Long before 1963 when the Roanoke River was dammed to form Lake Gaston, the Fitts families were living near present-day Vaughan, North Carolina. It was from a house that had long been in the Fitts family that this blanket chest emerged.
Lieutenant Samuel Smith wasn’t from North Carolina. The civil war military campsite near Warrenton, North Carolina must have felt like a foreign country (partly because it was). It’s almost certain that the August heat would have been worse than anything he experienced in his hometown of Steuben, Maine.
But Samuel Smith wrote a letter to his parents that Friday August the 28th, 2863, and I was lucky to find this letter and its original stamped envelope. The text follows, with my thoughts below.
Continue reading
You’re forgiven if you think this is a child’s desk, because I thought the same thing when I bought it. Measuring only 31″ tall by 24″ wide by 20″ deep, it looks every bit the part of a child’s desk, right down to the child’s crayon and pen marks inside the drawer. It wasn’t until I showed it to a knowledgeable friend of mine who works with antique furniture that its true origins emerged.
It’s not difficult to like Warren County. Perched at the top of the state and bordering Brunswick and Mecklenburg Counties in Virginia, Warren County is home to the towns of Warrenton, Norlina, and Macon.
I stumbled across a yard sale just north of Norlina today, and an otherwise uninteresting collection of sundry household goods revealed an interesting treasure: this chair.