TABLE

Like many artisans in the Georgia piedmont, Thomas J. Maxwell was both a craftsman and a farmer.  In 1953 Maxwell’s granddaughter recalled, “Grandpa was a cabinetmaker as well as a farmer.  When his children married there was a reserve of things he had made… It must have been that he considered it part of his duty to have some of his handiwork in their hope-chests. Mother had a chest, five chairs, a wardrobe, a small table, and a rolling pin.”  This piece descended in the family and is probably the small table referred to by the maker’s granddaughter.

When Thomas J. Maxwell died in 1869 his estate contained $25 worth of tools and $2 worth of birch plank.  Birch was often used as a primary wood in Georgia Piedmont cabinetmaking, but is seldom seen elsewhere in the American South.