Nine days later they came back after Ada's things but that is the
last we hear of Thomas. We wonder how his later life turned out
after his training and life with Freegift.
David Buckingham, in his journal in 1868, records that Freegift
exchanged rooms with Ephraim Prentiss because Freegift was "lame
and aged" and his coal stove was brought from the joiner's shop to
give him constant heat, day and night, as he had to be up much in
the night.
In 1869, Freegift helped make a coffin for Zeviah Spier, last of
the "first born" at Watervliet. In July 1870 he finished a
staff, the shaft of which Micajah Burnett brought as a gift to
him "from the Cherokee Nation of Indiana," in 1843 when Freegift
was at Pleasant Hill and Micajah returned home from a western
trip. Of "bodock" wood (Webster's says this is osage orange) , it
was nearly as yellow as saffron.
Freegift now finished it and used it as a cane.
In 1870 he put up a black swan weathervane on a pole at the south
end of the herb shop and in January 1871 he took a broken door at
the Office building to his shop and repaired it. Phebe Ann Buck-
ingham, in her journal, commented "it is a great job for a man
between 85 and 90 but no one can do it so nice."
However on April 10 Phebe recorded that "Freegift worked so hard
outdoors in unseasonable heat that he is very sick and taken to
the infirmary. He does not realize it, it is thought to be his
last sickness," He apparently caught a cold and it developed
into pneumonia and he died on April 15th.
Of this large Wells family, one only remained, brother Jesse, and
he continued until 1876 and the age of 97. A truly remarkable
family, producing both Seth Y. and Freegift as great leaders, and
the others as contributing and faithful followers. It is when
you study the lives of such people that you come to know what and
who brought the Shakers to the peak of their membership and how,
with their inevitable deaths, the Shakers waned because they
never again attained conversions of such magnitude and devotion.
Freegift is included in the list of known Shaker joiners or cabi-
net makers because in his journals he tells of making a conside-
rable amount of furniture but the number of known pieces directly
attributable to him is quite small
because he obeyed the Shaker rule of not affixing his name. The
Nelson Collection (better known as Gus) has a chair with the
initials "FW" on the front post and a similar one is pictured in
the Muller/Reiman book. But the New York State Museum has two
pieces attributed to him because at the time the Shakers gave
them they said Freegift had made them. They are a chest of
drawers and a sewing cabinet.
I noted an ad for an auction inMaine this August included a
Watervliet cherry table. Could it be one of the four he says he
made? And which are the 86 chairs he made or the six "great
chairs"? But, rather than speculate about his furniture, let us

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