old home but otherwise he must have channeled them into his work
because, throughout his life, he kept his hands continually busy.
But the waters off Long island were on his mind and, in March,
when he was in his shop with his lathe turning, he thought about
all the round claims in the deep water of the bays and sounds
where they could not be reached and gathered and wondered if they
could be obtained by steam.
He was now getting ready to make some chairs. He and Thomas in
1862 March turned 1000 chair rounds, finding they could turn 100
in less than an hour. Then he went in the east woods and hunted
up a maple tree for chair backs. Thomas cut it down and the two
of them trimmed it and sawed up the logs and got home to dinner.
The lumber for his chair posts was put in the lower loft of the
lumber room to season; that for the chair backs was put in the
north garret of the dwelling house under the tin roof. In June
he went to Schenectady and picked out cherry boards for table
leaves, getting enough for three tables.
In July, having tried to get the chair backs planed in Albany and
been unsuccessful, he brought the lumber back and began# doing it
in his own shop. Equipment for making broom handles had now been
moved to the old Meeting House. His comment is that planing the
chair backs "proves to be quite hard work for the old man's lame
hand and arm" but in two days they planed 200. Then the material
was taken to the washhouse and steam bent. When he went to the
mill and worked up his chair post material, he found they didn't
have enough so they went into the woods and found a small tree
struck by lightning, brought it home, cut it to length, split it
and "now have enough to make 86 chairs" although they have enough
backs and rounds for 200 chairs.
His journal now in August through October 1862 details the
process of making the chair parts--turning the posts, turning the
pommels, boring the posts. His explicit journal entries were a
delight to Charles Muller and Tim Rieman when they did their book
on THE SHAKER CHAIR because it details so completely the entire
process of making a chair. There were interruptions when he went
to West Troy with an ox team to get loads of broken slate to put
under the eaves of the Meeting House. Thomas also had to help
gather winter apples and then school started on November 3 so
Freegift was working alone in his shop, mostly doing chores such
as cleaning clocks. His rheumatism was bothering him, so work
on his chairs was irregular. By December 24 , he had finished 30
chairs; a month later 28 more; by February 28, 12 more or 86 in
all. Now he made six what he called "great chairs".
In April 1863 Thomas was 15 and was taken from the boys' order
and sent to live with Freegift. They now have a regular job of
"stringing" the broom handles, which means boring a hole and in-
stalling a peg around which the broom corn will be sewn. This
cross peg keeps the material from twisting around on the handle.
On June 9th they had 5000 broom handles, strung and ready for
winding.

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