There are many beautiful and wonderful pieces of furniture in our collection here at the Glengarry Pioneer Museum. One of such pieces is the bench shown above. It belonged to the early MacMillan family, and was likely used in a church as a deacon's bench. It is a Windsor settee; it has a broad crest rail that is characteristic to the earlier form of Windsor style, and scrolled arms and flat stretches which were only introduced later, putting the date of this bench in the second quarter of the 19th century.
The most interesting feature of the furniture we have in our collection are the marks and scratches on their surfaces, created by the many people who had used these pieces before us. This bench is quite worn, which suggests it was well-used and well-loved, and leaves us to wonder who had sat on this bench, and what experiences have happened around it.
Most of the information above was taken from" The Heritage of Upper Canadian Furniture" by Howard Pain, where this bench, and several of our other artifacts, are featured. This book can be found in our reference collection.
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