My new office

 

After 3 weeks of one finger typing on my I-pad I decided I really needed my computer and a desk at Phil's. I was looking on-line and at local stores and then everything shut down. So I looked around our house and noticed a drop leaf table in Bob's office was only holding books, and my great-grandmother's dining room chair recaned by my mother was just a place holder at another desk, so I set them up and brought over my computer. Open for business.

The table's story isn't too interesting--I bought it at Target in 2002 so Bob would have a table in his office while talking to clients about their architectural needs. The chair, however, if I can believe family lore, travelled from Pennsylvania to northern Illinois after my great grandparents married in 1855. Grandfather David had left home in 1848 to search for gold in California with a friend. The friend died, and somehow David ended up in northern Illinois, worked in Rockford, saved his money, then bought farmland between Ashton and Franklin Grove for $1/acre. There were other settlers in that area who were also members of the Dunkers (Brethren), German Anabaptists, so it's possible he knew people who could help him. So needing a wife, he went back to Adams Co., PA, and married Susan. She probably brought along a number of family things. Many years later, probably the 1920s, it was fashionable to paint old furniture dark, so my grandfather slathered almost every piece of furniture in the house with a reddish, black varnish to "modernize" them. The chairs fell on hard times, and were probably either in the barn or attic when my mom rescued them, refinished and caned them in the 1970s. I have three of them, and a fourth I think is with cousin Dianne from her mother, my mother's sister. If there are more than four, I don't know where the rest of them are.
And now you know why I can't say all that with an I-pad.