19th century AD

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1998 by David B. Warren

On the death of Elizabeth Sanford Jordan, her Belter furniture went to her only daughter, Martha Goodwin Sanford Jordan, who had married James Gardner of Augusta, Georgia, in 1847.(18) The furniture was then used in Martha Gardner's two successive Augusta houses.(19) Some time in this century the furniture, while remaining in the family, ended up in the New York City apartment of Mrs. Gardner's great-granddaughter Martha Goodwin Galphin, who sold it along with Belter's original bill to Miss Hogg in 1973.

It remains to be asked why the Jordans at their relatively advanced age made such expensive purchases. Perhaps it was simply because they could afford to do so. It has also been suggested that the set for which the bill survives was made to cheer up the newly widowed Elizabeth Jordan. However, there is a third possibility that deserves serious consideration. Beginning in 1847 there were concerted efforts to move the capital of Georgia from Milledgeville to another city. These efforts intensified after a fire destroyed a large part of the city's business district in 1853. Following the fire the construction of the Milledgeville Hotel, with a capacity for three hundred guests, was viewed as a vote of confidence in the future of the city.

Could the acquisition of the Belter parlor sets by the Jordan brothers have represented their conviction that Milledgeville, in which they had such significant investments, would remain the political center of Georgia?

A referendum in October 1855 reaffirmed Milledgeville as the capital of Georgia, but the devastating occupation by Union troops during the Civil War and the shift of the capital to Atlanta in 1868 changed forever the way of life the Jordans had known in Milledgeville. Today, their proud plantation houses are gone, and Milledgeville is a sleepy little town. Only the magnificent Belter parlor sets testify to the Jordans' splendid style of life in antebellum Georgia.

I would like to express my gratitude and thanks to J. L. Sibley Jennings Jr., a member of the Gardner family, for his invaluable assistance during my research for this artide in Georgia.

1 The meaning of the date August 16 at the left of the itemized list is not clear. It may indicate when the commission was completed, with the September date indicating when the bill was submitted.

2 The earliest citation of the bill is in Berry B. Tracy, et al, 19th-Century America: Furniture and other Decorative Arts (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970), No. 126. The entry there suggests that the name "Arabasket," which appears on the bill, was Belter's term for his pierced furniture. Whether it refers to this particular pattern or all his pierced furniture is still unknown.

3 Miss Hogg bought the set for the mansion because an 1861 inventory of the house indicates that the parlors were originally furnished with a rococo revival parlor set (Governor's Papers, Francis R. Lubbock, letterpress book, vol. 4, p. 48, record group 301, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Austin, Archives and Information Services Division). However, Miss Hogg's deed of gift contained a clause transferring the set to Bayou Bend should it no longer be used in the mansion. That clause was activated in 1981.