Can't really put a time frame on them....but they have sure seen a pile of usin'!!
Certainly pre 1900....50 years or more would be my guess. They have been re done, of course....suspecting they originally had splint seats.
One of the reasons old chairs were short and uneven is that the legs wore down on rough floors or rotted off from sitting on damp dirt floors.
Great chairs!
Linda C

Thank you so much for following up with me!!!

Not anymore likely to have had splint seats as rush seats. My set of pre-1900 ladderback pool hall chairs had/have rush seats. Yes....somebody re-did them and I see they aren't all matching. The one with the finials could be dining chairs and they were probably originally not painted. I see someone has nailed in the back of one to brace it.

Why are they so short? The typical seat height on turn of the century chairs was about 21 inches. If you look at the turning of the chair legs, you'll see the taper starting at different heights. I don't think these 'wore' down. I think somebody got a few unmatching ladderbacks and tried to make them look like a set. It would be pretty important to have the seat heights all be uniform and they probably sawed off the legs so all the chairs would match around a table, then painted them all the same and making them unwieldy for use at a normal sized table. Pity.

Calliope, I'm not sure that's a nail, if you're referring to what's holding the top slat on. My shaker ladderback chair has wooden pins (original to the piece) doing this same job, and they look very much like the photograph.

Could very well be.

The 3 chairs without finials match exactly. If they were sawed off someone did a pretty lousy job of it because they vary in height a lot. They are all shorter in the back than the front, and that seems to be what is so varied, some slope to the back considerably making the chair look a little wonky and one doesn't seem to slope much at all. The seats are about 15" from the ground, the overall height of the chairs are 36" and the front of all of the chairs is 18" wide and the back of the seat is 14.5" wide. Thank you all so much for the help with these little mystery chairs.

The tilting aspect or the chairs is typical of Shaker chairs. some even had a ball and socket on the rear legs to make it easier to tilt.
I am at my son's and just measured several chairs....one is a family piece that I know dates from about 1880 and the seat is 17 inches from the floor, there is a set dating from 1910, seats are 17 1/2 inches and the new chairs are also 17 1/2 inches. The legs of chairs often suffered rot and wear.....and when one leg became splintered or rotten, someone shortened the others to match.
I'll bet that your chairs spent some years in a garage or dirt floored barn.
Linda C

It helps to go to the horse's mouth to get an idea of things like what a chair was purposed for when it was built. I ask about seat height because it's a number typically listed in late 19th and early 20th century catalogues. One will notice that kitchen chairs, sewing chairs, dressing chairs, occasional chairs and dining chairs tended to have different seat heights, and some chairs were built specifically for adolescents and older children. Since it was obvious one chair didn't match, and the seats were so short to the floor, I wanted to know if the seat heights were constant. The fact that they are and that they're too short to be for dining use speaks to the probability they were all cut off to match a common seat height.

Of course one or more chairs might have had a worn leg, but these were all modified at one time, and painted at one time to look like a matched set. Nobody claimed that the person who did it did it well. Defining whether one or all was meant to be a dining chair would be worth knowing and most of them did have a pretty constant seat height in that time frame because they had to be used with a dining table. Just going around measuring seat heights of random ladderbacks doesn't speak to what I was getting at. My ladderbacks have very tall seat heights, but I know what they are and where they came from. The were used in pool halls in the late 1800s and have been in the family since the turn of the century.

The finial style and the type wood used, would help date these more closely. They are consistent with late 1800s, especially the one with the finials. I have found nearly exact duplicates of this style in that era. However, ladderbacks have such a long history they have been made right along.

Take this one for instance. Looks pretty old, but is a pine repro from the early 1960. Saying we can tell you when these were in vogue, but given what you have shared....and with no real defining details, that's about all we can tell you other than surmising history.

Thanks so much everyone for all of your thoughts! One other thing that makes me think they are not a reproduction like the one above is all of the chairs have a lot of wear, pre-painting, on the bottom rung on the front, which I am assuming might be from someone putting their feet on it when sitting on it. I show a picture of it in the photo bucket #4. All of the other rungs are straight, but the one closest to the floor in the front is worn in two spots, on all of the chairs. Thanks again for all of the thoughts!

Mamma, your chairs are not repros....
They are most likely shaker.....but the shakers made that style of chair for so many years it's very hard to say when yours were made.
As far as different heights of chairs....the shakers did make a tall chair, almost counter height, but I have never seen any evidence that they made slipper, or sewing chairs in that style chair.
I do however, know for a fact that chairs that got uneven in the legs were "evened up" so they didn't teeter any more.
My father tried that once....failed miserably and had to take it to his father who was a wood worker to fix.....and that's how my perfect sized chair for me to sit on the porch with Grandpa came to be.

What a beautiful story about your porch chair Linda! I absolutely love these chairs, though they don't work at all as kitchen chairs as you might imagine. I have 3 little kids- and we use them around their "art table" they are short enough for the kids and the seat is comfortable for the adults. You are all such a great resource- its been such a pleasure for me to hear about the different theories about these chairs. I wish I could say I knew what type of wood they were, there are some worn spots so I can see it, and I'd strongly guess its not pine because they're heavy little things, but beyond that I'd be guessing. I wonder if a woodworker could even these chairs for me... the one wobbles to the point of almost being dangerous if my 3 year old is too quick to jump off (luckily its not too far of a fall). I think I might look into it. Thanks again for all of the thoughts, its been a real treat!

I don't think your chairs are repros and the heaviness would also suggest they aren't. My two little repros are cheap pine imports, no doubt. My good ladder backs..not so. I was trying to illustrate that pictures, without knowing the construction, techniques and materials used really doesn't give enough clues to 'nail' something in a cut and dry manner.

Instead of sawing off the bottom of a leg to make a chair more stable....glue someting to the bottom of the short leg. I have a table with a little slice of a cork on the bottom of one leg....been like that easily 40 years.