"2 Mah'y tables, 6 Rush Bottom chairs, 4 Mah'y Rush Bottoms, and 2 small bedsteads, a kitchen table, a new case of bottles, a Coffee Mill, Brass Scales and Waights, 2 Kitchen Tramels, 2 pickel Tubs and 2 Wash Tubs, an Iron hooped Pail and a soap barrel mostly full of soap and the Ticke of a Stra bed. Value £20."
The works at Cold Spring were destroyed, and the goods were never used, but the Government's strong-box paid for them.
Cornelis Van Santvoordt, who lived at Esopus, near Kingston, N. Y., when it was burned by the British October 16, 1777, put in a claim for damages for £54 17s. 3d. a large variety of goods, as may be seen from the following list:
This inventory is somewhat unusual from the number of "Chaina" articles enumerated, and among all the items there are but six chairs and not a stool. This claim, with many others, is recorded in the "New York Records of the Revolution," and it was paid out of the "strong-box." This box was not a mythical object at all, but a veritable chest. Gerard Bancker was State Treasurer for twenty years. During the Revolution the iron chest moved about from one place to another like the Continental Congress, and the Treasurer went with it. According to a custom of the times Mr. Bancker took the chest with him when he retired from office. His family kept it for a hundred years, but with many other relics it was sold in Philadelphia, in 1898, by one of his descendants.
Figure 61. FIELD BED.
Figure 62. LOW FOUR-POST BED.
There were various patterns of combinations of desks and bookcases, and of desks and bureaus. There were the high, wide ones of Chippendale or Sheraton, that would almost fill one side of a room. There were small ones with desk below and shelves above, and occasionally there were such great ones as that shown in [Figure 60]. This piece of furniture is so tall and massive that it could not have been accommodated in any save a large house. It is over eight feet tall and five feet three inches wide. It is of a light mahogany, with pillars of Empire style and very handsome brasses. The lid of the desk folds back on itself and below it is a drawer and cupboard. The handsomest things about the bookcase are the glass doors with Gothic tracery. The date of this piece is about the first decade of the nineteenth century. The four legs on the front are of unusual elegance. It belongs to the Historical Society at Albany.