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Lot Essay
According to the label on the underside of the top, this candlestand was owned by Lucy Wheeler (1777-1841) of Concord, Massachusetts, who married Joseph Merriam (1767-1856) in 1799. This candlestand, along with a surviving turret-top card table and tall-case clock, probably furnished the homestead on his family's farm at "Merriam's Corner," the site where American militiamen had engaged the enemy on April 19, 1775 during the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Joseph and Lucy Merriam had ten children and, upon his death, he bequeathed the family home and farm to his son-in-law Eben P. Gleason (1802-1870). Gleason had married the Merriams' youngest daughter, Susan Wheeler Merriam (1812-after 1880), who according to the candlestand's note, mentioned this piece in her will (Lemuel Shattuck, A History of the Town of Concord (Boston, 1835), pp. 121-122, 378-379; Skinner, Inc., 29 October 1995, lots 140 and 162; David F. Wood, ed., The Concord Museum: Decorative Arts from a New England Collection (Concord, 1996), pp. 96-102, cat. 43; Charles Henry Pope, comp., Merriam Genealogy (Boston, 1906), pp. 107-108).