The Skillin Workshop - ship figures by the Skillin family

Magazine Antiques, March, 1999 by Sylvia Leistyna Lahvis

20 Suffolk County Deeds, vol. 172, p. 101. The house is illustrated in Edward G. Porter, Rambles in Old Boston, New England (Boston, 1887), p. 206.

21 He joined in 1803 (Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association... [Boston, 1879], p. 106).

22 Suffolk County Probate Records, no. 22629.

23 Skillin bills, autographs 8, series S (22) (New England Historical and Genealogical Society, Boston); see also McIntire-Derby Papers, receipts (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts); and Pickman Journals, 1790-1796, vol. 3, October 14 and December 24, 1793, and June 25, 1794 (Peabody Essex Museum).

24 See, for example, Fiske Kimball, Mr. Samuel McIntire, Carver: The Architect of Salem (Southworth-Anthoensen Press, Portland, Maine, for the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts, 1940), pp. 74-75.

25 Richard Skillin's real estate on Rands Alley, Boston, was divided between Samuel and Simeon III in 1793 (Suffolk County Probate Records, vol. 90, p. 334).

26 Tax Assessor's Taking Books for the Town of Boston, 1796-1798 (Boston Public Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts).

27 On July 30 and August 6, 1806, Isaac Fowle and Edward Raymond advertised in the Boston Gazette that "they have commenced business at the shop formerly occupied by the late Mr. Simeon Skillin, carver."

28 The receipt books are in the Bertram K. and Nina Fletcher Little Archives in the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in Boston.

29 ANTIQUES, December 1931, p. 341. See also Sister Fidelma Conway, "History of Charles Bulfinch's Church of Boston, Its Antecedents and Its People" (grant proposal to the Boston National Historic Sites Commission, Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, September 12, 1977).

30 The Skillins sent Derby a bill for "carv'd work done for a chest of draws pr bill given" (see ANTIQUES, December 1931, p. 342) soon after Derby paid Badlam for "a case of Draws exclusive of the carving" (ibid.). For more about this piece, see Gerald W. R. Ward, American Case Furniture in the Mabel Brady Garvan and Other Collections at Yale University (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, 1988), No. 82, pp. 171-177.

31 The bills are among the Derby Papers at the Peabody Essex Museum. See also Fiske Kimball, "Chest-on-chest with Carvings by Samuel McIntire," old-Time New England, vol. 22 (October 1930), pp. 87-89.

32 The Winthrop bust is in the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.

33 The Diary of William Bentley, vol. 2, p. 452.

SYLVIA LEISTYNA LAHVIS teaches American art history for the master of arts in liberal studies program at the University of Delaware in Newark.