Late 19th Century Rocking Chair

Not a lot of things came through my father’s side of the family. On his father’s side, there was a large family: 9 siblings and my grandfather was #6. His family was based in Ontario but Grandpa Rob was sent off to join a brother in Saskatchewan when he was a teenager and probably a bit of a handful so why not pack him off to be of use on a farm? There he met my grandmother, who was #8 of 10, although 5 of these had died within a year. This is one of the saddest parts of life before or at the start of the 20^th century.

Neither family had much to begin with and whatever there was usually went to the eldest child. So this rocking chair made its way into the family sometime early in the depression years, before my father was born in 1935. It was made in the USA sometime in the late 19^th century, and my grandmother bought it in a second hand store in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.  The seat has been replaced a few times, but the back is original. The Kennedys had one like it in the White House early in the 1960s, and it became fashionable. It’s nice to think we had an ‘original’, as we were rarely trendsetters ourselves!

My father remembers sitting on it as a young boy, facing the back and with his feet sticking out under the woven back and on the rockers so he could rock it “like riding a racehorse”. My memory is of it coming to my house was when we moved in 1967. We were a family of 4 children, two boys two girls, not that large in the 1960s but considerably large by the standards of the early 21^st century. How medicine has changed birth rates over only 100 years!

The house we moved into when I was 9 was considerably larger than our previous house, and we didn’t have a lot of furniture at first, so that rocking chair was almost the only thing to sit on besides one couch, both placed in the otherwise bare living room. Later on it moved to other rooms and other houses until my brother passed it on to me. It’s a very comfortable rocking chair and I am still trying to decide exactly where it will go in my house. At the moment it is in the living room, beside a lamp for reading but also within sight of the TV and the fireplace.