51st Annual Delaware Show

William Beake III (1696–1761), born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to the son of a yeoman and member of the Society of Friends, trained in Philadelphia under joiner William Till, who died in 1711, the year Beake’s apprenticeship likely concluded. The joined chest of drawers signed by Beake is one of three nearly identical chests from his hand, made possibly during his time in Philadelphia or after he relocated to New Jersey. By 1748 Beake was a permanent resident of Monmouth County and was among a list of the colony’s freeholders. In his will, recorded in Upper Freehold in 1761, he identified himself as a joiner, indicating continued activity in the trade, unlike so many craftsmen who became yeoman and retired from their physically demanding craft earlier in life. 3 Seth Pancoast (b. 1718), the cabinetmaker whose signed high chest of drawers dates to 1766 and to whom a companion dressing table also in figured maple is attributed, came from a family of carpenters. His grandfather, John (Panckhurst), emigrated from Northampton, England, to Mansfield Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, in 1680. Upon his death, John willed his “carpentures tools” to sons William (Seth’s father) and Joseph. 4 It is possible that Seth apprenticed in Mansfield or 1 Gabriel Thomas, “An Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country of West-New-Jersey in America, 1698,” in Original Narratives of Early American History: Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware, 1630 –1707, ed. Albert Cook Myers (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1912), 349. For more on the early use of cedar shingles, see Theodore Maisch, “Episodes in the Lumber Industry,” Southern Lumberman 136, no. 1760 (July 15, 1929): 64 – 65. 2 Thomas, “Historical Account,” 350. Joseph Hibberd, 1737, Inventory #609, Chester County Archives. My thanks to Lisa Minardi for providing a copy of this document. 3 I am grateful to Christopher Storb for sharing his knowledge of Beake’s life and apprenticeship. The three Beake chests are in private hands, including one in the collection of the Dietrich American Foundation. 4 For more on Seth Pancoast and the Pancoast family, see Wendy A. Cooper and Lisa Minardi, Paint, Pattern & People: Furniture of Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1725–1850 (Winterthur, Del.: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 2011), 122 – 23; and Bennett S. Pancoast, The Pancoast Family in America (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1981), 1 – 27. William Beake III, chest of drawers, walnut, ca. 1715. Rocky Hill Collection — 28 —