Windsor Settees

Settees were a natural extension of the popular American Windsor chair in the early 1800s, but furniture makers quickly found that the settee presented a number of major challenges to build. This article explores the evolution of the Windsor settee and explains how several of today's finest Windsor artisans are producing settees of exceptional quality and durability.

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The Chopping Bee

Clearing the land was the most daunting task early Americans confronted. A single man could clear less than a hundred acres in a lifetime, so people frequently banded together for "chopping bees." In this short article I tell about these events, including their dangers and some of the spectacular ways our ancestors met the challenge.

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Spring Cleaning

Each spring, people in early America scrubbed themselves and their households clean of months of filth that had accumulated to a degree shocking to our modern sensibilities. Not only did I describe the winter and spring household habits of the era to explain the importance of the annual cleansing ritual, but also accumulated some fascinating demographics for the article regarding living conditions in the first two centuries of European settlement in the New World.

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