19th century AD

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1998 by David B. Warren

An itemized bill of sale from the New York City furniture maker John Henry Belter to a wealthy extended Georgia family has proved to be a window into their antebellum life that would otherwise have become lost over time. The bill, along with the parlor set it documents, descended through four successive generations of daughters named Martha. While there are individual labeled or stamped pieces of furniture by Belter, primarily center tables, beds, and bureaus, this bill firmly documents the entire parlor set as the product of Belter's shop - the only such documentation known today [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATES III-VIII OMITTED].

Belter's bill [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1, 2 OMITTED] is dated September 5, 1855, and is made out to "Col. B. S. Jordan Gorgia," and below the column of figures is inscribed 'Receive. payment, infull/B. S. Jordan."(1) On the back is written "J. H. Belter/apl[?], against[?]. Mrs. G. H. Jordan/Paid. By. B. S. Jordan/$1305 75/100." When the bill was first discovered by decorative arts scholars in the late 1960s, it was assumed, erroneously, that Benjamin Smith Jordan [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE XII OMITTED] was the original owner of the set.(2) This misconception continued after the set was purchased from the family by Ima Hogg in 1973 and given to the Texas governor's mansion the following year.(3) After the set came into the Bayou Bend Collection in the 1980s, research led to the puzzling conclusion that the set descended not in the family of Benjamin Smith Jordan but that of his brother, Green Hill Jordan (P1. I).(4) It was also discovered that the Jordan brothers married two sisters: Emily Epps Sanford (P1. XI) and Elizabeth Taylor Sanford (P1. II), respectively.

It is clear from the back of the bill that Benjamin Smith Jordan was acting as an agent for his sister-in-law.(5) He paid the bill and was then reimbursed - which would be explained by the fact that his brother, Green, had died in February 1855. It is not clear why someone newly widowed and aged fifty-nine would buy a new and expensive parlor set, although it is possible that her husband ordered it before he died. More intriguing is the oral tradition in the family that Benjamin, aged sixty-two, and his wife Emily, aged forty-eight, bought an identical Belter parlor set at the same time. That tradition was borne out by the discovery in the late 1970s that the University of Georgia has Benjamin's parlor set [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATES IX, X, XIII OMITTED]. During the preparation of this article a third, less ornate, Belter parlor set also with a Jordan provenance was discovered at the University of Georgia [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATES XIV, XVI OMITTED]. However, this set is in what has come to be known as the Rosalie pattern, whereas Benjamin's and Green's sets are both in what Belter called Arabasket.(6) According to family tradition Benjamin bought the Rosalie set for his son Leonidas A. Jordan (P1. XV). The Arabasket sets were made to order, but it is not clear whether the Rosalie set was also made to order or bought from inventory, since the Rosalie pattern seems to have been produced both in the early days, when all Belter's furniture was made to order, and in the later manufacturing phase, after 1854, when Belter opened his factory.(7) It seems plausible, but by no means certain, that the Rosalie set was purchased at the same time as the Arabasket sets.

According to family reminiscences the Jordan brothers lived in identical or almost identical houses with identical furnishings on vast adjacent plantations in Baldwin and Putnam Counties outside Milledgeville, the city that had been designated and laid out as the capital of Georgia in 1804. Family tradition also states that the only difference between the two Arabasket parlor sets was that Mrs. Green Hill Jordan's was upholstered in blue green brocade while Benjamin Smith Jordan's was covered in pinkish red brocade.(8)

One would have thought that the new furniture would have been placed in up-to-date and fashionable rococo revival interiors. Family tradition tells us that the two nearly identical Jordan houses were not only furnished alike but that the Belter furniture was installed in similar parlors. The Green Hill Jordan house, Jackson Hill, burned early in the twentieth century, but the Benjamin Smith Jordan house, Westover, survived into the middle of the present century and is documented both in photographs [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED] and in drawings made for the Historic American Buildings Survey. The L-shaped Westover was squared off by the addition of a thirty-five- by seventeen-foot parlor or ballroom in 1852.(9) However, instead of being rococo revival, the interiors at Westover were in the Milledgeville Federal style, except the ballroom, which was in the Greek revival taste, its ceiling ornamented with two large plaster medallions with central acanthus leaf detail. According to family tradition, the Belter parlor set was purchased for the ballroom.

The Jordan and Sanford families were prominent and wealthy citizens of Milledgeville. Following the pattern of migration in the early nineteenth century from the seaboard to the newly opened frontier, the Jordans came from North Carolina and the Sanfords from Virginia to a part of central Georgia that had not long before belonged to the Creek Indians.