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Archivist Amy Hammond, right, shows
the shop ledger to, L-R: Brandon Leonard,
Mindy Leonard and Rusty Leonard, 2026

The contents of the Benjamin Leonard chair rail shop, which stood on his farm near Ohiopyle, PA from about 1830 to 1900, are a permanent exhibit today at the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg.

Married to Sarah Harbaugh, Benjamin started manufacturing chairs at the age of 24. Later he was joined by their sons Christmas and Reuben. The men specialized in rocking chairs. They used a unique design for the woven seats and chair backs, which started by selecting a tree of an exact diameter of six inches. The tree was cut into six foot lengths and then split in half and again into quarter sections called "edges." The splitting of wedges continued until they measured half an inch, with special machinery utilized to cut them into thin, half-inch weave material. The brothers used their own designs for the armrests, with Reuben's straight and Christmas's curved downward at the end.

The Uniontown Evening Standard once said that Benjamin's chairs "were known far and near for their usefulness and durability. He had made and shipped his chairs to people all over the United States, and people came from many places to see his shop and the work he turned out." The Leonards as well constructed ladderback chairs, bedsteads, wheelbarrows, oxen yokes and coffins and mended wooden wagons and wagon-wheels for neighbors and friends.

Their most important tool was a wood-turning lathe in the rear of the shop. It held special cutting chisels and when rotated rapidly on their lathe, powered by water from nearby Meadow Run, they could shape square logs into spindles, bed posts and chair legs.

Benjamin kept an account book from 1835 to his death in 1876, with the original today preserved in the State Museum. Some seven decades after the business ended, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania acquired the property and made it part of Ohiopyle State Park.

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