How much room would a rocking chair take in a covered wagon? Plenty, when space was of great necessity. How about a Collignon folding rocking chair? How much room would that take? Very little, because folded it was in the shape of a quarter moon. Nicholas, Claudius, and Adam Collignon invented the folding rocking chair September 9, 1875. There were many other variations invented. Regular folding, deck, lawn, and variations of these. The whole town of Westwood New Jersey, (now River Vale) in Bergen county, worked at the factory on the Hackensack river.
The chairs can be identified by looking on the bottom for a brand stamped (looks like it was burned) into the wood COLLIGNON and the patent date.
If you find one please email me, I would like to know how far they traveled. We found a folding deck chair in Fredericksburg Texas. That's a long way from New Jersey!
I must share some exciting information.! A COLLIGNON folding deck chair (patent 1871) has been located in Canada by Mathieu Belanger! I never expected this to happen so quickly. The chair was completly refinished to this original state by Mathieu and his wife.What a fantastic job! It looks beautiful. The wood is black walnut. We were able to supply our friends with a nice poster of the many other different styles of folding chairs. I will try to reduce this poster and display it on our page. Keep tuned! We may find more!
I Found one! Well, My cousin Ellis found it, and asked if I wanted it, and I did. It was found in New York at an antique store. Someone covered the seat and back in a beautiful green upholstery. Some day I may have it caned as it was done originally, but right now, I am excited just to have one.
My Collignon Folding Rocking Chair. Patent date is March 10 1868 - November 16 1869.
Here is the poster of the many chairs manufactured by the Collignon Brothers. There are two views of each chair, one open and one folded.
The man with the white beard in the center of the bottom picture is one of the inventors, Claudius O Collignon. They were photographed in front of the building where the chairs were made. Remember, the name COLLIGNON and the Patent date was stamped into the wood on the under side of the chair.
The types of wood that they used to make these chairs were maple, black walnut, and birch.
DETAIL CHAIR HISTORY
Peter (Pierre) Collignon, born September 22, 1799. came to the United States in 1825 from Rupt en Woevre, France. He married Mary Perrin, also from Rupt en Woevre, and had ten children. Catherine Barbara (b. 1825), Nicholas (b. 1829), Claudius Ottignon (b.1830), Elizabeth Mary (b.1832), James Peter b.1834), (my descendant) August Martin (b.1835), Leonard Perine (b. 1837), Adam (Ellis III's descendant) (b. 1839), Jane Ellen (b. 1842), and Victor born 1843. In 1831 Peter moved his family to Bergen County, New Jersey from New York City. It is here in Bergen County on the Hackensack river, that the first Collignon chair factory will be built.
In 1855 Nicholas returned to New Jesey from a search for a quick fortune in the gold mines of California during the 1849 " gold rush", and in the quest of building a ship yard in San Francisco. (The biographical sketch, from which this material was taken, said he built the first American vessel ever built on the Pacific coast. He named it the "Maria Mitilda," and it was the fastest sailing vessel on the coast. I could never substantiate this, and if anyone does please email me. Thank you.)Upon his return, Nicholas formed a partnership with his brother Claudius, and they purchased a large mill property on the Hackensack river two miles east of Westwood. It is here, in 1857, that the first factory is established. The quality of their work created a demand which had rendered an extension of their establishment a necessity, and they expanded to both sides of the Hacksack River at the bridge, on what is now Westwood Avenue at the Old Tappan boundry. In 1858, Adam returned to New Jersey from the Brooklyn Navy yard in New York and joined the partnership with Nicholas and Claudius. He remained with them for 10 years and had a dispute with Claudius about a chair patent. In 1868, Adam dissolved the partnership with his brothers, and bought property at 234 River Vale Road. Here he started his own chair factory about a mile west of the original factory.
They made a specialty of folding chairs, which were protected by fifteen different patents. They are the makers of the first folding-rocker in the United States, patent 1875. This design most probably resulted from Nicholas's 1849 trek to Calfornia during the historic "gold rush" days. Traveling by the typical Conestoga wagon, he noted that families most always had a rocking chair with them for the young mothers to rock their babies. With space limited, the cumbersome rocker would be tied in some fashion to the outside of the wagon where it would knock steadily and rhythmically against the side throughout the trip.
The chairs were so popular, and the demand so high, that additional properties were acquired. The property was primarily woodland from which the black walnut, maple, and birch logs used in the chair making business were obtained. It was no uncommon thing, in those days, to see 7 or 8 teams following one another, bringing logs to the mill and wagons taking the finished chairs away for shipment. At one time as many as 100 men were employed in various departments of the business, besides the women and youth who wove the cane chair seats and backs at home. The census records bear this out, because it shows almost everyone in Bergen County employed by the chair factory. The women and children received 25 cents per seat or back. Think of the many holes in the seat made by the cane weave. Today (1999) to purchase a seat or back made from hand woven cane, you will pay three dollars a hole. And you thought the price of bread went up!
The first Collignon chair factory was in business from 1857 to 1896 (39 years.) At the height of the business thousands of deck chairs were sold to several steamship companies including Ward, Cunard, Panama, and the Pacific Steamship Company on the West Coast. A serious blow was delivered to the company's trade in 1890 when Great Britain's labor regulation demanded that all equipment aboard English registered vessels must be the product of British workmen. The factory Adam started in 1868 was operated until his death in 1931 (36 years). Many fond memories bring smiles and damp eyes to the Collignons and neighbors that lived near Adam's factory when they remember the many hours during the winter they skated on his frozen pond. The pond was dug to provide steam to turn the lathes and saws at the chair factory. This might have been the industrial need, but for the kids of every age during the winter, it was a way to have fun and to be with friends.
A Winter Evening On Collignon's Pond 1869
Among the several museums fortunate enough to own a Collignon chair are the Smithsonian in Washington, the Winterthur Museum in Delaware and, of course the Pascack Historical society.
Pictures of Collignon Folding Chairs
