Riffemoor Inc. Table. Label says "Made in England." 

Size: 20 1/2 x 16 1/2 x 17 1/2 in. 

#3233 . 

Julian Cabbell Riffe was born in 1896 in Hustonville, Kentucky, and attended Transylvania University for one year before joining the Navy during World War I, serving as a pharmacist’s mate. He was one of the survivors of the sinking of the USS President Lincoln on May 31st, 1918, an experience that damaged his lungs. Uncomfortable with his homecoming in Hustonville as a war hero, he spent a year in Canada recuperating from the trauma, although his lungs would never function correctly again. He returned to the states and received a degree from the Bowling Green Business College, then worked for a candy company in Somerset. In 1924, the John Strauss Company, a traveling musical comedy troupe, enlisted him to act, and he fell in love with the director, Claribel Irvin, originally from Boston. They married and moved to Florida, where they had a daughter named Nancibel and opened a hardware store. The Florida climate and exposure to tuberculosis put Julian in the hospital, and they returned to Kentucky, where he was expected to die. Claribel, having done research on the disease, bought a flatbed truck and modified it extensively, equipping it with a Coleman stove, a hammock for the baby and a mattress they would share, so that Julian would have constant exposure to clean outdoor air. This prototype mobile home brought curious onlookers, and to make ends meet Claribel began buying and reselling antiques and knick-knacks from the back of the truck. They became known throughout the Pennyroyal Plateau as “The Covered Wagon People,” and when Julian miraculously recovered in 1927 they bought a small house in Lexington and named it “The Covered Wagon Antique Shop.” They traveled extensively through the Appalachian range, collecting antiques and art to resell, and the business grew so much that in the late 1930s they bought a much larger homestead with three buildings on the northeastern side of Danville, which Julian named “Riffemoor.” During World War II antiques became increasingly more difficult to find, and after the war the couple began importing, with nearly 85% of their items coming from England by the early 1960s. Claribel died in 1969, and Nancibel took over running the company as Julian’s health continued to worsen. After he died in 1983, Nancibel married Donald Williams, who had originally come to visit the antique store from Menlo Park, California in the late 1950s, and brought him on as co-owner. Riffemoor continued to operate until February of 2005 when Donald passed away, with Nancibel preceding him by less than a year. Their daughter Julie officially closed the business in December, and all items and assets were dispersed to antique dealers in the local area.