Just a neat item...

The way my mother told the story - My great great grandmother was in love and wanted to get married in Indiana, not move to Texas with her parents. They thought she was too young at 15 to make that decision (he was 29) but she agreed to wait a year, and to stay with his parents (the mothers were 2nd cousins) until she was 16. Then they would either get married if she still wanted to or she would follow her parents. On Christmas eve, 1834, 4 days after her 16th birthday, they got married. They went on to have 11 children. This is a bonnet chest he made to go in the farmhouse he built while waiting to marry her.


(Pardon the dust - I was in the middle of moving.) The knobs were not original - my aunt remembered it had rope pulls when she was little. When he heard that the old farmhouse furniture had been sold off my grandfather, who was in Georgia, went back to Indiana and tracked down the person who bought this at the auction and bought it back.

Like I said - a neat item to have.

 

What a great story, and so nice that you were given this information.

 

Aw, nice story.

 

Great chest but not what I would call a bonnet chest. They usually have a cabinet as part of the configuration (for the bonnet). Looks like natural cherry or, possibly, stained maple. The knobs are completely consistent with the style. Looks too sophisticated for rope pulls in my opinion. The story about getting it back after being sold off is amazing.

 

Apparently Grandfather had a friend at the university in Athens (he was on the faculty there) research it & had the knobs finished to go with the chest.The deep, dark, never to be spoken of family secret (I gather grandmother didn't entirely approve) was that by the time he got to it the buyer had painted it. He paid an expert furniture re-finisher more to get the paint off and recover the original finish as much as possible than he had for the piece. So it was made almost 200 years ago and refinished almost 100 years ago.

I have my doubts abut those feet too. The don't really match. I suppose they could have been made by a cabinet maker in Indiana, but I suspect they were added later.

It was called a bonnet chest because the top drawer was deeper to accommodate the ladies hats. I was used to seeing the cabinet style too, but since i got this I have seen quite a few with the deeper drawer - mostly from the 1830-40 range. I don't think the deeper drawer has been as popular for collecting as the cabinets, but it makes a good stash for table linens and such.