VIII
SEEKING SOUTHERN ANTIQUES
INTO this land filled with the memory of high achievement, distinction in living, beauty and refinement in concept and execution, I have gone on a search a bit late; for much of the furniture imported or local-made has long since been deported by pioneer collectors before the South awoke to the value of what it possessed. But I have gone in time to find enough to tell the fine story of the pioneer workers in furniture in the South, and bring abundant example of the development of a craft long since gone. I have gone through almost trackless forests, over rugged roads, to crumbling doorways; I have gone on the spur of the moment of notice of a sale or of any division of an estate, the breaking up of a home, or the division of property.
It is not always that I have gone to some white-columned mansion of other days and lifted a knocker at gleaming portals, where within its guarded confines rare pieces were well preserved. The doorways at which entrance has often been sought, have been largely neglected doors, along the river country where old settlements remain to tell the story of grandeur now departed. Forgotten doors, they sometimes were, even to columned houses, fallen from their high estate, passed into disuse and decay, and sometimes even into the hands of negroes. Some of the furniture, its value unrecognized, its owners having yielded to indifference or necessity has been burnt at the woodpile for kindling, as being in the way, shoved off on some poor relative or servant, or taken up at vendues or sales by the negroes of the neighborhood. Some of it is still to be found within.
The whole State of Virginia has furnished a rich mine of treasure. From the coast inward, up the bay, and along the Potomac, the James, the York, and the Rappahannock Rivers, and at Jamestown and Yorktown, rich fields are offered for study and research. At Alexandria and at Fredericksburg, where cabinetmaking was done, and many fine inlaid pieces have been found, the supply is seemingly exhausted. Portsmouth and Suffolk offer a particularly fine opportunity for the collector, and the yield is good in Norfolk, Williamsburg, and in Richmond. In Charlottesville, and Albemarle County, where home-making was at its best, and the refining influence of Thomas Jefferson was felt, real results have been obtained, with fine, inlaid pieces likewise found there. Wheeling (now in West Virginia) cultivated the craft, and offers opportunity. In the Shenandoah Valley, and along what was once the post road, established in 1782, reaching down into North Carolina, many relics of the furniture of the past are found.
Maryland antiques are more difficult to discover, except the highly valued pieces, although there is an effort there, as elsewhere, to bring back into the State the finer original pieces which have disappeared; but about the shores of its many rivers,
