When A Chair Is More Than A Chair

Growing up spending my summers in the twenty-one room house three generations of my family had lived in before me meant that I also grew up with one hundred years of my family’s belongings. As a kid, I loved to snoop around in closets and drawers, finding the most obscure objects: a silk top hat tucked away in a steamer trunk in the bathroom storage closet, a powder horn with a thin leather strap in Uncle Roy’s room, a floral painted brass postage stamp box with removable brass stamp tray in the big secretary desk, and about twenty framed photos of Abraham Lincoln tucked away in Uncle Roy’s walk-in closet. Because there were so many things belonging to my ancestors, I didn’t know the story behind most of them, but there was one that greeted each guest to the house, as if standing guard as patriarch of the family.

As you walk through the front vestibule and into the house on South Maple Street in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, you find yourself in a long thin hallway. The staircase with a dark walnut bannister shoots straight up on the right and the hallway to its left leads all eyes to the ladderback armchair staring back at you from a safe distance twelve feet away. The chair frame is made of dark wood, with small rounded finials at the top of each of the two uprights. It has a woven splint seat that is in remarkably good shape for being more than two hundred years old. I have never seen anyone sit in this chair. It was in the hallway, so not in a place conducive to socializing or resting. It was, however, a constant reminder of the man who originally owned it, its rigid high frame as imposing as the legend of Martin Severance.

Martin Severance's descendants
surrounding his chair circa 1915

Martin, my 5th great-grandfather, was born in 1718 in Deerfield, Massachusetts, fourteen short years after the famous raid on that colonial outpost. His father, Joseph, had fought in the raid against the French and Indians, and many members of his mother Anna Kellogg's family had been taken captive and forced to March to Canada. Undoubtedly, Martin grew up hearing these stories and they certainly influenced the course of his life. He had a long history of service in different militia companies, including Roger’s Rangers. A noted scout, Martin was regarded as “fearless, daring, shrewd and wary” and was never wounded, nor captured, except for one time, on June 25, 1758 at Lake George, NY. While being taken across the lake to Canada, Martin, as the story goes, let his captors know his demeanor, “Raising his oar, he struck the Indian over the head and knocked him overboard, leaving him to his fate in the water. No further attempts were made to make his acquaintance in that direction on their route.” (Severans: Genealogical History 1893)

This man was tough and I can imagine him sitting in his ladderback chair at ninety years old recounting the story of his capture. In fact, Rev. Theophilus Packard, Jr. recounted some of Martin Severance's stories when as a child he was visiting Martin as an old man, the older man perhaps sitting in this same chair:

I remember once having seen Mr. Severance, not long before his death, in his own home, sitting in his armchair, with becoming dignity; of stalwart frame, and an intrepid bold man, being then nearly bald. I was then a young boy with my father as he was visiting the aged man, as his pastor. When a captive among the Indians, he was set to hoeing corn in the summer, and with apparent ignorance and honesty would hoe up the corn with the weeds to such an extent that he was soon released from that employment. At one time he accomplished a temporary escape from his captors by a little strategy. On a certain occasion, when he was required to sing and dance for their sport; while engaged in this sport, he caused whiskey to be generously distributed until the company was well under its influence, when drawing his principal guard aside from the others, he stood over him with a bludgeon and made him sign a soldier's pass prepared for the occasion, and threatened to beat out his brains if not signed at once. The pass was signed and with it he left; meeting a sentinel who hesitated to let him pass, he at once knocked the sentinel down and went on his way. When inquired of afterwards at his own house whether he killed the sentinel, he was wont to answer, ‘I did not stop to see.’ He was held a captive for about two years and returned by the way of Quebec, France and England, having served in both French Wars. (Severans: Genealogical History 1893)

For me this stalwart imposing chair has come to represent the man who first sat in it. His bigger than life, self-assured presence spilling out from within it, telling me his story each time I walk by.

In 1760, Martin Severance took all his worldly possessions on horseback, built a log cabin, and settled in a distant part of Deerfield then known as Salmon Falls.  (Was the chair strapped to the side of the horse?) He lived at the base of what is today called Mt. Massamet, not far from the falls, a plaque still marking the spot where he built his house. As the first permanent resident of the town, he proposed the name Shelburne, as Lord Shelburne of England had been a friend to the colonists. According to my grandmother, in his old age, Martin was a bit of a celebrity and a storyteller, perhaps telling tales of his life while sitting in the throne of his ladderback armchair.

While this majestic armchair spent almost one hundred seventy five years in the town of Shelburne Falls, after having possibly made the hard rough journey from Deerfield early on in its life, in 1985 it began an odyssey that included five small apartments in the Boston area, a high rise on the north side of Chicago, and finally has come to rest for a while in the far western suburbs of Chicago, once again at the end of a hallway, keeping watch from above this time, making sure the family continues and remembers its original owner.