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Camp chest owned by General Edmund Kirby Smith
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This camp chest belonged to Confederate General
Edmund Kirby Smith of Florida, who used it for blankets,
books, and documents. The small, heavy, flat-topped
wooden chest has no decoration or distinctive craftsmanship
to assign it to an artistic school or location.
Yet, chests like this one were used in the nineteenth
century in households for storage and for travel,
much as the foot locker came to be used in the twentieth
century. Made to the scale of a sea chest, it could
easily be transported in wagons and carts, functioning
as a seat as well. It is the kind of chest used
in the nineteenth century by people whose vocations
called for frequent travel by wagons and other horse-drawn
conveyances. |
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Division of the History of Technology, Armed Forces
History
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian
Institution
Behring Center
Gift of Jeffry and Gloria L. Wert
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