ACKERMAN & SONS GREAT-GREAT-GRAD: FAMILY'S FURNITURE CRAFTSMANSHIP SPANS FIVE GENERATIONS.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: FAMILY-OWNED BUSINESS

Ackerman & Sons Furniture Workshop sits in a nondescript strip mall off South Santa Fe Drive and Belleview Avenue in Littleton, one of those places a commuter could pass a thousand times and never notice. The inside of the shop is decidedly more interesting. And the sign out front, while making it clear this is a family business, barely scratches the surface of how far back in the family it goes, which is five generations and 122 years.

Owner Mike Ackerman, the great-great-grandson of the founder, winds his way through a maze of chairs, dressers, cabinets and couches in need of repair or restoration. On a shelf, he spots a phonograph and its horn that needs re-attaching. An inscription indicates this Eureka phonograph won a grand prize at the Paris Grand Exposition of 1900 and was exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition, or World's Fair, in 1904.

"Pretty cool," Ackerman says. But it's not the most historically significant restoration project to pass through the shop. That distinction probably goes to a small liquor box or "cellarette" brought by a customer whose uncle's grandfather, a government employee in Washington, D.C., regularly played poker with Andrew Jackson and, the story goes, won the cellarette in one such game, likely in the early 1800s.

"A piece like that is maybe very important to American history, but it's also really important to the owner," Ackerman says. "But not any more important than grandma's rocking chair that's only 60 years old. Those pieces have family value. There's nothing like taking a chair like this and making it new again. And then giving it back to somebody. They tear up. I make grown men cry every month. It's the best feeling in the world to give people their pieces back."

Mike Ackerman's appreciation for family histories understandably includes his own, and how this fifth-generation business began in 1895. His great-great-grandfather, a German immigrant and master cabinetmaker, initially supported his young family on the outskirts of Minneapolis by farming and doing odd jobs for his nearest neighbor, an undertaker. At some point, as Ackerman tells it, the conversation between the undertaker and his worker turned to the variety coffins offered, or lack thereof. "You're burying everybody in these pine boxes," the young immigrant said to his employer. "I could build you a really nice coffin for the display out front."

"So they cut down a walnut tree and had it milled, and he built this guy a solid walnut...