It is not unusual to hear of a craftsman plying his trade in the mid 1800s — but it is when the man was a free black man whose furniture became so popular it graced the homes of governors, businesses and the finest homes in North Carolina, all in the racially tense years leading up to the Civil War.
Thomas Day was born to a freed black woman and was never a victim of slavery himself. He moved to Milton, N.C., in the 1820s to work as a cabinet maker. Ultimately, he purchased the former Union Tavern — for $1,050 in 1848 — and turned it into his home and workshop.
On Sunday, Preservation North Carolina opened the building, and several others in Milton that contain Day’s work, to give visitors a chance to tour the facilities and admire the furniture created so long ago.
A new book about Day’s life — “Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color” — was featured during the event, with authors Jo Ramsey Leimenstoll and Pat Marshall, as well as photographer Tim Buchman, on hand to autograph copies of the book.
The authors were set up in the Clay-Lewis-Irvine house on Fairview, which has a Greek Revival mantel created by Day.
Day’s work was popular well beyond the Milton area. As word of his prowess spread throughout the region, politicians furnished their homes with his furniture, large businesses commissioned him to furnish their offices and many of the largest homes containing his work.
But he certainly left an impression in Milton, where many of the homes have fireplace surrounds and stair rails built by Day, and one local church — Milton Presbyterian Church — still has the pews he built in the 1840s.
Leimenstoll, a professor of interior architecture at the University of North Carolina in Greesboro, said she worked as the architect on the restoration of the Thomas Day house, and colleagues suggested she get together with Marshall to write a book about Day. Marshall is the curator at the North Carolina Museum of History, in Raleigh, which has a huge collection of Day’s work on display.
“So we did it,” Leimenstoll said. “And Tim’s (Buchman) architectural photographs are wonderful.”
The book is published by the University of North Carolina Press. The 320-page book is full of hundreds of photos of Day’s work. The price is $40, and it can be ordered at http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id1688.
w Thibodeau is a staff writer for the Danville Register & Bee.
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