Front Porch Sittin'

http://www.unctv.org/ncnow The Thomas Day House is an 18th century cabinet shop that once housed North Carolina's most-prolific furniture maker, Thomas Day. North Carolina Now's senior correspondent Kelly McCullen reports from Caswell County. http://www.unctv.org/ncnow

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As part of our "Collecting Carolina" series, Julia Carpenter travels to Milton to examine the works of famous African-American craftsman Thomas Day.

This little public-use airport was apparently established at some point between 1945-48. The earliest depiction of Caswell Airpark which has been located was on the October, 1948 Winston-Salem Sectional Chart. It described the field as having a 2,000' unpaved runway. The field was equipped with a former Civil Defense tower. The civil air tower was purchased in the 1960s, possibly as surplus military. The airport was still active up until the late 1980s and had 4-6 'resident' planes – Cessna 152s, a Cessna 180, and a couple of Piper Tri-Pacers. Then the local pilots starting getting older & quit flying. I think the declining local economy also meant that there were not many people with the resources to continue using the airport. The hangar is reinforced concrete & about 50' wide by 30' deep. Just enough of the floor is concrete to accommodate a small tricycle landing gear. The rest is just clay. It seems the lack of 'blast doors' was odd, considering the supposed reason for construction, a bomb shelter. It looks like a natural gully or depression was used & enlarged when the hangar was built. Interestingly, the apparently paved model airplane runway is not paved at all, but a cleverly designed piece of black plastic tarp stretched taut with white lines painted on it! Further information may be found here: http://www.airfieldsfreeman.com/NC/Airfields_NC_Greensboro.htm#caswell

Thomas Day, a cabinetmaker by trade, is perhaps the most celebrated of North Carolina’s antebellum craftsmen. Born in 1801 to a family of free, landowning African Americans, his father was also a skilled cabinetmaker. Thomas and his brother John were well-educated and both followed in their father’s footsteps, learning the skills to become cabinetmakers. After establishing a furniture business with his brother in Milton by 1823, Day became a prominent and well-respected citizen of the community. In response to an act of 1826 that prohibited free blacks from immigrating into the state, Milton’s white leaders petitioned the General Assembly in 1830 to allow Day’s bride, Aquilla Wilson, a free black from Virginia, to join her husband in North Carolina. In his almost 40 years in Milton, Day built an extraordinary business, employing freedmen and slaves alike to craft stock lines of furniture and to fill custom orders for furniture and interior woodworking. By 1850, Day had the largest cabinetry shop in North Carolina. For more on Day's life, check out this podcast from the N.C. Museum of History and for more on the furniture industry in North Carolina head to NCpedia.