Re: Monday answer
Gary Smyth
In honor of MLK day. Steven got it all riight and gets the gold forehead star.
The furniture builder was Thomas Day, a black man. Tom�s father and brother were master cabinetmakers and made furniture from the late 1700�s. Both the father and bother did other things as Steven called attention to, but Tom stayed in furniture up until his natural death in 1861. Tom was a free black man living in North Carolina. He was also a supreme insider with the major landholders, politicians, and the wealthy around his location. He also made pews and other furniture and donated them to the local church, where he worshiped in the same section with the white congregation.
He promised quality furniture in most any style and delivered it himself. It was hard to throw a man out of your house when you purchased an item, he made it, then delivered it himself for your approval.
He wanted to marry a Virginia girl but it was forbidden at that time and place to have black people cross over to another state. Thomas Day, with his influence with the powers that were, got the North Carolina legislature to change existing law and grant him permission to move his family across state lines and enabled his wife to leave Virginia.
In addition, he was both a real estate owner and he owned slaves. At that time it gave him access and conversation with other slave owners, and a say in local matters in the town he lived in. No mean fete back then. Still, as a black man, he was considered inferior to the white employee journeymen in his employ. His shop had as many as twelve (a different source, 20 which may have included freemen and apprentices) workers and they made a lot of furniture. Some of it using steam powered machinery for furniture building efficiency. His work and position in the merchant class also allowed him to read and write which was also forbidden to many blacks in Southern states.
His work is considered of quality and is featured along with a statue of him at the North Carolina Museum of History. Some of his designs are being reproduced by higher end furniture companies and custom cabinetmakers..
