A Family of Chairs

Rural Ladderback Chair

Some time ago I wrote a blog about Genealogical Treasures. In it I mused over the various trinkets and treasures that my wife and I have become stewards of.  One of those treasures is this chair and its five siblings. The chair is nut colored very light weight but sturdy chair. Most likely it is made of Tennessee Hickory. 

I first encountered these chairs decades ago while enjoying a small dessert of peaches, angel food cake, and iced cream served to us on fine china in the Nashville apartment of Uncle Jack and Aunt Alma. (Aunt Alma was the sister of my father-in-law's grandmother.) We sat at a nicely placed dining room table in one of these chairs.

Jack and Alma later moved to Carthage, TN to a smaller apartment where they lived out their long lives. Jack and Alma had no children, so as the various household items and properties were settled my father-in-law inherited the chairs. A few years ago, he and my mother-in-law, too, downsized and no longer had room for the chairs, so they passed the chairs along to their daughter and by extension to me.

I immediately noticed that the chairs, though of the same pattern, were each unique. There was no maker's mark and factory uniformity. Every rung and slat was slightly different. They were clearly handmade.  

I asked my father-in-law about the history of the chairs. As he understood it, Jack's parents, Charles Gordon and Genie Craig, had them when they were setting up housekeeping soon after they married.

Through some genealogical digging, I discovered that Jack's parents were married in May of 1901. That would mean the chairs were probably obtained around 1901 or 1902 making them about 125 years old. 

The life of a chair is often harsh. They are sat on, leaned back in, dragged across the floors and if children are around -- climbed on, scrawled, and occasionally carve on. Ladder-back chairs, especially, wind up on porches growing weathered and worn. 

These chairs lived a charmed life. 

Charles and Genie were both in their thirties when they married and only had one child, Jack -- born in 1905.  With only one child around them with any frequency and no indoor pets in any of the homes they occupied -- they all look nearly as new as they appeared when they were first wrought from the hickory of Maury County, TN. 

Curiosity got the best of me.  Who made these chairs? Could I even find out?  

Of course, since they weren't signed, I could never know for certain - but I have a hunch.  Handmade chairs could have been purchased from local stores or from people you knew. So, I did a quick look through the census documents of Maury County, TN.  I suspected that the carpenter would have lived near either Charles or Genie - and since it was a household good, it would more likely have been near Genie.

Just one page before Genie and her family in the 1900 Census (84A Sheet #7, 7th District, Maury, TN) was a young man named Andrew Cummings who was six years younger than Genie listed as a Carpenter in the house of his father.

Maybe the newly married Gordon's purchased the chairs. Maybe young Andrew or his parents provided the chairs to them as wedding gifts. We can never know, but it is fun to imagine.

There is an interesting twist to this story.  These chairs came to my wife through her father's family. But his family was not the original owners of the chairs. The original owner was Genie Craig. Genie is the great-granddaughter of Joseph Matthews. Joseph is my fifth great grandfather - meaning that the original owner is my second cousin.

It is as if the chairs knew the story long before I did, and simply guided me toward it.