#milton nc

[yearningforunity]

Thomas Day (c. 1801–1861) was a highly successful and influential African American furniture craftsman and cabinetmaker in antebellum North Carolina. His story is remarkable because he flourished as an entrepreneur and artisan in a time and place where most Black people were enslaved and even free Black people faced significant social and legal restrictions.

​Born in Virginia to a free Black family, Thomas Day was trained in cabinetmaking by his father. In the 1820s, he moved to Milton, North Carolina, and established his own workshop. His business grew rapidly, and by the 1850s, it was the largest furniture-making operation in the state.

Day was known for his high-quality, distinctive furniture. He created pieces in popular styles of the time, such as Federal and Empire, but added his own unique flourishes, including undulating curves, fluid lines, and spiraling motifs.

He was a savvy businessman who catered to a wealthy white clientele, including two North Carolina governors and the University of North Carolina. He also embraced new technologies, incorporating steam-powered machinery into his workshop to increase production. His business employed both free Black and white craftsmen, as well as enslaved people he owned.

Despite the racial prejudices of the time, Day was a well-respected member of his community. When a state law threatened to prevent his Virginia-born wife, Aquilla Wilson, from joining him in North Carolina, prominent white citizens petitioned the General Assembly on his behalf, and the law was amended to allow her to move.

Thomas Day's furniture and architectural woodwork are considered some of the finest examples of 19th-century American craftsmanship. His work is now highly sought after and is featured in major museum collections, including the North Carolina Museum of History. His life stands as a powerful testament to his skill, perseverance, and ability to navigate and succeed in a deeply challenging society.

[adyemusicology-blog]

A very small (hence the res) photo of me with Milton, NC’s “teens”, a group of residents in their 80s and 90s. I spent a nice morning jotting down notes as they talked about memories of Milton, including the switchboard that used to be in the Thomas Day House, the segregated school by the creek, the old one-lane toll bridge, and Milton’s very extravagant Emancipation Proclamation Day parade! That last one is a tradition that needs to return; high-stepping horses and marching bands would look great coming down Broad St (ahem, MAIN STREET if you’re old enough to remember it).

[adyemusicology-blog]

Public history is all around us! On Saturday I drove to Milton, NC, to attend the Milton Street Fair and see “A Day in Thomas Day’s Workshop,” a short vignette about the free black woodsmith who lived and worked in Milton. The table in front is a Thomas Day original! You can tell by the strong curves in the feet…Thomas Day pieces tend to have bold, declarative curved lines in rich dark mahogany. The woman in the AMAZING hoop skirt is playing Day’s wife Aquila, who was a slave in Virginia. State slave laws prohibited slaves to cross state lines, so the wealthy white people of the Milton area wrote a successful petition for her to come to North Carolina to be Day’s wife. People like to tell this story as one of the goodness of humanity, but my cynical side also suspects that the rich white people of Milton might have been afraid that Thomas Day would choose to leave North Carolina for Virginia, taking his furniture (MAJOR status symbol pieces) with him. As a musicologist, I was excited to see that the play included a lot of music, too! A tenor sang a beautiful rendition of “Summertime,” and Day and his workers did juba, a rhyhmically-complex hand clapping and patting dance originally done by African American slaves. It was my first time seeing “pattin’ juba” live! I have really been taken by how much music and art can tell history; the juba performance was a nice way to highlight the artistic culture of enslaved African Americans, and portrayed Day as being connected to African American culture even while he enjoyed freedom in the antebellum South. The quilt in my second picture is also a striking example of artistic renderings of history. This quilt is in the Schoolfield Museum in Danville, and shows an artistically-rendered map of Danville’s textile mills, using fabrics from Dan River Mills. The quilt was created recently, in the last decade or so, but the artistic practice of quilt-making goes way back, and would have been something that mill workers in the early 20th century would have appreciated and identified with. In that respect, this quilt tells a history both through its subject matter and its form. Plus, it’s visually stunning! Like the juba dance, this quilt and other artistic tellings of history have a way of cutting straight to the heart of the matter, giving you a *feeling* of a time and place while also teaching you historical facts. I have about three weeks left in Danville before I have to go back to Charlottesville to work a second summer job and do the writing portion of the internship. I’ll be sad to go…and I’m scheming up projects that’ll help me get back to Danville…..mill village string band folk festival, anyone?