I have been attached to rocking chairs throughout my life. My grandmother Laura’s chair sat next to our kitchen stove when I was a teenager. I loved sitting on this rocking chair during winter months with legs hung over the side of the chair reading a book. Later in life, my grandmother’s rocker was given to me and my children were rocked in this chair. Since retirement, my husband and I purchased two rocking chairs for our front porch.
The rocking chair is considered an American tradition, yet no one really knows who invented it. Scholars feel the cradle to be the antecedent of the rocking chair. Both the cradle and the rocking horse predate the rocking chair.
The word “rocker” comes, not from the cradle, but from the person rocking the cradle.
When did someone finally put rockers on chairs?
Rocking chairs appeared in England in 1725, where skates or rockers were added to the bottom of the legs of ordinary chairs to convert them into rockers, the rocking chair. Americans did the same thing.
The oldest reference to the words “rocking chair” in America were found in a bill dated February 14, 1774, by Philadelphia cabinet maker, Wiliam Savery, for “bottoming a rocking chair.” Most scholars feel the rocking chair appeared in the early 1700s is America.
Both Americans and Europeans used these first rockers outdoors for gardens and lawns.
It wasn’t until 1787 the words “rocking chair” appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The first documented reference to making the rocker from scratch was by the chairmaker, William Seaver. He worked in Boston from 1790-1803 making both Windsor cradles and rocking chairs.
By 1800s, the chairs became common household furniture. Peddlers carried them in wagons and sold them all over the country. General stores also sold them.
In addition, from 1800s through the early 1900s, you could buy a variety of rocking chair styles. They were mass-produced and sold by Montgomery Wards and by Sears, Roebuck and Co.
At first the chair was used by the female in the parlor. They also became associated with hospitals and mental facilities. Eventually, the chair came to the front porch and men felt more comfortable using them. From the 1830s, letters found from English visitors to America felt rocking chairs to be self-gratifying and wearisome. English author Harriet Martineau in 1838, wrote, “…How this lazy and ungraceful indulgence ever became general, I cannot imagine…”
Due to a 1928 book, The Rocking Chair: an American Institution, writers Dyer and Fraser claim Benjamin Franklin, diplomat and inventor, to have invented the rocking chair. Since then the claim has been disproved.
By the 20th century, rocking chairs were favorites with Ben Franklin, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), Napoleon, and many more. Our presidents, also favored the rocking chair: Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy. Incidentally, President Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre, in Washington, D.C., white sitting in a rocking chair. President Kennedy, due to a chronic back pain, took his rocker with him, even on Air Force One.
In my research, I found the largest rocking chair in the world-the Route 66 Rocker-in Fanning, Michigan, built for $22,000.
The Guiness World Champion is Joachim of Austrailia, who rocked on a rocker continuously for 75 hours, 3 minutes, in August 2005, at the Hilton Garden Inn, Ontario, Canada.
Now that I’ve finished with my rocking chair article, I’m going out on my front porch rocker and do what Van Wilder says, “Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to be but doesn’t go anywhere.” Works for me!
