damage to his said Master nor see to be done of others, but that he to his power shall let or forth with give warning to his said Master of the same he shall not waste the Goods of his said Master nor lend them unlawfully to any he shall not commit fornication nor contract Matrimony within the said term He shall not play at Cards Dice Tables or any other unlawful Games whereby his said Master may have any loss, with his own Goods or others during the said term, without Licence of his said Master He shall neither buy nor sell He shall not Haunt Taverns nor Play Houses nor absent himself from his said Masters Service Day nor Night unlawfully But in all things as a faithful Apprentice he shall Behave himself towards his said Master and all his, during the said term.
What happened to Tyrie we do not know. Perhaps the coming of the War for Independence holds the key to his destiny; perhaps he, like many another apprentice, ran away from his master. One of Bucktrout's apprentices, David Davis, took off one day wearing a whole new suit of clothing and new shoes. The important circumstance, however, was that an apprenticeship of up to seven years was the normal--indeed the only--way for a boy to gain entry into the business world. It was also the normal source to the master of a constantly renewed supply of cheap, unskilled labor.
Three other sources of help were available to him: wage-earning journeymen, indentured servants, and slaves--all of whom might be skilled workers in the craft. Williamsburg cabinetmakers advertised from time to time in the _Virginia Gazette_ for the services of capable journeymen, a circumstance that argues both the need of the proprietors for help and the availability of potential helpers. As to any specific workers they may have acquired in this category, the record is silent.
Other advertisements listed joiners and cabinetmakers among the cargoes of ships bringing indentured passengers whose services for a period were to be auctioned off to the highest bidder or sold for a fixed fee. But no evidence has been found that any Williamsburg cabinetmaker augmented his work force with indentured servants.
Formal apprenticeship of Negro slaves was not uncommon, and many examples can be cited of Negroes who became skilled workers even without the formality. The largest number in and around Williamsburg seem to have been carpenters, but other crafts had skilled and semi-skilled practitioners who were slaves. Peter Scott, for example, owned "two Negroes, bred to the Business of a Cabinet-maker," and Anthony Hay owned a "very good" slave cabinetmaker even after he turned from that trade to innkeeping. However, no instance has come to light from colonial Virginia of a Negro, even a freedman, who became a journeyman or master of any craft.
_GREENER GRASS_
As we have seen, Virginians who wanted fine furniture probably ordered it from England. But competition from across the Atlantic was not the local cabinetmaker's only burden. A very large amount of furniture left the busy shops of New England, New York, and Philadelphia in the eighteenth century, consigned to southern ports or the West Indies. No precise figure can be stated for the size or importance of this coastwise trade, or for its importance in the life of Williamsburg cabinetmakers; it could not have made things easier for them.
Whether outside competition was the cause, or simply the narrowness of the Virginia market in the first place, Williamsburg cabinetmakers--like the practitioners of other crafts--found ways to augment their incomes. Anthony Hay became proprietor of the Raleigh Tavern and Benjamin Bucktrout turned storekeeper and state functionary.
The change in Hay's case was clearly not motivated by poverty; he must have been well-to-do or at any rate well respected to have acquired backing, perhaps to the extent of £4000, to buy the Raleigh--and without selling his house, cabinet shop, and timber yard.
Coffin-making was a normal part of the cabinetmaker's business, and many cabinetmakers took what was the logical next step of serving also as funeral directors. When the popular Lord Botetourt, Governor Dunmore's predecessor, died in Williamsburg, two of the town's cabinetmakers were involved in the burial. Joshua Kendall made the three nested coffins, and Benjamin Bucktrout provided the hearse and four days worth of attendance in connection with the ceremonies.
Bucktrout was one of the several Williamsburg cabinetmakers who did upholstering; he also sold upholstery materials in his shop on Francis Street. By 1774 that shop had become a store--stocked with beer, cheese, spices, woolens and cottons, hats, boots, women's and children's shoes, gloves, guns, pistols, saddles, whips, and a number of other things--and Bucktrout had to advertise that he still did cabinet work.
Eventually, however, Bucktrout seems to have abandoned his own business to put all his time and effort into serving as purveyor to the public hospitals of the state. A powder mill he devised and erected in or near Williamsburg early in the Revolution did not function for lack of saltpeter, and Bucktrout's efforts to gain compensation or subsidy from the Assembly were in vain.
Whether or not he turned Tory in 1779--and there is one accusation on record to that effect--he was back in Williamsburg soon after the defeat of Cornwallis, and remained a resident of the town for another 30 years. In 1804 he was appointed town surveyor, thereby capping a career that for versatility was matched by its virility. The widower Bucktrout must have been about 60 years old when, in 1797, he took to wife a young girl by the name of Mary Bruce. Before his death in 1812 she bore him four children, the second receiving the name Horatio.
A century and a quarter later--in 1928--another Horatio Bucktrout sold the family undertaking establishment and thus brought to an end the Bucktrout saga in Williamsburg. The story of cabinetmaking as an active eighteenth-century craft in Williamsburg had ended long before, of course.
_WILLIAMSBURG CABINETMAKERS_
In addition to Benjamin Bucktrout, Edmund Dickinson, Anthony Hay, and Peter Scott--all of whom have been discussed at some length in the preceding pages--the following are believed to complete the list of known Williamsburg cabinetmakers in the eighteenth century.
_Richard Booker._ A cabinetmaker in Williamsburg in 1773, and for three or fours years thereafter, and again or still in 1792. The records are full of men by that name, and their identities are difficult to sort out.
_John Crump._ Was associated in 1775 with Richard Booker, in what capacity is not known.
_Richard Harrocks._ Had a shop in 1776 and 1777, part of the time in partnership with James Honey.
_James Honey_ (died 1787). Was a house joiner rather than cabinetmaker, but was briefly in the cabinetmaking business with Richard Harrocks.
_William Kennedy._ In 1769 was briefly a partner of Bucktrout; then had his own business in the Pelham shop on Francis Street, but his activities there are unknown.
_Matthew Moody, Jr._ Had cabinetmaking business around 1764 or 1765 and later was a carpenter.
_John Ormeston._ Was in Williamsburg from 1763 to 1766; may have been a cabinetmaker or a riding-chair maker or both.
_Thomas Orton_ (died 1778). His name appears in the records once with the word cabinetmaker appended to it.
_James Spiers._ Coachmaker, cabinetmaker, upholsterer from 1744 to about 1755; his shop may have been near that of Scott.
_SUGGESTED READINGS_
The number of books in print on how to make furniture is almost endless; the determined do-it-yourself antique-maker will want to start with Joseph Moxon, _Mechanick Exercises_ (London, 1683); Thomas Chippendale, _Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director_ (London, 1754); and Thomas Sheraton, _The Cabinet Dictionary_ (London, 1803). Among more recent publications, space permits mention of three--not necessarily the best or most complete, but at least representative: F. E. Hoard and A. W. Marlow, _The Cabinetmaker's Treasury_ (New York, Macmillan, 1952); Lester Margon, _Construction of American Furniture Treasures_ (New York, Home Craftsman, 1949); and Raymond F. Yates, _Antique Reproductions for the Home Craftsman_ (New York, Whittlesey House, 1950). The last named includes a discussion of old-time hand tools and techniques; although not strictly concerned with cabinetmaking tools, Henry D. Mercer, _Ancient Carpenters' Tools_ (Doylestown, Pa., Doylestown Hist. Soc., 1929) is very informative.
On the historical aspects of furniture and fashion there are, again, a multitude of books; a good start can be made with Frank Davis, _A Picture History of Furniture_ (New York, Macmillan, 1958) and Hermann Schmitz, editor, _The Encyclopedia of Furniture_ (New York, Praeger, 1957, new edition). On English seventeenth- and eighteenth-century styles Ralph Edwards and L. G. G. Ramsey, editors, _Connoisseur Period Guides_ (London, The Connoisseur, 1956 _et seq._) and Robert W. Symonds, _Furniture Making in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England_ (London, The Connoisseur, 1955) are indispensable. Joseph Downs, _American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods_ (New York, Macmillan, 1952) and Albert Sack, _Fine Points of Furniture_ (New York, Crown, 1950) are essential for the colonial story in furniture design.
Local developments--Virginia and elsewhere--will be found in the article by Helen Comstock, "Furniture of Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky," in _Antiques Magazine_, LXI (January, 1952). That magazine's recent compilation entitled _The Antiques Treasury_ (New York, Dutton, 1959) has useful information and many illustrations of furniture and other furnishings in Williamsburg and in a number of other American museums and restorations.
As to the craftsmen themselves and their life in colonial times, the first place to look is Ethel Hall Bjerkoe, _The Cabinetmakers of America_ (Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday, 1957); and for light on the general, social, and economic status of craft workers Carl Bridenbaugh, _The Colonial Craftsman_ (New York, N. Y. Univ. Press, 1950) will be found helpful. _Seat of Empire_, by the same author; Hunter D. Farish, editor, _The Journal ... of Philip Vickers Fithian_; and Edmund S. Morgan, _Virginians at Home_ (all published by Colonial Williamsburg, in 1950, 1958, and 1952 respectively) will provide lively background for the local phases of the picture.
_The Cabinetmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg_ is based largely on an unpublished monograph by Mills Brown, formerly of the Colonial Williamsburg research staff. It has been prepared with the assistance of Thomas K. Ford, editor, Colonial Williamsburg publications department. Benjamin Bucktrout's bill to Robert Carter of Nomini Hall, quoted on page 12, is printed by permission of the Virginia Historical Society.
Transcriber's Notes
--Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected a few palpable typos.
--In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.