Thomas Day (cabinetmaker)

For other persons named Thomas Day, see Thomas Day (disambiguation).

Furniture attributed to Day, North Carolina Museum of History.

Chest, 1845-1850,Walnut and Yellow Pine, North Carolina Museum of History

Thomas Day (1801-1861) was a free black furniture craftsman and cabinetmaker in Milton, Caswell County, North Carolina. Born a free black man in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, Day moved to Milton in 1817 and became a highly successful businessman, boasting the largest and most productive workshop in the state during the 1850s. Day catered to high-class white clientele and was respected among his white peers for his craftsmanship and work ethic. Day came from a free and relatively well-off family and was privately educated. Today, Day’s pieces are highly sought after and sell for high prices; his work has been heavily studied and displayed in museums such as the North Carolina Museum of History. Day is heralded in modern society as an incredibly skilled craftsman and savvy businessman, specifically in regards to the challenges posed to his success by his race.

Education & Personal Life

In 1801, Day was born into a free black family in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. According to John Day, Jr, Thomas Day’s older brother, Day’s father was the grandson of a white plantation mistress from South Carolina. Day’s maternal grandparents, the Stewarts, were also free blacks of wealth and status in Virginia; they owned a slave-worked plantation and Day’s grandfather was a doctor. Day’s father John Day, Sr. was a cabinetmaker of relatively high status as well, because he had the ability to vote and was possibly Quaker educated in a time when private education was difficult to attain as a free black; Day’s proclivity for cabinetmaking and crafting stemmed from his father’s career. Day and his older brother were privately educated, a rarity for free black persons. They were sent to board with white families to whom their father was connected through his cabinet and farming businesses, and went to school with the white children; thus Day received a caliber of education similar to that of his white contemporaries.

John Day, Sr., although he was a fairly successful cabinetmaker, often found himself in debt due to alcoholism and gambling, and he moved the family around often to find business in order to earn an income. This problem brought the Day family to North Carolina in 1817, where John went to work for a Thomas Reynolds to pay off his debts, including that from the migration bond imposed on incoming free blacks by the state of North Carolina. It is around this time that John Day, Jr., and Thomas Day begin their own cabinet shop in order to earn their own income, moving to Milton to establish their furniture business. After some time working in North Carolina, John Day, Jr. left the furniture business to pursue ministry, moving back to Virginia with his own family where he owned a home and a few slaves. After a schism with the Baptist church there, he migrated to Liberia where he helped found the colony itself, set up its government, and was a missionary.

Thomas Day remained in Milton as a craftsman and achieved success and respect for his skill, and in 1829 he married Aquilla Wilson of Halifax County, Virginia; she, too, was a free black. However, due to the increasingly strict migration laws imposed by the state of North Carolina, Wilson was barred from entering North Carolina. Upon hearing of this, the townspeople of Milton beseeched the state General Assembly on Day’s behalf to allow Wilson to enter the state and live with her husband, stating that a man of Day’s status and skill deserved such respect. Even the state Attorney General and lawmaker Romulus Sanders, having been acquainted with Day’s craft skill and strong work ethic, testified on his behalf. It was Day’s social status and his crafting skill that gained him the support of the white Milton community and eventually led to Wilson being granted a waiver to enter the state. Day and his wife had three children, Mary Ann, Devereux, and Thomas Jr, who were educated in the north. The Day family were also prominent members in the Milton Presbyterian Church, and Aquilla was Day’s business partner. In the church, Day and his family were highly respected and worshipped in the white section of the sanctuary; referred to as Mr. Day by church leadership, Day had the rare privilege to host church sessions in his own home as well as to craft the church pews.

Day was fairly unique due to his business success as a free black man. White patronage and Day’s education and business prowess allowed him to overcome his race-impacted circumstances and experience capital success as a businessman. In fact, North Carolina laws were fairly loose in regards to free black rights in comparison to other southern states; the social structure was tolerant of free blacks and although racism, under law and through social moors, was of course prevalent throughout this time, free blacks could gain respect and affluence if they were perceived by white society to be hard workers who earned success through their work ethic and personal values. Tensions existed in North Carolina between whites and free blacks, the former believing the latter were stealing their jobs. Free blacks often owned slaves themselves, and this helped put a damper on racial tensions because it allowed whites and blacks to connect on a capital and social level and equalized them. Whites believed that free blacks who owned slaves were less likely than non-slave-owning free blacks to encourage slave rebellion, and thus were less threatening to society. Many free blacks in North Carolina owned slaves and experienced capital success as Day did; it was the combination of Day’s landowning status, his mulatto race, his education and business prowess, and his free black status that led to his success, while his exquisite craftsmanship and respectful customer service set him apart from other free black businessmen.

As Day’s life went on, social tensions between whites and free blacks increased, especially in times of economic bust; combined with the ever-more restrictive laws on free black rights, this social situation contributed to the decrease in capital success that Day’s furniture business experienced in the late 1850s, specifically following the economic panic of 1857. Overall, Day was highly respected in the Milton community, as demonstrated by his status in the church and his affluent, white clientele, who praised both his skill and his middle-class demeanor and value system.

Day's Furniture Business

Thomas Day's residence and workshop, Union Tavern, Milton, NC.

After moving to North Carolina with his family in 1817, it appears as though Day had been running his own furniture business before moving to Milton to work with his brother John. Although they were not the only cabinetmakers and craftsmen in the area, the Day Milton shop experienced early success, gaining local recognition and popularity by 1823. After his brother returned to Virginia and then moved to Liberia to pursue missionary work, Thomas Day took over the furniture and craft business in Milton. 

In 1827, Day bought property for a workshop on Milton’s main street for $550 and proceeded to take out newspaper ads to publicize his business. Over the next decade, Day bought surrounding pieces of property and extended the building structure to expand his workshop, costing another $525. In 1848, Day bought the Union Tavern Property in which he ran his workshop until his death in 1861, for $1050. Day ran his Milton workshop for 40 years, constantly keeping a line of furniture for sale in his storefront while also working on outside contracts for high profile clients.

The Union Tavern building consisted of Day’s family home on the second level, Day’s workshop in the back, and his showroom on the ground floor. In his shop, Day utilized various forms of labor and crafting techniques. Day employed white apprentices as well as free black and mulatto laborers and his own slaves; his employees numbered anywhere from twelve to fourteen during his career. Day also owned a tobacco farm which earned him profit and on which he also worked his slaves. Scholars estimate that Day employed five white and at least seven black workers in his workshop. Although some scholars have attributed certain less-skilled pieces of furniture to Day himself, it is more likely according to other researchers that some of the pieces sold by Day’s workshop were produced by his less-skilled apprentice craftsmen. To craft his veneered cabinets and other furniture pieces, including beds and bookshelves, Day worked with hand tools in his earlier years, but in the 1840s he introduced steam power into his workshop. This steam power quickened Day’s crafting process and increased production levels.

Day’s workshop created various types of furniture and cabinetry, such as armoires and chairs, as well as architectural work on homes in the northern North Carolina/Southern Virginia area. Day specialized in veneered furniture and relied heavily in mahogany as a work material, which he imported from places in Africa and Central America. In fact, Day stated himself in one of his publicity advertisements that he imported his mahogany from Santo Domingo, and that he kept mahogany furniture on stock for sale. While his work with mahogany came to be known as his trademark, Day also utilized other materials for his furniture such as walnut, seen in the pews he constructed for the Presbyterian church he attended in Milton. Day was strong and confident in his stylistic taste, debating with his clients to ensure that the best quality materials and designs were used.

The exquisitely crafted furniture created by Day did not go unrecognized. Day’s Union Tavern furniture business served high-status organizations and patrons, many of them white, including the University of North Carolina and North Carolina Governor David Reid. In 1847, Day won a contract with UNC to create pieces for two of its student societies, the Philanthropic and Dialectic Societies. Day worked on this project for two years; as it became more expensive and took longer than expected, his patrons at UNC expressed total faith in his crafting skill and in the worth of his work, although Day’s salary had to be kept quiet so as not to enrage other white craftsman in the area over his race and high payment. In 1855, at the height of his capital success, Day was commissioned by Governor Reid to furnish his home; for this project, Day created forty-five pieces of complexly crafted furniture. High status clientele such as this not only boosted Day’s notoriety and business, it also helped him gain influence in Milton and in the state General Assembly, especially when Day had to fight to get his wife into the state; this trend was also reflected in the way Day was held in high esteem by his segregated church and by all of his clients, whom he treated with the utmost respect, and by how even today Day’s furniture is passed down through families and incredibly treasured.

Day’s technically savvy production methods as well as his excellent customer service and skilled craftsmanship and designs, scholars like Patricia Phillips Marshall argue, made Day’s cabinet workshop in Milton the premier and most capitally successful furniture business in the state of North Carolina. Day was a major contributor to the state economy; scholarly estimates show that he held 20-25% of state capital investment in furniture production within his business, and that his workshop put out 10% of the state’s total furniture production. By 1840, scholars agree that Day held incredible economic influence on the Milton region and that his business held $1500 worth of capital resources and products; in 1850, the Union Tavern business boasted a net worth of $5800 and held around $8000 worth of crafted pieces, tools, and machinery. Day maintained a high personal credit rating and net worth, estimated to be about $40,000 in 1855. Day often made sales on credit but could not always collect payments; this combined with the economic panic of 1857 caused Day’s business to declined in worth and production in the late 1850s; Day declared bankruptcy and his shop was placed in trust with a business partner. After Day’s death, his son Thomas Jr. bought the workshop back and kept it running for another decade; the Union Tavern workshop closed for good in 1871.

Day's Technique and Artistry

Bureau (c. 1860-66) documented to Day, North Carolina Museum of History.

Legacy

Day's furniture is high quality, antebellum, North Carolinian native furniture. Pieces of Day's work have been displayed at various museums throughout North Carolina and Virginia, and an exhibit of Day's work opened at the North Carolina Museum of History in May, 2010.

Due to Day's status as a free black, and his unique achievements given the social and racial restrictions of the era in which he lived, he is hailed as an important figure in the history of North Carolina's African-American history and culture.

A statue of Thomas Day stands outside the North Carolina Museum of History, along with statues of Frederick Augustus Olds, and a representative Sauratown Woman.

He built his Milton workshop in the Union Tavern building (also known as the Yellow Tavern), which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975. The Union Tavern building was damaged from a fire in 1989, and is in the process of restoration. The Union Tavern building now houses a museum dedicated to interpreting the life and times of Thomas Day and is operated by Thomas Day/Union Tavern Restoration, Inc. In addition, six houses on the National Register of Historic Places contain interior or exterior woodwork attributed to Thomas Day: Brandon Plantation, William Henry and Sarah Holderness House, Longwood, James Malone House, Woodside, and Burleigh Plantation. Fittings in the Presbyterian Church and Baptist Meeting House (Milton Church) located in the Milton Historic District are also attributed to him.

References

• 1. Thomas Day; at the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
• 2. Prown, Jonathan; The Furniture of Thomas Day: A Reevaluation, Winterthur Portfolio; 1998

External links

• Correspondence between Thomas Day and UNC President Swain regarding a successful bid for work
• EDSITEment's lesson plan Man in the Middle: Thomas Day and the Free Black Experience