A pair of distinctive chairs from Newport, Rhode Island

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1994 by Nancy Goyne Evans

It is far from common that family histories illuminate the background of household furnishings after two centuries. Foresight prompted Mary Ellery Jennison Bangs to record her family heritage, inspiring later family members to preserve the written legacy.

The author would like to acknowledge assistance in researching this article from Clare G. Noyes, a senior guide at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, and Gladys E. Bolhouse, the former curator of manuscripts at the Newport Historical Society in Newport, Rhode Island. The material in this article expands upon information contained in the forthcoming catalogue entitled New England Queen Anne and Chippendale Furniture in the Winterthur Museum, written jointly by Nancy Goyne Evans and Nancy E. Richards.

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(1)For Samuel Jennison and Edmund Trowbridge Ellery see New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 8 (Boston, 1854), pp. 318, 320; and vol. 14 (Boston, 1860), p. 288. Also for Ellery see "Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence," vol. C to Floyd, p. 191 (typescript, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia).

(2)For the marriage of the elder William Ellery to Elizabeth Almy see Historic Families of America: William Almy of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, 1630; and Joris Janssen De Rapalje of Fort Orange (Albany), New Amsterdam and Brooklyn, 1623 (Chicago, 1897), pp. 35, 82. Other furniture associated with the Almy and Ellery families includes a chest-on-chest of c. 1760 and a sofa of 1775 (advertised, respectively, in ANTIQUES, December 1990, p. 1115, and June 1965, p. 639); and a bureau table illustrated in American Antiques from Israel Sack Collection, vol. 7 (Washington, D.C., 1983), pp. 1796-1797, Fig. P4995.

(3)Letter to the author from Gladys E. Bolhouse, former curator of manuscripts at the Newport Historical Society, Newport, Rhode Island, November 15, 1991, in which she cited Dr. Henry Turner's Manuscript Genealogy in the Newport Historical Society.

(4)For a discussion of sabicu wood see ANTIQUES, May 1989, pp. 1102, 1106.

(5)Travels in the Confederation [1783-1784], trans. Alfred J. Morrison (Philadelphia, 1911), vol. 2, pp. 273-274. Shipping returns for Charleston, South Carolina, for the 1760's (in the Colonial Office Records, Public Record Office, London) verify that there was a sizable timber trade between the Bahama Islands and North America. Mahogany (probably a generic term), lignum vitae, brazilwood (for dyeing), and turned mahogany bedposts are frequently listed.

(6)For example, in 1768 dry goods and beaver hats from New York City were exchanged for commodities from Newport's West Indian trade (John Lees, "Rhode Island in 1768," Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, vol. 14, no. 4 [October 1921], pp. 122-124).

(7)The pendant lobes of the anthemia are similar to the ornament centered in the carved shells of a bureau table of 1765-1785 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston that is labeled by Edmund Townsend (1736-1811) and illustrated in Michael Moses, Master Craftsmen of Newport: The Townsends and Goddards (Tenafly, New Jersey, 1984), Figs. 3.63 and 6.10. Other chairs of this pattern lack carved knees.