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Victorian furniture from Beaty estate returns to county

Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton A look at two of the four pieces of Beaty estate furniture recently returned to Warren County. The pieces, which were part of the Fenton History Center’s collection, are now part of the Warren County Historical Society’s Victorian parlor exhibit.

Pristine, restored Victorian-era furniture has returned to Warren County, where it was originally purchased more than 100 years ago.

Two sofas and two chairs from the David Beaty estate have been donated back to the Warren County Historical Society.

According to documentation provided as part of the transfer, the pieces had been in the collection of the Fenton History Center in Jamestown, N.Y.

Michelle Gray, Warren County Historical Society managing director, said said Fenton acquired pieces that were originally part of the Fenton family home and, in light of the county’s Beaty connection, offered the pieces to the Historical Society.

Gray said the Warren County Historical Society agreed to pick up the pieces a while back but the process was delayed by the pandemic. The pieces ultimately arrived about a week ago and are now in the society’s Victorian Parlor Exhibit at its main office, 210 Fourth Ave.

Photo from Schenck’s History of Warren County A sketch of David Beaty, likely the original purchaser of several pieces of furniture that, over a century later, are now part of the Warren County Historical Society’s collection.

Photographs that came with the furniture shows they were once in pretty rough shape and the focus of a $3,000 to $4,000 restoration in the late 1970s by Jamestown Royal Inc., which acknowledged in a letter that the repairs were “going to be a tedious job.”

A letter from Fenton back to the restoring entity highlighted “all the favorable comments concerning the furniture” and said the “pieces are really lovely and add a certain grace to the museum.”

The most obvious vestiges of the Beaty estate in Warren are Beaty Park and Beaty-Warren Middle School.

Information from the Warren County Historical Society explained that the Beaty property used to extend as far back as Buchanan Street and that in the 1840s the estate stretched from Jackson Avenue along the Conewango north nearly to Russell.

The original owner of the furniture was likely David Beaty, who was born in 1811 in Beaver County, Pa.

David was born in 1811 in Beaver County and died in 1889. He came to Warren County in his early 20s, initially working in the timber industry

As with many men of that era, it was the oil boom that proved to bring them wealth.

Beaty had set up an operation on Oil Creek south of Titusville (think Colonel Drake)

“This occupation gradually assumed larger proportions, and in time absorbed Mr. Beaty’s entire time and attention,” according to Schenck’s History of Warren County.

“The boy who left home with one dollar and seventy-five cents in his pocket, and with venturesome daring, walked 1 30 miles to the destination which he had selected as the field for his labors, was bound to succeed, and has succeeded beyond his original calculations.”

According to Schenck, he moved to Warren for good after his home was finished in the early 1870s, owning an estate that exceeded 500 acres in addition to nearly 4,000 in Dakota.

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