Roadshow To Feature Harvard Artifacts

A privately owned antique chair with a connection to Harvard’s history will be featured on the January 4, 2004 episode of the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow.”

The chair, which a professional appraiser valued at $60,000 to $70,000, is accompanied by a 1749 portrait of former University President Edward Holyoke, Class of 1705, painted by John Greenwood.

The portrait—which was itself valued at $25,000 to $30,000—served as an important clue for appraisers as to the chair’s origin. They originally theorized that chairs of that make were built in Newport, R.I., according to Judy Matthews, the show’s spokesperson.

“The chair has attributes that most appraisers have attributed to Newport, but recent research makes experts think that this chair was actually made in Boston,” Matthews said. “The presence of the portrait clinches this connection to Boston.”

This revelation is incredibly important to those who study the history of American furniture, said the chair’s appraiser, John Hays, who works for New York’s Christie’s auction house.

“History has been rewritten now,” Hays said during the show when explaining the importance of the chair, on which the current owner used to pile old newspapers.

The seat and the portrait, which experts believe were made in the middle of the 18th century, were passed down for generations in the owner’s family, some of whose members claim to be ancestrally related to Holyoke,

The owner, “Dave,” said on the show that he believes that the chair belonged to the former University leader.

Show officials declined to release the owner’s full name.

Holyoke served the second longest term of any president in Harvard’s history—from 1737 to 1769—and was famous on campus for defending the rational beliefs of what contemporary religious revivalists called “Godless Harvard,” according to Stephen Shoemaker, who is the teaching fellow for Religion 1513, “History of Harvard and Its Presidents.”

Shoemaker said that in his day Holyoke was nicknamed “Guts” by students “for his substantial girth,” and that today College tour guides frequently recount to prospective students his unsuccessful efforts to save old Harvard Hall from a fire.

During the blaze, Holyoke—age 74 at the time—stood in his nightgown passing buckets of water in the middle of a snowstorm, but despite his efforts the College library and the only known portraits of John Harvard were destroyed, Shoemaker said.

A minister by profession, Holyoke died while still in office in 1769, just before his 80th birthday, according to the University website.