According to family lore, the members of the Tuthill King family, who were among those who lost their homes in Terrace Row, brought this drawing room set (now in the collections of the Chicago History Museum) with them when they moved from Boston to Chicago in the mid-1830s. The furniture made the trip via the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. With the fire approaching, King realized that it was time to make a shorter but more harrowing journey. He purchased a horse and wagon, loaded the furniture into the wage along with some clothing and personal papers, and then set off with his wife for their daughter's house on Washington Boulevard in the West Division. Since the fire made a direct route impossible, they took a long detour south before crossing the river and heading back north.
The furniture was worth saving. It was the work of the German-born craftsman John Henry Belter, who was based in New York and specialized in rosewood furniture in the rococo manner of Louis XV, who ruled France from 1715 to 1774. Belter’s work defined high taste in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. His furniture of this type is known in the contemporary antiques market as being in the Tuthill King style.
King made his fortune in real estate. In 1885, at the age of eighty-one, he created a sensation of sorts when, with his wife just three months in the grave, he announced his engagement to his forty-five-year-old nurse. A story on the betrothal in the New York Times noted that King did not look his age. “He is of medium height and weight, hale and pleasant looking, wears gold-rimmed glasses, and a white fringe of Horace Greeley whiskers,” the reporter wrote. “He is eccentric in his manner and speech, and very candid. He says his children have been fooling him for several years, but he intends to show them that ‘the old man is boss yet.’”
