George Washington Chair Sold in 1931

One-hundred and thirty-seven years after George Washington supposedly sat in a Sheraton chair in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it was sold.

On Friday, November 27, 1931, an auction was held. The next day the newspaper ran an account of the sale. “A fine old Sheridan (Sheraton) chair that George Washington is said to have sat on during a visit in Carlisle sold at public sale here yesterday for $190,” it reported. “The chair once graced the Ephraim Blaine home and was disposed of ...as part of the estate of Miss Sarah Kate Ege.”¹

Who was Miss Sarah Kate Ege,² and how did she come to have the “Washington” chair? Miss Ege had been a teacher at Metzger College in Carlisle for many years, and in 1900 she became its president.³ Metzger College was founded from a bequest by the Hon. George Metzgar and operated from 1881-1913.

George Metzgar (1782-1879) was born in (McAllister’s Town) Hanover, York County, Pennsylvania. When George was twelve years old, his father, Paul, on a visit to his daughter Mrs. Robert Blaine in Carlisle, took him to a dinner that Dr. Samuel A. McCoskry was giving for President George Washington. Although George Metzgar did not sit at the table, he stood by Governor Mifflin’s chair and was able to tell about the dinner to his friends and family.⁴

In October 1794, President George Washington spent a week in Carlisle while the troops were assembling to begin the march to western Pennsylvania to quell the Whiskey Rebellion. While in Carlisle, the President was quartered in a house owned by Col. Ephraim Blaine.

In the 1790s Blaine constructed two brick houses on North Hanover Street. One was for his son James and the other for his son Robert and his wife Susanna Metzgar. After Robert Blaine’s death, the house was acquired by David Watts, Esq.⁵ It was David Watts, with whom George Metzgar studied law; and it may be through these connections that the “Washington” chair came to be owned by Miss Sarah Kate Ege, the last President of Metzgar College.