Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1908 — MAHOGANY IN NEGRO CABINS. [ARTICLE]

MAHOGANY IN NEGRO CABINS.

But Collectors In Georgia Now Have to Take to the Swamps to Find It Several at the curio shops in Savannah are kept by colored men. They have attained considerable sagacity in the purchase of antiquities, especially of old mahogany furniture, and they talk as glibly of Sheraton, Chippendale and Colonial styles, inljy and veneer, as their white competitors. “Where do you reckon I find most of the old mahogany?” asked one of these dealers pausing in. the work of preparing a Queen Anne bedstead for the polish. "In the negro cabins. Not the shanties in or near Savannah, nor those on the main traveled roads. All that furniture was picked up long ago. - “Now we have to take to the swamps to find it. I frequently leave my wife in charge of the shop while I go off on a collecting trip for several days. 1 walk across the woods and fields, and find a little old shanty somewhere off in a pine clearing, where the children may have but one garment apiece and sleep every night in a mahogany bed. . ■ “Once I happened at such a cabin

juAt in time to keep a clawfoot bedstead from destruction. It was a chilly evening in spring, there was no firewood at hand, and the man of the house was just taking one of the posts of a splendid Colonial bed. which was in disuse in a shed, to the chopping block. A moment later it would have been on top Of the crackling, fat, pine kindlings in the smoky fireplace. “Ttle darkies know nothing of the value of mahogany. It came to them from their friends or the plantation owners who put it away for newer pieces of walnut and maple. It went out of fashion and bo into the attics or the quarters, though the servants came into possession of most of it when the old homes were broken up after the war. “Any of the generation of negroes would rather have an up-to-date dresser of pine wood brightly varnished or a white iron bedstead. I have sometimes exchanged new furniture with them for the old pieces which collectors prize. That is always very satisfactory to the darkey, although a dollar or two of ready money will buy anything in his house. "That is why the negro can secure the real old stuff down here better than a white man. He understands the manners of the cabin and can live with the people. Even if a white man succeeds in finding them in the marshes, the darkies would be distrustful and not likely to show him hospitality. “It amuses me to see collectors from the North come down here, hire a carriage or a machine and dash out on the country roads after old furniture and other curios. All that territory has been covered long ago. “Indeed, although Savannah is full of old mahognay, silver and porcelain, there is very little of it for sale, and what there is owners know how to value. I count, however, that I mak< about 700 per cent, on the pieces that I pick up in the negro cabins in the interior.”