WHM- The Blackstone Canal - The Canal Basin

Highway of Commerce: The Blackstone Canal
Industrial Worcester

Blackstone Canal Basin
Between Central and Thomas Streets
Artist, Frederick G. Stiles
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On the west side of this basin was a very large building of wood, 100 feet long by 50 feet wide, two stories in height, painted white, owned and occupied by general Nathan Heard and George T. Rice as a canal store. A sign was on the ridgepole indicating that fact, and which could easily be read from Main Street. Just in rear of this store was a small wooden building, brown in color and two stories high. The lower story was used by Mr. Solomon Miller, a brother of the late Henry W. Miller, for the manufacture of varnish and japan. A Mr. Bullard occupied the upper story for making colors for dying cloth and other purposes. Next and very near the canal store, a wooden bridge spanned the canal. Next to the bridge and on a line with the street, on the east side of the basin and opposite Heard & Rice's [store], was another large canal storehouse of wood, painted white. It was two stories high on the street side and three stories on the basin side. The business there was carried on by Mr. Elbridge Hewett, who also had a wood and lumber yard in the rear. A few rods east of this canal storehouse was a double dwelling house of wood, white, and two stories high, with two front doors in the center, each part being entirely separate from the other. In the west half lived Mr. James S. Woodworth and Mr. Farrer. Mr. Elbridge Hewett occupied the east half. West of the canal storehouse was a vacant lot of land reaching to what is now Union Street, then only a passageway to Exchange Street.

-Frederick W. Stiles,
"Recollections of Central and Thomas Streets in the Thirties of 1800",
Proceedings (1897)

Arrow-back side chairs, c. 1830
possibly
Worcester Chair Factory
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These chairs, a recent and prized acquisition, are highly unusual. There are only 4 other known chairs and one dressing table in this style and with virtually identical artwork, all in the collection of (or promised to) the American Folk Art Museum.

The scenes loosely depict the Thomas Street canal basin and surrounds (see sketch and Frederick Stiles' painting). In consultation with Worcester County furniture experts, the Folk Art Museum has attributed their pieces to a Worcester fancy painter. All 6 chairs are characterized by distinctively Worcester County joinery. It is probable they were made in one of the county's northern towns, where chair manufacturing became a major enterprise after the Blackstone Canal opened, bought by the Worcester Chair Factory, and decorated by Smith Kendall (?-1877).

Henry W. Miller (1800-1891) owned and operated a hardware store in town. Anticipating the impact of the canal, in 1827 he operated the Worcester Chair Factory - a business that bought unfinished chairs from country makers to be decorated in Worcester. Smith Kendall, his primary fancy painter, was his brother-in-law. The company stayed in business until 1831, when Henry Miller returned full-time to the hardware business. It appears the "up-county" makers found it more profitable to ship chairs to other markets via the canal. As one Worcester resident recollected from his childhood:

Chairs, chairs, everlasting in number, brought into town in large loads from the northern parts of the county, seemed to me to be the principle loading of the boats down the canal.

-Excerpt from Henry W. Miller's
Chair Factory Account Book