Name/Title
PaperEntry/Object ID
RF6,FurnitureDescription
RF6 - Reference Paper 6:
FURNITURE
Our country is so young that a century ago seems very ancient, and things that happened hen have as much an air of romance about them as the times of Elizabeth have to the English. The coming of the first settles to Perth is of as much interest to us as the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers to our neighbours. Everything these pioneers brought with them is valuable in our eyes now, and no doubt there are many things we firmly believe came with them which never had a sea voyage. It is wonderful how quickly old things grow old.
The first houses were of such simple construction and so small that very little furniture was required. A shelter and heat were the first consideration, so the chimneys furnished a great part of the house and took up most of one side. The crane was hung in the fireplace, the pot hooks put on, and then everything was in readiness for the heavy iron pots and bake ovens of the time. I do not know whether it is customary to teach children to write now, first by making straight lines and then pot hooks, but I knew I whish pot hooks had never been known. Mine never had the right curves. To us with our stoves and ranges, the old way of cooking seems very troublesome, although in many parts of the old country, the open fires are still used. The meat on a spit before the fire and a pan below to hold the dripping required constant attention to keep it turned. The bread baking in a bake oven - a round flat bottomed pot stnading on feet - would seem to have needed a great deal if discrimination to put just the right quantity of coals on the lid and under the oven. In these days there were no hops to make yeast, so a bit of the leaven was kept from one day to the next.
The earliest tables and chairs were of a very primitive king, being hewed boards with stakes stuck in for logs. Occasionally a man who could make these articles better than the rest went to the neighbours houses as the tailors and shoemakers did, and boarded and lodged till the work was done. Early in the twenties a Scotchman, who was a skilled and trained cabinet maker, worked at Ebeneser Wilson's, father of the late Judge John Wilson. His bench was set up in the good room or "ben" of the house at the time, as a "fine birch table highly polished, and an honest piece of work". The capacious chimney prejected far into the room and the neck was a favourite place for a bed.
The bedsteads were generally fixtures and often had sliding doors. Afterwards the high poster came in. the good wife's great desire was to have this as great an ornament as her means would allow. The beds stood much higher than those of the present day, to avoid drafts, and were completed by a white valance. They made little rooms in themselves, as the top was covered and the whole was curtained with gay chints. The artistic nature found a means of expression in the marvelour patchwork quilt that covered the bed to its head over pillows and bolster, and in the adornment of the curtains with knitted edgings and fringe. Space was such an oject that trundle beds were used for the small children, and bunks that could be conveniently folded up through the day, with all the bed clothes in them, made the first sofas.
Cupboards were shelves with bars to support the plates on edge and hooks under to hang the cups, jugs and mugs. Sometimes rare china and silver were in very rough surroundings. I have heard my mother tell of some very beautiful pieces of both that were in Capt. Elliot's house at Fallbrook. The pity of it was they could not afford to get common dishes to save them and so had to mourn their daily destruction. It is worthy of remark in passing that Capt. Elliot married a daughter of Capt. Kinnear who lived just on this side of Greenley's Corners. She was then a beautiful girl of fourteen and their daughter is now Mrs. Patterson, the wife of the Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba.
In the house of the late Hon. Roderick Matheson, is the oldest collection of really valuable furniture. One of the most interesting things is the quaint little old-fashioned piano. It was made in Scotland but it is long since;
"The wonderous box was opened that had come form over seas,
With its smell of mastic varnish and its flash of ivory keys".
It was in 1825 that it was bought in Montreal and brought to Perth. Its spindle legs and small delicate proportions do not bear much resemblance to the massive, awkard square piano of our time. The front, above the well-preserved through yellow keys, is of some light wood prettily painted, and the inscription in the centre is "Knowles and Allan, Makers, Aberdeen, Scotland. Instruments taken in exchange, tuned, repaired and let on hire". It is not overstrong, but its sweet, though thin, metallic thrills suggest mere the sound of a harp. It is tenderly cared for in its old age, and spoken of as one might speak of someone very dear, who is losing hold of this world.
The drawing-room furniture of mahogany, which was bought in Buffalo in 1826, consists of more pieces than we usually think of as set. There are two lounges, or one armed sofa with handsome rolling ends, making a recess where the round bolster fits in so nicely, twelve chairs and two arm chairs, with fluted legs, cane seats and movable but well-fitted cushions. A large round, or Ice table, as they were called, is of solid mahogany. The support is a strong pillar with brass claws. Then there is a sofa table, and as I never seen or heard of one before, I quote a description from Webster's Domestic Ecomony, put in 1845: - Sofa tables are elegant small tables for the drawing-room, of a convenient form - as their name implies - to be placed near the sofa, and for this purpose are long and narrow. They are always made of fine woods and considerably enriched by carving, inlaying and other modes of ornamenting". This sofa table is richly carved and has carved rests that are drawn out to support small leaves at each end, and has drawers at the side. It is seldom so fine a piece of mahogany is seen as the tops of two oblong card tables, the tops revolve in a frame of the same shape until at right anagles, and are then unfolded. Underneath are places for the cards. In one of these is "a coaster" - the stand that held the decanter to send it over the polished table after dinner, and this is nearly filled with beautiful little ovals of curved mother of pearl, supposed to be card counters. These tables are also on claw feet. All of these things were bought in Buffalo in 1826. In the library of the same house there is a table with a round top made from some of the oak plank of the ill-fated warship "The Royal George". Nine hundred lives were lost when this ship sank in 1782. It was raised in 1834 and Mr. Pink told me of having seen her guns last summer in the British Museum. The table was bought from an English emigrant.
Another place that contains valuable furniture is the old Radenhurst house. These are now packed away but what a treasure trove they would be to some of the antique furniture hunters. The high poster or tester bedstead is of solid mahogany with beautifully carved posts and feet board. The casters are large wooded discs turned from some very had wood. The bed itself is so high that when the mattress and thick feather tick of old times was on it, the steps that belong to it were very necessary. The furniture is in many respects like the Matheson's but, if my memory serves me well, of of walnut with the exception of the sideboard, which is mahogany.
Miss Rutherford has a chair that was made in the very early days of the Settlement. Her father came to Perth in 1818 and took land in the vicinity. He kept bachelor's hall till 1823, and all that remains of his bachelor days is an iron pot and this substantial chair. His wife had the seat cut to make a low spinning chair. Her little wheel is even older than the chair. It had belonged to a sister sometime dead before she left Scotland. On this was spun the yarn that made the stockings, flannel and cloth for the family for many years. Other chairs that were made soon after they were married by Mr. Rutherford and a man by the name of Sheppard, who afterwards drowned himself, look as if there were no reason why they should not last another seventy years. These chairs have associations that give them added value. One of the arm chairs still bears the mark of the absent minded destructiveness of a student. When the Rev. Mr. Wilson came to Perth in 1829, he boarded with Mrs. Rutherford till the time of his marriage. The chair was in his study and while he sat and pondered over his sermons, his penknife was twirled in his hand and made a hole in the arm of the chair. No doubt the careful housewife resented this at the time, but is is now a precious momento to her family of one who was loved and respected. Mr. Wilson was so much attached to this chair that when he was married he asked to have it for his own house. His wish was granted on condition that if he left Peth the chair should be returned. So it came back to its original place and is now in the possession of Mrs. Ferguson - Jessie Rutherford. It wa not an uncommon thing in these days, as the journey was long and expensive, for young men to come out and make a beginning and then send for their sweethearts. This had been the Wilson's case. Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Machar of Kingston, came on the same ship and surprised each other at Quebec by the meetings with their future husbands. Mrs. Wilson was a bit of a match-maker so she afterwards arranged a match between her sister an the Lanark Presbyterian Minister, Rev. Mr. McAllister. They were married in Quebec without having seen each other before.
I knew of only two good specimens of the old grandfather's chairs that are now so much sought for, - one Miss Radenhurst's, and the other Mrs. Duncan McDonald's, one Captain Leslie's. Both of these were made by David Hogg, senior. These are large uphostered arm chairs with wings at the sides to support the nodding head, and speak whole volumes of cozy comfort at the fireside.
David Hogg, father of our townsman of the name, was the first cabinet maker properly so called. He began business in 1836 in part of Col. Taylor's house, which stood well back on Wilson Street behind where Mr. James Allan's store now is. This was burned and he built on the present site, indeed, thast building forms part of the present one. He learned his trade in the Old Country and had spent some years in a plane factory and several in making portable desks. In 1838 he added a large stone building and went into business extensively, but fire again followed him and he stone part was burned. His furniture was so well fashioned and of such good quality that many a one is proud of having some of his handiwork. One of the first sideboards he made is in Victoria Hall. A piece that lately returned to the shop for some slight repair was made for Mr. Boyd Caldwell. It is a loo table with a walnut veneer in eight sections from the centre. For James Bolton, who built the Ryan place, some very good furniture was made. He valued it highly enough to take it with him to St. Catherines and afterwards to Toronto. Mr. Hogg has in his shop a draft of a bedstead made for the late F.G. Hall, who at one time lived where the Hicks House now is. When they moved to Ottawa this bedstead was one of the few things they tack with them. This is what was called half-tester - a low foot and high head boafrd with a canopy extending partly over the bed. Another good piece, - a black walnut wardrobe - was taken to Ottawa by Mrs. Richard Shaw. These were all the work of the older Mr. Hogg. The present Mr. Hogg has in his house, chairs that were made by his father for the Rev. Mr. Harris, and in his shop a very ornamental high poster that Mr. Anslew Rudd's grandfather brought to Perth.
In a sketch of D. Hogg, the older, he is said to have been ambitious to make furniture as lasting as time itself. But at least one piece has not escaped the ravages of time. In the days of homemade cheese the temptation to make both butter and cheese was sometimes too great to be resisted, and so the skim milk cheese had often mere resemblance to basswood than cheese. One of these came into Mr. Hogg's possession, so he put feet in it and made a stool of it.
A bookcase and chest of drawers of mahogany, which once belonged to Col. Taylor and afterwards to Mrs. Smith of the Ferry, has found a good home at Mrs. McLaren's, where, with many other pieces, it is highly prized for its good workmanship and antiquity. Wonderful tales were told of the grandeur of the Taylor family. It was said that Mrs. Taylor was of the royal blood of Portugal and that her dower was her weight in gold. The riches were of the proverbial kind and had taken wings. When I remember her she was a homeless wanderer.
What is thought to be the first rocking chair in Perth was brought by the Rev. Mr. Fyfe, who came to Perth in 1842 and organized the Baptist Church. On his departure it was given to Mr. Robert Kellock, gaoler, and has now a place in his daughters' Mrs. H. Robertson, house. In the same house there is a sofa that once belonged to the late Murdoch McDonald. As stated in a former paper, he was the prime mover in the building of the public school and laid the corner stone.
In Mr. E.G. Malloch's hall there stands a chair that belonged to his grandfather Bell - the first Presbyterian Minister in Perth - furniture, like friends, is separated. Its mate adorns the house of the Rev. Thomas Hart in Winnipeg.
In our household that had it beginnings in 1835, there are numerous things that have become valuable in our eyes from long association, although a disinterested person might find little to admire. One of these things is a revolving desk that stands on four brass finished feet, which was bought in June 2nd, 1842 from Mr. Keefer, a lawyer of Bytown. It had then been in use for some time. Another is a portable desk given to my mother in 1828, when she was a girl of sixteen. It has a rolling top and a scent drawer that, in the five years it has been in my possession. I have not been able to open. Shortly before my mother's death she showed me the secret of the drawer, but when I came to open it I had forgotten. In a corner of the sitting room, well out of our reach when we were children, there hangs a barometer which my father got on July 1st, 1845. One of the last things he did every night was to tap this mysterious thing and set it. It hangs neglected and unstudied now. Mr. John A. McLaren and Mr. E.G. Malloch have the only other ones of the kind I have ever seen. They were probably all bought at the same time, as they descended from father to son. Some rosewood chairs bring recollections of the Rev. Mr. Pyne, a cherry table, of the Saches, and an oak chair recalls Mr. J.P. Grant and her literary work. Perhaps she sat in it while she wrote those lines on Perth:
"Perth that a sylvan air still lingers round,
Where pastoral peacefulness for years was found,
Where the old settlers unambitious, blest,
Like lotus eaters, asked alone for rest,
Where still the river, shallow little Tay,
Seems quite too lazy to apped on its way".
Anna? M Allan
Perth, December 11th, 1896.