The Substance of Childhood - children's furniture

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2000 by Tracey Rae Beck

Most of what we know about the lives of children in the past we know from their parents-from what they wrote about them in diaries or letters or from what they thought important enough to save. From these we can tell a great deal about how children spent their time and what adults thought about children and their needs at any given period.

Children born in America in the first half of the eighteenth century were born into a world designed for adults. They quickly joined in the activities of their elders, sharing the same amusements and using the same household goods. Consequently, there were very few toys or furnishing made especially for children. In fact, it seems only infants had special furnishings created for them. Certainly the most familiar to us today, and probably the most common at the time, was the cradle. Like the one in Plate VI, cradles were generally long and narrow, for parents hoped that keeping infants' limbs straight would prepare them for walking. Another device used to aid childrens' walking was a walking stool, or go-cart (see Pl. IX), which allowed an inexperienced walker to practice without assistance and to follow the activity of the household from one room to another.

The narrow opening supported a child's body and encouraged children to perambulate by keeping them from sitting down or crawling. Early American walking stools are rare survivals today, probably reflecting the fact that by about 1800 doctors and manuals written for parents began to actively discourage their use. In an 1809 edition of Advice to Mothers, for instance, Dr. William Buchanan (1729-1805) wrote,

Nothing can be more ridiculous than the numberless contrivances of mothers to teach their young to walk, as if it was a thing to be learned by their instruction; and to keep them propped up by wooden

Machines...as if their lives were to be endangered by the least tumble. [1]

This shift in belief is indicative of a major change in the way Americans viewed their children beginning in the late eighteenth century. As more people began to study the world around them from a scientific point of view, they reasoned that all things progress through observable and predictable stages. Applying this thinking to human development, they decided that childhood was a natural stage in life and that, left to their own, children would still learn to walk and talk. Much earlier John Locke (1632-1704) had urged parents not to "trouble yourself about those faults in [children], which you know age to cure." [2]

As more people began to consider children a developmental period, they created special furnishings to suit the size and needs of children. The most common of these were small chairs, such as the one in Plate VIII. When William Palmer (w. c. 1802-1851), a New York City furniture maker, sent a child's fancy or windsor chair to the Reverend John Murray as a gift to his daughter in 1803, Murray responded: O, my Friend, could you see the extasy my little girl is...in, consequent on seeing her little Chair,...which but this moment arrived, you would be delighted--her Mama don't act as she does, but she is full as much pleased-- They both wish for the opportunity of thanking you for the prittiest Chair they ever saw....My attention is again drawn to my little girl and her chair--she places it in different directions--she beholds it with wonder--with transport--with love--she comes up to me, and kisses me, was there ever, Papa so beautiful a Chair. Well, said I what shall I say to Mr. Palmer--for, after all, it is t o him that you are obliged--give him thanks, and tell him that I wish I knew anyway in which I would testify my gratitude. [3]

The high chair in Figure 1 is typical of the period. Basically a standard windsor on long legs, it could be drawn right up to the table. It has neither a footrest nor any method of restraint, although a number of surviving examples have a bar across the front to prevent a child from climbing out of the chair and sometimes children were kept in their chairs by being tied by the so-called leading strings attached to their clothes. Although high chairs from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries survive in significant numbers, they were a luxury for most families. More often, children sat on a foot stool, also called a cricket. James Fenimore Cooper's daughter Susan wrote in her reminiscences that she and her sister Cally, not yet two years old, began their education in the little parlor at Fenimore [their house in Cooperstown, New York]; we used to sit on two little stools nearour Mother; I learned to read in a primer, and to sew Cally I fancy, was considered too young for the primer, and her sewingwas done with a thread tied to a pin.. When we had finished our hour of school we followed our Mother into the pantry, and each holding up our little apron... .we were rewarded with afew raisins, or ginger bread, or perhaps a bit of maple sugar. [4]

As in the Cooper girls' case, mothers were usually responsible for teaching the basics of reading and writing to their young offspring, both male and female. One tool they used was a hornbook. The examples in Plate I are carved from bone and inscribed with the letters of the alphabet; others consisted of a similarly shaped wooden frame that held a printed piece of parchment or paper protected by a thin transparent sheet of horn. Once the alphabet was mastered, children would begin to learn to read using a primer (the most popular was The New England Primer, first published in Boston in the 1680s), an alphabet book, or a Bible.