When Anthony Hay died in 1770, his executors advertised for sale his two lots on Nicholson Street including a dwelling house, shop, and “Timber Yard.” The reader should not assume from the words “timber yard” that Hay (and his successors at the same location on Nicholson Street, Bucktrout and Dickinson) supplied lumber to the town’s other users. Probably it was stocked only for the proprietor’s own use. In any event, the kinds of raw material that would have been piled in Hay’s yard can be guessed fairly easily.

As we shall presently see, no surviving piece of eighteenth-century furniture can be positively traced to Hay or any other Williamsburg maker. But every piece having a possible claim to local origin, including the Speaker’s Chair, contains either walnut or mahogany as the primary wood. Similarly, few documentary records survive to tell about the furniture actually made in Williamsburg shops and they do not always mention the kinds of wood used. Where they do, however, walnut and mahogany are invariably specified. Finally, archaeological excavation at the site of the Hay cabinet shop turned up a roughed-out table leg dating probably from Dickinson’s occupancy. Quite well preserved in the damp silt of the stream bed, it was easily identified as walnut. All things considered, therefore, Hay’s timber yard would surely have contained ample supplies of both walnut and mahogany.

American black walnut, known in England as “Virginia walnut,” had been the most important of native woods to the colonial cabinetmaker since the seventeenth century. Strong, durable, hard enough to resist surface marring in daily use but still easy to work and carve, it shows a handsome grain, has a lovely color, and takes an excellent finish.

Known and infrequently used earlier, mahogany began to arrive in quantity both in the colonies and the mother country about 1725. In England, by the middle of the century, it had pushed aside walnut as a furniture wood. Mahogany never rose to the same pre-eminence in the colonies because other fine woods were so readily available. Mahogany was imported from Jamaica and Honduras legally, from Santo Domingo and Cuba illicitly via Jamaica. The wood from each source differed variously in its characteristic graining, color, strength, hardness, and workability. That from Santo Domingo, known as “Spanish mahogany,” was considered most desirable.

The wood of the wild black cherry was a favorite among Connecticut cabinetmakers, as it was farther south too, because of its natural strength, close grain, warm color, and resistance to splitting and warping. Peter Kalm, the Swedish botanist who visited Philadelphia in 1748, wrote:

The Joiners say that among the trees of this country they chiefly use the wild cherry trees, and the curled maple.... The wood of the wild cherry-trees (Prunus Virginiana) is very good, and looks exceedingly well, it has a yellow color, and the older the furniture is, of which is made of it, the better it looks. But it is already difficult to get at it, for they cut it everywhere, and plant it nowhere.

Hay’s yard might well have had some cherry in its piles of lumber, though probably not in great quantity. It might also have included a bit of maple—a primary favorite in New England—perhaps in some choice pieces showing the bird’s eye, curly, wavy, blister, or quilted grain patterns that often occur in this wood.

In addition, cedar, hickory, ash, beech, birch, oak, elm, locust, apple, holly, and other hard woods might have been present in the Nicholson Street timber yard in small amounts. All could have found appropriate use in some kind of cabinetry.