04/18/2025
Happy Patriots Day Weekend! To celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, here's an Old Abington connection to those events.
This chair has a history of being owned by Captain John Pulling (1737-1787) of Boston. Pulling was a sea captain who lived in the North End of Boston. Like his neighbor and friend, Paul Revere, he was a member of the Sons of Liberty and the North End Caucus, and may have been a participant in the Boston Tea Party. Pulling was also a vestry man for Christ Church, commonly known as the Old North Church, where he owned several pews. According to family tradition, Pulling was one of the friends along with Christ Church sexton Robert Newman, that Paul Revere contacted on the night of April 18th, 1775, to hang the lanterns in the church’s steeple. That night, Pulling told his wife Sarah Thaxter McBean Pulling to take their three children to her parent’s home in Hingham, where he later joined them for the duration of the British Occupation of Boston. During the Revolutionary War, Pulling served as a Captain and Commissary of Ordnance in both the Massachusetts Militia and the Continental Army. Captain John Pulling died at the age of 50 in 1787 and was buried in Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. His wife took her children to live in Abington with her brother Dr. Gridley Thaxter and his wife, Sarah Lincoln Thaxter, the daughter of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln.
The Chippendale style chair is made of mahogany and pine and was most likely made in Boston. It has cabriole legs that end in pad feet. It has a pierced splat with a central heart-shaped cut-out. This design is similar to a chair in the collections of Historic New England (accession number 1963.96), but that example has Spanish feet rather than the pad feet of this chair. The slip seat has an embroidered fabric with floral design. The chair was passed down through Captain John Pulling’s descendants before being donated to the Dyer Memorial Library.
Side Chair
Mahogany, pine
Boston, Massachusetts, ca.1770-1790
D-1046, Gift of Ruth Wilkes via Alice Wilkes Frame, 1985
Dyer Memorial Library, Abington, Massachusetts
