A chest of Canadian history
“The Bricker Chest” was commissioned by one of Upper Canada’s earliest settlers
Historian Barbara Dobson poses with the Samuel Bricker Chest of Drawers offered as lot 206 in the upcoming February 8th auction at Miller & Miller.
The initials ‘MB 1826’ prominently inlaid on front of the tall antique chest of drawers known as ’The Bricker Chest" would probably pique the curiosity of any inquiring mind, collector or not. But it would take far more than an inquiring mind to imagine the story it tells. Mabel Dunham told that story a century ago. She called it The Trail of the Conestoga. At the time, that story was deemed so important to the development of Canada that the current Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King wrote the Foreward. It is the tale of Samuel Bricker, a hero who risked his fortune and life to come to Canada for a better future for his family. “The Bricker Chest” is one of the few surviving heirlooms of that story.
Nobody knows Dunham’s historical tale better than Plattsville, Ontario historian Barbara Dobson. She first read it when she was twelve years old because her grandfather was given a copy when it was first released. That was 1924. Now, over a century later, she still has it. And through her late husband Henry, who would become a known authority on antique Canadian furniture, she would eventually come to know “The Bricker Chest”.
Historian Barbara Dobson holds a first edition copy of the Mabel Dunham’s, ‘The Trail of the Conestoga”. Gifted to her grandfather in 1924, it has been in her family for a century.
Dunham’s story goes like this. In the early days of the 19th century, many young Mennonite families from Pennsylvania yearned for their own farms. In 1802, two brothers, Samuel and John Bricker decided to make the arduous trek to Upper Canada in search of that dream. Their goal was affordable land at the western end of Lake Ontario, a heavily forested area on the east side of the Grand River.
John had convinced his wife and children to accompany him. Samuel’s future wife, Rebecca Eby, was to stay in Lancaster County until he returned, two years later, to bring her to Upper Canada.
Spurred on by the thought of inexpensive and productive farm land (once the towering white pine trees had been cleared), Samuel and John, along with others, left their family farms in Lancaster County on the 500 mile journey northwards.
To that point in time, the Bricker men (like many others in their community) had never strayed far from home. Their one-day travel to the market town of Lancaster had been the extent of their journeys. Now they were in for the journey of their lifetimes.
The trek to Upper Canada, in covered Conestoga wagons, was a harsh, demanding journey. Men and women would live in trepidation wondering what horrible misadventures might befall them during the trip to a new life. The tremendous wealth they carried to purchase the land made them prime targets. Bears and wolves were common along the journey. There was also the prospect of uncertain encounters with indigenous people who lived in the forests through which the travellers had to pass.
Dunham’s depiction of their hardships along the way reads like the real life version of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The Mennonite families faced hundreds of miles of horse drawn travel through the roughest country imaginable including the Allegheny Mountains, part of the vast Appalachian mountain range. Travellers had to cross rivers, including the Niagara, by barge or in most cases by taking the wagons apart, filling the seams between boards with moss and earth, and floating their way across the fast moving waters.
An illustration by C.W. Jefferys of a Conestoga wagon driven in 1807 by a settler from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to Waterloo County, Ontario. Source.
Upon arrival, the men each bought 300 acres at a dollar per acre. The quality of the land was superb, excellent black earth but encased in huge forests from which they cut and made their first log houses. They would farm between the trees while slowly expanding the tillable farmland.
But there was a snag. After buying the land, in a shocking and unfortunate development, Samuel Bricker discovered there was an existing $40,000 mortgage on his land and many others’ that nullified their purchases. In 1803 he founded "the German Company" and with his brother sold lots in Pennsylvania to raise funds to rescue the new landowners from a foreclosure situation related to that mortgage. They successfully did so, claiming the 60,000 acres of what would be called Waterloo Township.
True to his word, Samuel returned to Pennsylvania to collect his wife, Rebecca Eby, and they made their way back to their farm in Upper Canada.
Samuel and Rebecca would go on to have a family of eight children. Their eldest daughter was Mary Bricker born in 1805. She was married at the age of 21 to Abraham Toman. To mark this important event, her father commissioned an impressive tall chest of drawers in walnut as a gift to his daughter. In North America it was customary for the father of the bride to gift to his daughter a “dower chest” to help her acquire linens to start her home. Samuel specified that Mary’s initials "MB” and the year “1826” be inlaid in white pine on the fine matchstick frieze under the chest’s cove-molded cornice. Other notable features of the chest include the graduated drawers and reeded quarter-cut columns on the front corners. To provide security for valuables, Samuel included secret locks on the top two outside drawers.
The ‘Bricker Chest’ is offered as lot 206 in the February 8th auction at Miller & Miller.
Gerald Fagan, on behalf of his wife the late Marlene consigned "The Bricker Chest" to Miller and Miller Auctions’ February 8 Canadiana Sale. He acquired it at a Toronto auction 60 years ago, and recalled that there were three important Pennsylvania German pieces in the sale that day including an outstanding linen press. “I should have bought them all", he lamented.
Back to Dobson. In 1982, Barbara and Henry worked with the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery to curate a catalogued exhibit: “A Provincial Elegance: Arts of the Early French and English Settlements in Canada”. Plate 145 of their catalogue featured “The Bricker Chest”.
The catalogue for A Provincial Elegance: Arts of the Early French and English Settlements in Canada exhibit featured "The Bricker Chest" (Plate 145).
Resources provided to Miller & Miller by Dobson gave an important clue as to who Samuel Bricker would have commissioned to make “The Bricker Chest”. She pointed to Plate 234 of Donald Blake Webster’s book, English Canadian Furniture of the Georgian Period. It features a high chest of drawers almost identical to ‘The Bricker Chest” but inlaid with the initials, “M.M 1821”. The back of the top centre drawer of that example is signed in pencil, “by Simm”, attributed to German immigrant cabinetmaker David Adolphus Simmerman of Louth Township (Niagara Peninsula).
A very similar chest of drawers is mentioned in Donald Blake Webster’s book English Canadian Furniture of the Georgian Period (Plate 234).
Further to Dobson’s research, the authors Michael Bird and Terry Kobayashi in their book, A Splendid Harvest: Germanic Folk and Decorative Arts in Canada make reference to another chest similar to the quality and style of “The Bricker Chest”. “This tall chest of drawers (Plate 70) is striking evidence of the refinement occasionally achieved by the Pennsylvania-German cabinetmakers in Waterloo County. Its sound proportions are complemented by its ably executed details.”
Michael Bird and Terry Kobayashi, in their book A Splendid Harvest: Germanic Folk and Decorative Arts in Canada, reference the quality and style of furniture made by Pennsylvania-German cabinetmakers in Waterloo County.
Aside from Dobson, other collectors and dealers with expertise in the field have acknowledged that ‘The Bricker Chest" is an important piece of early Canadian furniture. It is rare to have a signed and dated piece of period furniture that also carries a high degree of historical significance.
In his foreword to Dunham’s ‘The Trail of the Conestoga’, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King reflects, “If we go back to the early days, we find that the problems which perplex us [today] are no greater than those they [Canada’s early settlers] successfully solved.”.
Certainly, the Bricker chest is a symbol of such success and achievement. At a time when settlers were still cutting farms out of the Upper Canadian wilderness by hand, the chest suggests that the family had successfully conquered the challenges of leaving for a new home in a far away place. It shows a degree of sophistication far removed from the wilderness of Upper Canada; indicative of the success that the Bricker family had achieved in just a short 25 years.
Perhaps more than anything the Bricker chest is a physical testament to the courage and dedication that one Mennonite family demonstrated while they built a meaningful and productive life in Upper Canada 200 years ago.
By Shaun Markey
Shaun Markey has collected Canadian country furniture and folk art for over 40 years. He has been widely published in various media outlets related to the subject of antiques and folk art.
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