At the RBML, there are a couple of historical chairs in our reading rooms. One chair used to be in Benjamin Franklin’s library and is featured during presidential inaugurations. The other belonged to Columbia College Class of 1786 alum DeWitt Clinton. In fact, as the plaque on the chair notes, this is the chair “in which Governor DeWitt Clinton was seated at the time of his death” in 1828. But recently, we learned another chair associated with the early days of Columbia from its original campus on Park Place that ended up at Williams College.
In a July 10, 1906 letter (Central Files Box 659), Williams College alumnus and Columbia University Librarian James Canfield wrote to the clerk of the Columbia Board of Trustees John B. Pine about a story of a Columbia-related chair at Williams College. According to Williams College President Henry Hopkins, in their president’s residence, there was an “old fashioned very high-backed chair, leather seat and back, hair-stuffed” which at one time belonged to King’s College. President Hopkins told Canfield that “we have no documentary evidence about it … so far as I know.” It was only tradition but “to [his] mìnd the probability is that the tradition is correct.” Pine was intrigued and he acknowledged that the story could be true since the library and furniture of King’s College “were widely scattered at the time of the Revolution when the British forces took possession of the College buildings.”
Two years later, on February 1, 1908, Canfield again wrote to Pine. He had just attended a Williams College dinner and had a conversation about the “King’s College” chair with George N. Wahl, the head of the Germanic Languages Department at Williams. Prof. Wahl claimed to be well acquainted with the origin story of the chair because his wife was a descendant of the Johnson family, including first King’s College President Samuel Johnson (1754-1762) and first Columbia College President William Samuel Johnson (1787-1800). Canfield further confirmed the story in talking with Williams College’s previous president Franklin Carter. While Canfield had collected more sources confirming the Williams College chair’s connection to King’s College and the Johnson family, Pine could not confirm the “tradition.”
Intrigued by this story from such a long time ago, we reached out to our colleagues at the Williams College Archives. Perhaps they would know about the history of the chair, both its origin and its current whereabouts. It turns out that the Williams College Archives does in fact have the documentary proof that seemed elusive in the early 1900s. They shared scans of two letters from 1860 in which the donor, Nathan Jackson, writes to Williams College President Mark Hopkins about his latest gift. (Nathan Jackson gave Williams many gifts, including the President’s House itself.) In the first letter (June 12, 1860), Jackson explains to Hopkins that the chair was meant for the President of Williams College to use on Commencement Days. In the second letter (July 18, 1860), Jackson shares the history of the “wonderful tall chair” and of King’s College.
First, Jackson knows all the Revolutionary alumni: “In this venerable seat of learning, the Jays and Hamilton, the Clintons and the Livingstons and many other men of worth and talent and of honorable mention in connection without country’s history” were educated. He is also familiar with the history of the Columbia’s name: “After the Revolution when everything emanating from or associated with royalty having become treason in the public estimation, the name of King’s was changed to that of Columbia.” And then, he gets to the chair: “With change of names came change of furniture and the tall chair was consigned to a garret where it remained for near ¾ of a century.” In 1857, Columbia College moved out of its original site, which Jackson correctly notes was “some 3 or 4 years” ago. And with the move, the chair was freed from the garret:
“The demolition of the college brought again to light the tall chair but only to consign it to a more degrading obscurity it being sent with old doors and benches and old chairs and tables to a secondhand lumber yard exposed to all kinds of weather where it remained until its peculiar form and quaint appearance attracted my attention. When on learning its history and thinking it deserved a better fate, I bought it and had it refitted and sent to you where … it might have a more quiet and congenial resting place than it could possibly have in this city.”
Jackson rescued this historical and dignified piece of furniture. His description of the last days of the Park Place building brings to mind the photograph above from the last days of the old college, May 1857.
We are grateful to our colleagues at the Williams College Archives for sharing this glimpse into the final days of the original King’s/Columbia College campus. We know that the tall chair enjoyed at least a good 50 years at the Williams College President’s House (a much better fate, indeed). Not only did our colleagues provide us with the letters, but they managed to find a photograph of a very high-back chair in a Williams College President Franklin Carter’s photo album. The chair’s current whereabouts are unfortunately unknown.
For more information about the King’s College/Columbia College first building, see Milton Halsey Thomas’s King’s College building with some notes on its later tenants. New York 1955.
