Scope and Content[In 1964 Carl Bird, a Saugatuck boat builder and craftsman who had a picturesque shop on Francis Street just west of Butler Street, restored for his niece, Margaret (Graves) Van Houtte, a desk that had been built by her great-grandfather, Henry Bird Jr., who had first come to Saugatuck in 1868. Henry ran a lumber mill on Lake Street and occasionally made furniture for himself and others. When the work on the desk was completed, Carl wrote Margaret and along with some interesting comments on the desk specifically and building things in general, he spins some fascinating yarns about the Bird family and early Saugatuck.] --- You will be surprised and shocked to get this letter surprised to get one from me at all and shocked, and probably delighted, to know that your great-grandpa's desk is now as near like it was in 1870, when he made it, as it is ever likely to be. Now, as I approach some of these restoration jobs, after over thirty years of thinking about them, they begin to tell stories that are not so evident to most people. When I build boats or any other structure I first build it in bed so that I know every detail and just what it will look like when complete. I imagine this desk is one of grandpa's first ventures in cabinet making and that he did not know just where he would wind up. I think he felt it out and "built it as he went along" so that it is to a certain extent what I call "cob-house." One evidence is the door at the end of the knee hole. This gives access to the greater part of the storage space and can only be reached by getting dawn on one's hands and knees. But, the most conclusive evidence of no design is the end door, which was an after thought, to retrieve and make available some of this space. I think this piece was early in his experience because I have restored other pieces of his and the engineering was better. As far as that is concerned I have found many more pretentious builders of this period who seemed to understand little about furniture design. Chairs are more liable than other furniture to be off in some respect. You see, when one builds a boat or anything else he builds to certain specifications of which there may be six and it is only possible to work to two at the same time. You or anybody can understand that if you work for beauty and speed you might not have the most comfort and seaworthiness. I have had chairs as beautiful as a picture but upon examination I wondered how they stayed together. Now, I have dragged your great-grandpa over the coals long enuf. No one knows better than I what a great craftsman he was and you may know it too when you see his exquisite dovetailing which I have come across before and which you will find at the corners of the rail and the drawer fronts. The angles of the front were embellished by plastic lions heads one of which the worms have left us. Some people think that plastics are new, but this molded plastic was probably made of glue and sawdust and the worms evidently like the glue. These heads were only at the top and, after trying every source without success I made turnings for top and bottom. I also turned medallions for the front doors which were full face lions. The fabric on the desk top seemed to be a heavy muslin or light canvas painted black and extended from the front to the back rail where there was a moulding in the corner. I used the moulding to repair the doors and drawers and put in its place the one unauthentic piece- for the ink bottle and pen and pencil channel. Then, the rest of the top inside the walnut trim is maroon, woolen desk felt. This desk was in the old Brittain House which was the O. R. Johnson House in lumbering days, O. R. being one of the lumber barons. He afterward built the Park House along the river below Moore's Creek which was big enuf to have a "deer park." My closest contact with that period was this incident: A man once told me he went to cross this park to the river but it happened to be the "rutting season" and a big buck put him up a tree where he stayed for several hours. The house on the hill where we lived and your ma was born was the Sam Johnson House, a cousin of O.R. and also a lumber baron. When Julia Brittain sold the house and contents, the first object was the desk for which I paid $5.00. "Cappy" [Captain Leonard S. Brittain] says that his father, the old captain [Captain R. C. Brittain], said that the desk cost him a thousand dollars. Grandpa built the desk for H. D. Moore, Moore owed Brittain a thousand dollars, went thru bankruptcy and the desk was all that Brittain recovered. Harry Moore was my grand uncle, your great grand uncle. I do not remember him, but I remember Aunt Kate, a petite, charming little lady as I ever knew, not at all like grandma who, to my notion, was tall and ungainly. Her name, too, was not Kate and not Katrinka either, but some unusual Dutch name which was charmingly quaint. [Her name was Katurah] They were Dutch women- Van Housens. The family must have been of some substance because the girls attended a school where they wore "backboards" and, what surprises me, they seemed to do the trick - grandma was straight as an arrow until she died at 86. Grandpa was born June 11, 1817, and came by ox team from Canadaigua, Ontario County NY, to the Ann Arbor, Mich section so that he could marry grandma at 15, which he could not do in NY. His grandfather furnished a yoke of oxen and helped build the breastworks on Breed's-Bunker Hill and worked all thru the Revolution on fortifications. The most surprising thing about the whole business is that grandma married before most girls know anything, raised a fine family, was a good cook, but also had a home institution that was as near self sustaining as it possibly could be. I have seen her flailing out bears with flail and blanket on the barn floor. There was the ash-barrel on a platform which took a pail of water now and then to leach the lye, not only for soap but also for hominy i.e. hulled corn. My cousin Edith, bless her dear soul, was the only one interested enuf to dig into the family tree and, until she died, I maintained she was off on the wrong foot. Somehow or other she got some kind of a lead (I think it pleased her fancy) to hook us up with the silk stockings of Virginia- Tom, Dick and Harry Byrd. I am confident our family came thru Boston as the Bunker Hill incident would show and also they are still around there. Charles Sumner Bird ran for governor and Bird & Sons Roofing. Also we are a bunch of roughnecks and belong to the Horse Thief and Highway Robbery Line. I am glad the desk is now up to you. You can figure out how you will transport it and you can leave it here as long as you wish. If you should want it crated or if there is anything else I can do to please you, command me. You are still one of my best gals, you know. I am not asking you to read this all at once- you can take the balance of the winter to figure out what I am trying to say in this "damned cramped piece of penmanship. Love to all, your uncle Carl P.S. I forgot to say that besides the lion gargoyle in the drawer is a home made lure, partially done. It is hollow for a weight, had fins to make it swim by jerking a line on a stick. When the big fish came he was socked with a spear thru the ice inside a shanty.