Samuel Galt followed the watchmaking and silversmithing craft in Williamsburg from 1750 until his death. His older son, James, was also a silversmith until he became, in 1770, the first “keeper” of the “Lunatick Hospital” in Williamsburg. The younger son, John Minson Galt, acquired a medical education in Edinburgh and London, then became a partner in Dr. James Pasteur’s apothecary and chirurgical establishment in Williamsburg. Unfortunately the Galt family tradition does not say which of Williamsburg’s eighteenth-century craftsmen created the articles in question. The most prominent pre-Revolutionary cabinetmakers were all active during some part of the period when the Galts, father and sons, were founding the family’s name and fame. It is possible, judging from appearance alone, that the two simpler pieces could have been made for the earliest Galt by the earliest (known) cabinetmaker, Peter Scott, while the third was constructed for a later and more pretentious household by a later craftsman, perhaps Edmund Dickinson. Dickinson was well equipped to make better furniture than any of these three clothes presses. An apprentice in Anthony Hay’s cabinet shop on Nicholson Street, he may have stayed on as journeyman during Benjamin Bucktrout’s proprietorship of the shop and timber yard. In any case, he became master of the establishment himself in 1771. Seven years later, serving as an officer in the Revolutionary army, he was killed at the Battle of Monmouth. The appraisers of Dickinson’s estate—one of them was Bucktrout—valued his possessions at the respectable total of £164 6_s._ 6_d._ About £20 of this represented Dickinson’s library of 40 volumes. Some of these had probably been gathered by Hay in the first place, but it was still a large and wide-ranging collection of books for a craftsman. In addition to a copy of “Chippendale’s Designs” valued by itself at £6, there were books of poetry and history, English and French dictionaries, and many volumes of the _Tatler_, the _Spectator_, and the _Connoisseur_. _THE COMPLEAT TOOL CHEST_ Another section of the Dickinson inventory demands particular attention here: the list of the cabinetmaker’s tools. These were valued by the appraisers at close to £50, and included 81 planes of different sorts, 11 saws, one stock or brace and 20 bits, 63 chisels and gouges, four clamps and a bench vise, a dozen miscellaneous items, and a tool box. [Illustration: _A cabinetmaker’s workbench and a variety of woodworking tools of the eighteenth century. Among them may be seen several bench planes, two kinds of frame saw, an assortment of chisels, some measuring and marking tools, a brace and bit, gimlets, etc. This illustration is taken from Joseph Moxon’s_ Mechanick Exercises, _published in London in 1683_.]