I'M WRITING this column on old Island furniture, something I know virtually nothing about. However there's a good reason. Three Charlottetown ladies last week told me if I could write something that might help them carry their research a bit further.

Mrs. George Rogers, Mrs. Charles MacKenzie and Mrs. Alfred Hennessey have done a great deal of work already on island-made furniture ion the days that are gone. They have uncovered considerable information, have some attractive pictures, and are asking through me for information from anyone across the province who can send them information about old Island furniture they have not seen as yet.

These three ladies are doing this research with the ultimate aim of publishing the interesting talk George Leard of Souris gave to the Prince Edward Island Historical Society here back in June of 1965.

I regarded Mr. Leard as one of our best historians and his interest were varied. His death was a real loss to the province.

Settle-Beds Recalled

MR. LEARD “guessed” that settl beds were widely used in the period 1720-28. They were used long after that, as Mr. Leard knew. As he described them, “they opened out to make a snug bed for two and closed up to hide the chaff, or straw-filled tick.” They were used for 100 years, he said, after the French lost control of the Island.

The settle-beds I knew were made of plain boards, but Mr. Leard had seem them “in plain pine” and also “more ornately carved ones.”

“The first Grandfather clock came here 204 years ago . . . it was a beautiful peace of furniture.”

Looking back to the days of William Townshend, one of the first customs officers, Mr. Leard had a list of furniture that included two mahogany bedsteads, four black birch bedsteads, and five black birch chairs. Much of that furniture was of beautiful mahogany.

I was interested in the Leard reference to “two beer horses for the cellar, valued at 17 shillings” so I called my friend Joe Curran who must know more about such things than any other Islander.

Joe believes they were concrete, concave blocks ro set beer casks on so the wouldn't roll across a cellar floor. He's not sure of that, but I did find that he has two old beer pumps, and the picture will be found somewhere else in this paper.

They were used to draw the beer from the casks as the foamy stuff was dispensed in glasses, or steins.

No Room For Furniture

“GOOD FURNITURE was the exception.” Mr. Leard noted, in the early history of the Island. “The crowded little ships that brought the settlers had no great room for furniture.” He notes “in my brother's home in Souris”-this would be Mayor or Ray Leard, I presume-“the hood seems much better than the lower case which is explained by the fact they only had room to bring the essential working parts.”

But interesting as these references to imported furniture are, it's the Island-made furniture that we're interested in today.

Mr. Leard noted that in his talk to the Historical Society: Good furniture was the exception.

Some of his references were really good. I liked one in particular: After noting that country people made their own furniture, he said:

“In a Fraser log cabin in North Lake they thought carpenters a luxury so they left stumps in the clay floor as supports for the benches, the table and the beds. How's that for being practical about furniture.”

Mr. Leard spoke of Benjamin Chappell making a cradle for his son, and that made me wonder when people stopped using the old-fashioned wooden cradle. Once there was one in mostly every kitchen. As I recall them, all of them were home-made. Chappell also made a high chair for his son when he became big enough to use one. Chappell is more widely known as Charlottetown's first Postmaster. The Leard lecture suggested he was also a founding father of Trinity United Church. I have no information on that one.

William The Loyalist

FIRST SCHURMAN on the Island came in 1784 and “William the Loyalist” was a jack of all trades. In 1786 he sold sets of chairs in his store for $4.00 - Mr. Leard must have transposed the English currency in use then to the dollars.

Charlottetown newspapers of 1812 spoke of the “The Charlottetown Chair Manufactory” which was two doors down from the Wesleyan Church.

And here's an interesting paragraph from the Leard talk:

“Recently I learned from Dr. A. A. MacDonald, Souris . . . that he had heard that James Mills (1800-1899) Fortune had made the chairs for the Colonial Building in 1847”- the reference here must be to what we knew later as Province House, or the Provinvial Building.

Here are the names of some of the Island furniture makers that were given to me by the trio of ladies who are researching such things:

Butcher, Newson, Wright, Hobbs - first names are not available. There were such other names as Bill Jury, Robert Pike, Charles Dogherty, George L. Dogherty, Alexander Stewart, Georgetown; Thomas Green, Charles Drew, a Kirkland man in Western P.E.I.