Settee

In 1775, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, Virginia's last royal governor, fled Williamsburg as Revolutionary pressures mounted. Dunmore abandoned most of his personal possessions at the Governor's Palace, where they were sold at public auction the following year. This settee, seven matching chairs (accs. 1975-23, 2-8), and a related smoking chair (acc. 1980-184) all have histories of purchase at the sale. According to family tradition, they were acquired by Thomas Lewis of Augusta County and subsequently given as a wedding gift to his sister, Agatha Frogg Lewis, and her husband, John Stuart of Stuart Manor, a house in Greenbriar County (now West Virginia). That Thomas Lewis was actually present at the Dunmore sale is substantiated by the survival of a copy of Shakespeare's works bearing the governor's bookplate that descended with the furniture in the Lewis and Stuart families.

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