Page:Southern Antiques - Burroughs - 1931.djvu/53

Rh  wealthy, however, recovered themselves, and importations were again indulged in despite the bitter memories of the war, and the South's active protests against the overweening British influence in the North, and, as Jeffersonians claimed, on the government itself.

Washington's administration had been set up with style, and an amazing degree of elegance and fine living, likewise, among the wealthy in the South, was renewed. New life was apparent through the United States, as the new century dawned upon them. Cities grew, and money became more abundant in the South.

There is slight evidence of any furniture making in Baltimore during the early bitterness of the Revolution, and certainly not until after 1780, when Mr. Chisholm, we are told, took up the task. John Lindsay, just out of London, shortly arrived at Dumfries; and in Charleston, from the story the newspapers have to tell, business seemed largely stagnant. The Baltimore business, however, seemed to have picked up, following 1780, with a steady list of craftsmen there busy as well. Following 1800, when the federal government was removed from Philadelphia to the new Federal City on the Potomac, Baltimore became a shopping center for furniture.

Charleston furniture makers were more slow to recover themselves from the effect of the war, but the need of some of them to make coffins and supply funeral necessities, as had been their custom from early times, made them a necessary adjunct to business, whatever else their condition might have been. The year after Sheraton appeared in London, 1791, in the period generally ascribed to Hepplewhite, we find as announced by the Gazette, that Andrew Gifford, "Just from New York has for sale Mahogany Furniture, Desks, Bookcases, Secretary, Oval Tables, Inlaid Table, Card Table, sideboards, plain and inlaid, Dining Tables in Setts, Pembroke Tables in Setts, Circular Tables, Night Tables, Settees, Sofas, Chairs of best Pattern, an Elegant Clock and Case, Bedsteads, Chest of Drawers, Single Tables in Setts, Bason Stands."

In December, 1790, we find Solomon Smith informing his friends "That he has returned to the Province," and is carrying on the "Upholsterer's Business," selling, at No. 8 Tradd Street, camp beds, and bedsteads with springs and cases, looking-glasses, inlaid tea tables and trays; Wallace and Watts, "Cabinet and Piano Forte makers from London," were carrying on in Meeting Street.

It was at the turn of the century that the business in Charleston began to speak for itself again through the newspapers, directories, and other agencies in any compelling number. Once it was started, there was such a flood of men at work, men of various extraction, as the following list will indicate: Coquereau, Muckenfus, Naser, Horlbeck, Peigne, Rou, Row, Sass, Sigwald, Tamerus, Tennant, Quackenbush, Marlen, Mellichamp, Mellise and hosts of others, whose varied birth undoubtedly influenced the undertaking in which they were engaged, particularly those of French and West Indian extraction.

Richmond came into its own early in the eighties, when the capital was removed there from Williamsburg. Life quickened,