Lincoln Home Historic Furnishings Report

SECTION E: RECOMMENDED FURNISHINGS (continued)

BEDROOMS: INTRODUCTION

According to tradition, Lincoln's bedroom was the front room over the parlor. The room should be furnished to reflect Lincoln's occupancy with such personal items as shaving equipment, his lap desk, and his traveling trunk. The room, however, also should be furnished more formally than the back rooms as was customary for the period since it is a front chamber. Records also show that on at least one occasion, Lincoln received visitors in a bedroom with a high post bed. (See p. 43 for the contemporary account.)

The furnishings in this room are well documented. The wallpaper is original to the Lincoln period; a stereoscope view taken in 1865 shows Lincoln's bed and washstand, which had been purchased by the Tiltons. Furthermore, a Waud drawing of the room, also made in 1865, suggests other period furnishings and a room arrangement which may have been similar to Lincoln's own arrangement of the furniture. (See p. 119 for further discussion of original evidence.)

The present location of the furniture in the stereoscope view is now unknown; however, there are several pieces of bedroom furniture--beds, bureaus, and wardrobes--with well-documented histories of ownership by the Lincolns. This report recommends making use of the Lincoln associated furniture wherever possible. However, if a period "Elizabethan style" bedstead and washstand can be located, they should replace the bedstead and washstand in Mr. Lincoln's bedroom. (There is no certainty that the bed and washstand shown in the 1865 view were originally in Lincoln's own bedroom. Another possibility is that after Lincoln's death, these items took on a legendary association with Lincoln's bedroom; therefore, costly reproduction of the bedstead and washstand is not recommended.)

The evidence for furnishing the other bedrooms is based on the survival of pieces of furniture with a history of Lincoln ownership. Period Sources: (noted in the bibliography) are greatly relied upon with an emphasis on those recommendations made by Eliza Leslie in her Lady's House Book (1846), because Mrs. Lincoln herself owned a copy of this popular housekeeping manual. All beds should have appropriate bed linen (see pp. 98 and 144 for documentation), Marseilles quilts, or chintz coverlets. According to Miss Leslie's Lady's House Book (pp. 316-317), the following procedure should be used in preparing a bed:

Spread on the under sheet, tucking it in all round under the sides of the mattress; so as to keep it smooth and even, and to prevent its wrinkling, dragging, and getting out of place during the night. If it has a white linen case, shake up the bolster well, and lay it on after the under sheet. If it has no case, draw up this sheet more to the head, and tuck it well over the back of the bolster, but do not stretch the under sheet tightly, so as to drag the bolster down at night, causing it to get beneath the shoulders of the sleeper. Lay it easy, and put it with your hands into the hollow between the bolster and the bed. Next, spread on the upper sheet, tucking it well under the bottom, lest it get out of place at night. You need not tuck it at the two sides, as you did the under sheet. Then, if there are blankets, lay them on smoothly, securing them in place by tucking them in at the bottom and at the lower corners. Next, put on the spread or counterpane, taking care to have it smooth and even, and turning it down at the head with the upper sheet. Then, beat up the pillows and lay them in their places, the open ends outwards. Lighting devices were not common bedroom furnishings during the mid-nineteenth century. Period inventories, for example, rarely list candlesticks in the bedrooms and even more rarely lamps. [35]

Period illustrations also show that lighting devices do not always appear in every room. [36] Kitchens and hallways more often contained the necessary lighting devices. At night candlesticks and lamps would be carried from these areas to those rooms where needed.

The available evidence on lighting in the Lincoln home indicates that the primary illuminant was candlelight. (See pp. 112-119.) The use of candles as the main light source was characteristic of the period. Only two inexpensive lamps appear in the Lincolns' purchase records. Therefore, according to period practice and the available evidence on lighting in the Lincoln home, few lighting devices have been recommended for the Lincoln home bedrooms. (For a more detailed discussion on period lighting, see K. Menz, "Lighting Devices Used in the American Home - 1840-1860," unpublished report, The Harpers Ferry Center, December, 1982.)