Swan, John

Cambridge, cabinet maker, upholsterer and auctioneer (1769–1811).

It was reported in the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal of 29 July 1769 that ‘lately died … in the Indies, Sir William Swan of Madingley in this county. He is succeeded in title and a small estate by his only brother Sir John Swan, a young gentleman about 17 years of age, now apprenticed to Mr. Charles Day, cabinet-maker of this town’. An advertisement appeared in the newspaper for John Swan, upholsterer and auctioneer, on 2 October 1784. The Universal British Directory records him as an upholsterer in 1792. Directories of 1805–11 list him as cabinet maker in Bennett Street, Cambridge.

The same address was given on 17 May 1811, when he announced in the newspaper that ‘he has declined the Upholstery and Cabinet Making businesses for the purpose of settling his affairs, he solisits the favours of the public in the Appraising, Auctioneering, Timber Measuring, Valuing and Surveying businesses’. The auction was advertised in the same issue with a detailed list of the stock and ‘a very large quantity of fine seasoned Spanish and Hondures mahogany in planks, boards, veneers, dry ash and elm plank, white and black holly, tulip and purple wood, oak and elm boards, cherrytree, sycamore, yew tree, box, elm timber, a large stock of walnut tree planks’. The account book of the Cotton family of Madingley Hall record a payment of £26 6s to Swan in 1800 and one in 1809 for supplying a dressing table and carpeting their church pew. [

Source: DEFM