Thomas Day

By the time of his death in 1861 Thomas Day was the most successful furniture maker in North Carolina, and his pieces are still highly sought after today. The fact that he was a free black man in the antebellum South makes Thomas Day’s success and accomplishments all the more remarkable. But while Thomas Day’s achievements are honored and well-remembered today, the extraordinary life of his brother John is relatively unknown.

Thomas and John Day, Jr. were sons of John Day, himself an accomplished cabinet maker in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. John and Thomas’ maternal grandfather had been a free black doctor and plantation owner, and their family had been prominent and affluent for generations.

John Day Jr. had established and was running a successful furniture manufacturing business of his own when, at a Baptist camp meeting in 1816, he had a conversion experience and was baptized. Feeling a call to the ministry, John was directed to Reverend Abner Wentworth Clopton, a native of Pittsylvania County, Virginia who was then teaching and leading a church in Milton, North Carolina. To be closer to Reverend Clopton, John moved his furniture-making business to Milton. Thomas Day followed his brother John to Milton, to work with him in the business. When John eventually chose to leave the business to devote himself full-time to ministry, he turned the shop over to Thomas, who made it famous.

During the time John Day was studying under him, Reverend Clopton was also mentoring James Taylor, who would go on to become chairman of the Foreign Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. John Day, like Taylor, felt called to missionary work. John first sought an assignment in Haiti but was turned down on theological grounds (John was an Arminian at a time the Baptist church was deeply split on that subject). Finally, in 1830, with Taylor’s assistance, John Day emigrated to Liberia to become a missionary there.

On his arrival, Reverend Day founded and led a church in a rural province outside of Monrovia, before later becoming pastor of the Providence Baptist Church, Liberia’s first Christian church, which had been founded in 1822. Tragically, Day’s wife and four children (who had emigrated with him) all died within a year of their arrival in Africa. But John survived and prospered. A brilliant and well-educated man, he became a prominent member of the Americo-Liberian ruling elite and he was instrumental in the founding of the Liberian Republic.

When Liberia declared its independence in 1847, John Day was one of the men who drafted the Declaration of Independence. As one early Liberian historian wrote, “There were resident here then men such as Rev. John Day, with his cultivated and critical intellect….There were giants in those days.” Day was also involved in drafting the Liberian Constitution and he would go on to serve as both the country’s Lieutenant Governor and as Chief Justice of the Liberian Supreme Court. As a more recent historian of Liberia puts it, “In Liberia, Day had the stature of Jefferson, Franklin, or Adams.”

So, Abner Wentworth Clopton’s mentorship of his students John Day and James Taylor set John Day on the path to becoming one of the Founding Fathers of Liberia, which in turn opened the door of opportunity for Thomas Day to become one of the most celebrated artisans of his time.

John Day, Jr. died in Monrovia at age 61 on February 15, 1859.