Daniel Trotter

Daniel Trotter (1747-1800) was an American furniture maker.

Biography Daniel Trotter was born in 1747 in Philadelphia, to William Trotter, a shoemaker, and his wife Elizabeth, who had six children altogether. His father died when Daniel was twelve, and his mother died four years after. His father was a Quaker, and Daniel likely received schooling provided by the Quaker Society. At that time, Anthony Benezet and Robert Proud were teachers there. Around age 14 he was apprenticed to cabinet maker William Wayne. Making furniture and woodcraft ran in the family: His great-uncle Benjamin Trotter (also a "zealous Preacher") was a chair maker; Joseph Trotter, his uncle, was a joiner. Two of his cousins were trained as cabinet makers, and Joseph, his older brother, was a chair maker. By 1768 he was finished as an apprentice, and by 1771 he had a partner, John Webb, also a Quaker: such partnerships for a limited number of years were common among Quakers, and in 1774 Webb and Trotter ended their relationship.

In December 1773 he married Elizabeth Conarroe, also from a Quaker family, and they rented a house on Elfreth's Alley. From 1775 to 1779 he and an apprentice ran a shop on Water Street, but during the American Revolutionary War, times were hard: because Quakers were not allowed to do military service he had to pay fines, and the depressed incomes in America at the time already slowed down demand on luxury items. By 1783 or thereabouts, his business was doing well enough to raise his income above that of the average person in his trade, and tax records throughout the 1780s prove increasing success. He also occupied a number of administrative positions of importance in his church. In 1789 he joined the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and was nominated to the Action Committee, where he attended weekly meetings; he remained a member the rest of his life. He bought a share in the Library Company of Philadelphia, and built up a collection of books evidencing his "rather pedestrian taste" in reading. Connected to this set of chairs is a Pembroke table, 1785–95. Other chairs that resemble Trotter's are frequently ascribed to him, including two in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but those two have details that suggest they are not his.