Furniture "Made in Paris"?

Was this furniture “Made in Paris”?

 

John Croft (1836-1909) joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1856 in Liverpool, England while an apprenticed to a joiner and builder.  He went to Manchester and later became president of the Manchester Conference in 1858.  John came to America in 1860 with his newlywed wife, Amelia Mitchell (1840-1926).  They were married January 8, 1860 in Lancashire, England.

There were over 594 Mormon passengers, most using resources from of the Perpetual Immigration Fund, who boarded the ship “Underwriter”.  John Croft was a counselor to Elder J. D. Ross on their 32 day trans-Atlantic voyage.  They arrived in New York on Amelia’s 20^th birthday, May 3, 1860.  Then they traveled by train to Winter Quarter’s (Florence, Nebraska).  From there they walked across the plains in the John D. Ross Company.   Amelia was pregnant with their first child as she walked the 1200 miles (at about 15-20 miles a day) from June 17, 1860 and arriving in Salt Lake Valley on September 2, 1860. (See http://history.lds.org/overlandtravels.)

After working as a carpenter on public works projects in Salt Lake and Bountiful  (Lion House and the Bountiful Tabernacle), the young family moved in the spring of 1861 to Peterson in Weber Canyon.  Four years later in 1865 the Crofts decided there was not enough sunshine on the west side of the Weber River Valley because of the high mountains to the west, so they purchased a farm in the town of Enterprise on the east side of the river.  (Apparently their old Peterson log cabin was still standing in 1973.  I wonder if it is still there?)  The Croft family burial plot surrounded by the iron fence remains in the “purple valley of Morgan County.” 

John’s brother, Howland, immigrated to America six years after John in 1867 and set up a prosperous yarn manufacturing mill in Camden, New Jersey (Howland Croft Sons and Company Linden Worsted Mill.)  Howland never joined the church but stayed in contact with his Utah Mormon relatives.  The New Jersey Howland Croft family often came and visited their “poor Mormon cousins” and the John Croft family received all expense paid trips to visit their New Jersey “rich Gentile cousins.” 

In 1890 the two brothers, John and Howland Croft, decided to take a trip to England and France. John’s wife, Amelia, was invited to go, but she declined saying,  “One trip across the Atlantic was enough for me.”

The two brothers went to England and France to see family members and gather some genealogy information. While in France they bought valuable furniture in Paris that was shipped back to Utah.  Grandchildren tell of the “furniture in the Parlor at the Croft ranch house.  It was "somewhat of a "no-no" room, with curtains and blinds drawn and used only on very state occasions. The furniture consisted of four Queen Ann type chairs and a sofa, all covered with braided horsehair."  Alfred Russell Croft, Out of Our Past, p. 19, 1973.)

We don’t know what happened to all that furniture from Paris, but I can make a guess.  John Croft’s granddaughter, Claire Chase Weiss inherited some of the furniture (maybe the red horsehair sofa and possibly the end tables?) and passed on the two end tables to her son, David Weiss. When David’s wife, Marilyn, died, D. Mark Weiss, John’s great-great-grandson, ended up with the two beautiful end tables.  

Maybe the end tables were simply purchased by Simon and Claire Weiss but since we never asked those who knew now we will likely never know the origin of this furniture.  How did it get preserved and handed down to us?  What happened to the rest of the Paris furniture?  If indeed these are pieces from the Croft “Paris purchase”, then they have likely travelled from Paris, France to New York, USA, to Ogden, Utah, to Enterprise, UT, to Salt Lake City, UT, to Centerville, UT, to Portland, OR, to Redmond, WA, to Vancouver, WA and then to Logan, UT.   If they could speak, imagine what stories these tables could tell!   

                                                 Did the carpenter craftsman of John Croft’s youth admire the fine

workmanship? Did Amelia Mitchell Croft lovingly polish these pieces?  Did Great-Grandma Claire Chase Weiss think of her Croft ancestors and times with her cousins when she saw the end tables?  Did Grandpa David Weiss know how he inherited this furniture?  

Now my own grandchildren love to look inside the small drawers in the end tables and play with the knickknacks inside.  It is now my turn to polish and preserve it and wonder where it came from.    We will likely never know.  As the Nigerian proverb states: “When an old man dies it is like a library set ablaze.”

What do you wish you could ask those who have already “passed on”?  Do you have a question about an item you have inherited?  How did some of your family traditions began?  Do you wonder about the unidentified photos you have seen?  Perhaps a child asks why you make a recipe in that peculiar way and you respond, “Well, that’s the way my mother taught me.”  We need to ask these kinds of questions of our living ancestors before they “cross over”.

For now, the Paris furniture question remains in my mental file labeled “Family Mysteries”.   Author David McCullough believes  “You scratch the supposedly dead past anywhere and what you find is life.”  Maybe we will yet find out how this scratched furniture came into the Weiss family.