Furnituremaking

Furnituremaking was one of the most universal of colonial enterprises. Not an industry susceptible to supervision from England, it was carried on domestically in small shops by no more than a handful of craftsmen at any one time.

By 1810 the federal census recorded a profusion of furnituremaking, leather manufacture, tool- and implement-making, woodenware production, metalworking, hatmaking, clockmaking, brewing, distilling, boot- and shoemaking, and a variety of other occupations in rural areas […]

The unidentified compiler of this account book may have been John Hewitt, a furnituremaker from Savannah, Georgia. Accounts relate to furnituremaking and carpentry. There are drawings of furniture, including a bookcase and table.