THE COUDON FAMILY EARLY CHIPPENDALE CARVED WALNUT DESK-AND-BOOKCASE, POSSIBLY CHESTERTOWN OR CECIL COUNTY, MARYLAND OR PENNSYLVANIA, 1750-1765

The Coudon Family and the Eastern Shore of Maryland



Rode…over a delightful part of the country to Chester-Town-- this is a beautiful small Town on a River out of the Bay navigable for Ships…. It has an elegant, I may say, grand Court-House, in which is the town Clock. - Philip Vickers Fithian, Journal and Letters, 1773-1774



On the eve of the American Revolution, Chestertown, a customs port and seat of Kent County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, retained much of its early charm and vitality. In 1774 when Philip Vickers Fithian passed through the town, Chestertown was a small urban center that had become active in the West Indies wheat trade earlier in the eighteenth century. Local ships carried grain products to Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, and later to the wine islands of Madeira, Cape Verde, and the Azores, where grain was traded for wine and salt. As an official port of entry for British goods and a stop on the ferry and stage lines between Annapolis and Philadelphia, Chestertown became by mid-century the largest and most important town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, with a population of about thirteen hundred. It was during this period, sometimes referred to as the “Golden Age” that affluent merchants and shipowners began to erect impressive brick buildings along the waterfront, a number which still stand today as tangible evidence of a rich architectural legacy.



In France, when the Jesuits pressured Louis XIV into revoking the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the act marked the culmination of a long process by which Protestant privileges had been gradually withdrawn. Very soon large large numbers of Huguenots, among them some of the country’s wealthiest, most industrious citizens, emigrated to England and America, thus dealing a severe and permanent blow to the vitality of the French nation and strengthening the economic and political life of France’s chief Protestant rivals. A pair of French Huguenot brothers named Coudon left their homeland around 1692 because of the religious persecution and migrated to Cecil County, located in northeast corner of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. One of these brothers produced a son named Joseph Coudon (1742-1792) who became a renowned educator and religious leader. Around 1765 he became a schoolmaster in the Cecil County Free School, and later moved to Newark, Delaware, where he taught in a school that evolved eventually into the University of Delaware. Later he moved to Chestertown in 1776 to become headmaster of Kent County Free School which was incorporated in 1782 as Washington College, the nation’s tenth liberal arts college. In 1780 the Reverend William Smith left his position as provost of the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) to become headmaster of the same Kent County Free School and rector of Chester Parish. By 1782, Smith convinced the Maryland General Assembly to charter a college in Chestertown. Using his many connections is Philadelphia; he raised the substantial sum of five thousand pounds to establish Maryland’s first college. Smith’s longtime friend, George Washington, pledged fifty gold guineas in appreciation of the community’s wartime contributions and permitted the college at Chestertown to be named Washington College in his honor. Joseph Coudon was awarded a master of art’s degree from Washington College in the same month that George Washington made his only visit to his namesake college.



In the meantime, Joseph Coudon had served as “Lay Reader and Preacher” at Christ Church in Chestertown. Heretofore, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had provided the main body of the Anglican clergy in the North American colonies, but during the American Revolution the incidence of Loyalism among the clergy was high. In 1782 the vestry of St. Mary Anne’s in North East, Maryland, called Coudon to serve as Lay Reader and Preacher; after five years the vestry recommended him for ordination to the priesthood. This was accomplished in May 1787 in Christ Church, Philadelphia, by Bishop William White. Consecrated bishop of Pennsylvania in England just days earlier in 1787, this was Bishop White’s first ordination. The Reverend Joseph Coudon’s first wife had died in February 1781. In May 1783 he married Rachael Wallace of Newport, Delaware, and the day following his ordination his son Joseph Coudon II was born on May 30, 1787. We believe that the desk and bookcase we are offering was made for the Reverend Joseph Coudon, about 1765-1775, around the time he reached his maturity. He died on April 13, 1792, at the age of forty-nine, and is buried under the chancel of St. Mary Anne’s Episcopal Church in North East, Maryland.



Joseph Coudon II (1787-1860), the son, was also a well-known and respected citizen in Cecil County, having an illustrious career as farmer, businessman, and public servant. For a time he was in partnership with John B. Howell in a mercantile business in Port Deposit. At a later time he went into the lumber business as a partner of Captain Robert Morgan in Port Deposit. In May 1820 Joseph II married Ann Stump (1793-1850) the daughter of John and Hannah Stump, who lived on a large farm known as Perry Point in Cecil County. Ann Stump Coudon’s father, John Stump, was the son of Henry Stump of Harford County, Maryland, who lived directly across the mouth of the Susquehanna River from Cecil County. Joseph Coudon II and his wife Ann purchased Woodlands, formerly owned by John Archer and his wife Mary, the sister of Ann Stump Coudon. Woodlands is located on the land originally known as Susquehanna Manor, a thirty-two thousand acre land grant by George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, to his Irish cousin, George Talbot, around 1680. A splendid volume of local history, Historic Perry Point in Prose, Poetry and Pictures (Perry Point, Maryland,: Veterans Administration Facility, 1935), includes essays on the early explorers, Susquehanna Manor, and a description of the physical plant and organization of the Veterans Administration facility located there now. About 1850, when their two sons – Joseph Coudon III (b. 1823- ) and Henry Stump Coudon (1824-1913)—were grown, their parents bought the adjoining property to Woodlands, known as Elerslie from the Gale family, and remodeled both houses so as to be almost identical in order that both sons would have homes and property of nearly equal size and value. Joseph and his family lived at Woodlands and Henry and his family at Elerslie. Joseph Coudon II remained an active member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, serving on his church’s vestry for many years. After his retirement from business, he continued his farming and church activities and served as the Judge of the Orphans Court of Cecil County. The parents, Ann Stump Coudon died in April 1857 and Joseph Coudon II in May 1860.



Henry Stump Coudon (1824-1913) of Elerslie married in 1854 Martha Burrows Levering (b.1834) and they had two sons: Wilson Levering Coudon (b.1858) and Joseph (of Henry) Coudon (1860-1947), Joseph (of Henry) Coudon married in 1893. Clarita DeBullet Dalcour (1869-1947), whose family had lived on a sugar cane plantation in Cuba until the Spanish-American War at the end of the 1890s, when they moved to the United States. This Joseph was involved in many vocations and avocations: he was a farmer, businessman, and instructor at the McDonough School, and worked with the rehabilitation program at Perry Point Veterans Hospital. But he is probably best known for his skill as a carver of duck decoys. Their son Henry Forbes Coudon (1903-1960) married Mary Elizabeth Dietrich (1903-2000) in 1926 and they had seven children.



The colony of Maryland had been settled in 1634, after George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, gained proprietor control of the Chesapeake region. From the town of Saint Mary’s the colonists spread north along the Potomac River and settled around the many inlets that form the convoluted region of the upper Chesapeake Bay. Marshy tongues of land determined property lines more than geometric principles of land settlement.



Maryland’s early economy was based on tobacco, which became the colony’s medium of exchange for clothing and other manufactures and to pay taxes, tithes, and fines. Tobacco was also the chief export to England and a very profitable one. It was shipped from the wharves on the property of the planters, since roads were primarily muddy paths and nearly all plantations were near the water. However, the exorbitant import duties leveled on tobacco in England and the charges exacted by the importers for credits on manufactured goods had diminished growers’ profits by the time of the American Revolution.



Nineteenth-century urban and industrial development of the eastern seaboard bypassed tidewater Maryland and left its few towns, Chestertown among them, distinctive for their isolation. Chesapeake Bay itself separated southern Maryland from the Eastern Shore. The former consisted of tidewater flats laced by streams and inhabited by a rural society of former slaveholders that dwindled with the gradual loss of tobacco revenue and attracted few outsiders to replace them.



The Eastern Shore was also something of a backwater, although a distinctive one. Cut off the Delaware River on the northeast and the Bay on the west, the people developed a spirit of separateness and self-conscious identity. Because the Eastern Shore’s two major resources, rich agricultural land and the Chesapeake Bay, have created a predominately rural society; the county, rather than the city, provides the main political-geographic focus.



Maryland’s eastern Shore consists of nine counties separated from the rest of Maryland by the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay and bounded on the north, south and east by the states of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, and the Atlantic Ocean. Kent County, the first to be established on the Eastern Shore, evolved from an act of the General Assembly in 1639. Established in 1642, its original boundaries included what is today Queen Anne’s and Kent countries, as well as parts of Caroline and Cecil. Chestertown, the present county seat, was laid out by authority of the General Assembly in 1706.



During the colonial period, the population grew, and several additional Eastern Shore countries were established. The first of these was Talbot, named in honor of Lady Grace Talbot, sister of Lord Baltimore. Although these records are incomplete, historians date the establishment of this county in 1662. Easton is now the county seat.



Somerset was proclaimed the third Eastern Shore county in 1666. It was named for Lady Mary Somerset, whose husband, Sir John, was the grandson of the Earl of Worcester, an influential associate of Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore. Princess Anne, the county seat, was named for the eldest daughter of King George II.



Dorchester County took its name from Sir Richard Sackville, the fifth Earl of Dorset, a court favorite and family friend of the Calverts. As with Talbot, the early records of this county are incomplete. However, 1668 is generally accepted as the date of its establishment, with Cambridge designated as the county seat. In 1674, Cecil County was carved from parts of Baltimore and Kent counties, and was named for Cecilius Calvert. Elkton, the county seat, derived its name from its location at the head of the Elk River.



Queen Anne’s County was named for the last of the Stuart monarchs. Erected in 1706, it was created from parts of Talbot and Kent counties. The county seat, originally established at Queenstown, was relocated in Centreville in 1782.



Worcester County has known many territorial changes. Originally created as a Maryland county in 1669, it was located in what is now the state of Delaware. Lord Baltimore’s claim to this territory was hotly disputed by William Penn, who won his case in 1685. When the land was awarded to Penn, the name Worcester was retired until 1742, at which time the current county was created from old Somerset. Worcester County was named for Edward Somerset, the fourth Earl of Worcester, a prominent Catholic and court official. Snow Hill is the county seat.



By 1773, population growth in eastern Queen Anne’s and Dorchester counties warranted the creation of a new subdivision. As a result, Caroline County was established. The name was chosen to honor Lady Caroline Eden, wife of Sir Robert Eden, the last proprietary governor of Maryland. The county seat, Denton, is a contraction of Eden-Town, and was named for the governor.



The last Eastern Shore County to be established was Wicomico. Created in 1869 from parts of Somerset and Worcester counties, it takes its name from the river on which Salisbury, its county seat, is located.



Between 1776 and 1851 the people of the Eastern Shore tried five times to secede or establish their right to do so under the Maryland Constitution. In 1809 the Assembly created what came to be called the Eastern Shore Compact by the terms of which one of the two United States senators from Maryland had to be from the Eastern Shore. To this day in Maryland the term waterman refers to the Eastern Shore native who follows any one of the livings provided by the abundant marine life—and there is hardly a native who does not live near the water.



Wendell Garrett



Bibliography- The Coudon piece
1. Barker, Charles Albro, The Background of the Revolution in Maryland (New Haven, 1940)
2. Bode, Carl Maryland: A Bicentennial History (New York, 1978)3. Cassell, Frank A., Merchant Congressman in the Young Republic: Samuel Smith of Maryland, 1752-1839 (Madison, 1971)4. Clarkson, Paul S., and R. Samuel Jett, Luther Martin of Maryland (Baltimore, 1970)
5. Earle, Swepson, The Eastern Shore of Maryland; Its History, Traditions, Architecture and Waters (Baltimore, 1930)
6. Knight, George Morgan, Jr., Maryland: A New Guide to the Free State’s Often-Neglected Places and Personalities of Fascinating Present-Day and Historical Interest (New York, no date)
7. Land, Aubrey C., The Dulanys of Maryland (Baltimore, 1968)
8. Stapleton, Reverend A., Memorials of the Huguenots in America (Baltimore, 1961)

CATALOGUE NOTE

Appears to retain its original finish and hardware.

Elaborately ornamented in the emerging Rococo idiom and with a history of descent in the family of its original owner, this previously unknown desk-and-bookcase is a remarkable survival of American rural craftsmanship. Its idiosyncratic Philadelphia-inspired design combined with a history through six generations of the Coudon family of Chestertown and Cecil County suggest it originated in the eastern Maryland, where local furniture was influenced by Philadelphia styles and several prominent citizens were known to have commissioned furniture and architectural carving from Philadelphia shops. (1) The walnut primary wood and poplar, yellow pine and oak secondary woods are typical woods from the Mid-Atlantic area used by cabinetmakers working in Maryland during this period. (2) A slant-front desk in a private collection with similar provincial details appears to be a product of the same unidentified cabinet-shop.

Befitting a man of books and the clergy, this impressive desk was first owned by Joseph Coudon (1742-1791/2), a renowned educator and religious leader who taught at the Cecil County Free School and later at a school in Newark, Delaware before becoming headmaster of the Kent County Free School (later Washington College) in Chestertown, Maryland. Also the Lay Reader and Preacher at Christ Church in Chestertown, Reverend Coudon was ordained into the priesthood at Christ Church in Philadelphia in May 1787. The desk descended to his son, Joseph Coudon II (1787-1860), a respected Cecil County businessman, farmer and member of the Protestant Episcopal Church who lived with his wife Ann (Stump) at Woodlands, originally Susquehanna Manor and a land grant by Lord Baltimore to George Talbot. Their son, Joseph Coudon III, owned the desk next at Woodlands. At his death, the desk descended to his nephew, Joseph “of Henry” Coudon (1860-1947) of Cecil County, a businessman, farmer, and instructor, and subsequently through two more generations of the Coudon family. It is owned today by Reverend Joseph Coudon’s great-great-great grandchildren.

Geographical proximity, intermarriage between families, and migration of cabinetmakers allowed for the dissemination of Philadelphia styles to eastern Maryland. (3) With a population of 24,000 in 1775 as compared with Baltimore’s population in 1776 of 6,755, Philadelphia dominated over the upper region of the Chesapeake through its maritime trade until Baltimore’s emergence as a commercial center in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. (4) Several Philadelphia-trained artisans, such as Gerrard Hopkins (1742-1800) and Robert Moore (1723-1787), re-located to the Baltimore area during this prosperous time. Chestertown, the seat of Kent County, was the largest town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland by the mid-eighteenth century yet predominately a rural society. Nevertheless, the citizens of Kent County were able to employ specialized cabinetmakers from the second quarter of the eighteenth century. (5)

In fashioning the present desk, its skilled maker has demonstrated an informed knowledge of architectural forms and Philadelphia cabinetmaking practice. While the design for the paneling of the doors perhaps derives from Maryland domestic architectural paneling, the desk’s tall architectonic form and exuberant design are patterned after high style Philadelphia cabinetwork. The swan’s neck pediment, rocaille shell, rosettes, carved tympanum, and ogee feet are hallmarks of the Philadelphia Rococo aesthetic. The drawer configuration -- consisting of a long drawer flanked by two small candle drawers as the top tier, above two side-by-side drawers, above two full-width drawers with full dust boards throughout -- is an early drawer layout emblematic of the Philadelphia region. The imposing interior with its combination of hollowed drawer fronts and b