Hope Chests

 We all need something to hold our greatest moments. Something that stores our life histories. It is often said, that a man shall leave his mother and a woman leave her home. There they travel on to where the two shall be as one. A new life with memories of both families are thus combined. In order to accomplish such things need to be preserved to hand down from one generation to the next. Thus, the Hope Chest or Marriage Box was born.

Cedar chest - Hope Chests - Marriage Boxes were usually passed down from Mother to Daughter. It was a way to preserve family history for the next generation. A woman often began assembling 'her things' as soon as she learned sewing techniques like embroidery, quilting, knitting, crocheting, and sewing. Items she fashioned would be folded and stored away in the chests for her new life.

Once engaged, items given at parties found their way into these sturdy structures. Silverware, china, linens, jewelry and even money. Remember in the Quiet Man - Maureen O'Hara didn't consider herself fully married to John Wayne until she had her things and her dowry.

 

From the Quiet Man Film staring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara

But, chest for such things  were nothing new. More than 3000 years ago the Egyptians were doing the same. Chest contained items that were essential to the here and now as well as at death items that might help in the afterlife.

Trunks and chests became popular pieces for the every man in the middle ages. They provided ways for the families to store items in case of siege. For this reason, handles were added to the boxes of oak, popular, cedar, walnut, or pine, so the families could pick up and flee if the moment arrived.

As society lust for items continued, little drawers were added to the bottom of the chests. These drawers led to the furniture item today we called a Chest of Drawers. In our family the chest of drawers often was the Man's piece of the bedroom furniture. The ladies had a dressing table with a stool and a plain mirrored chest that held her most intimate things.

In America, as brides traveled west, these boxes might be fastened by fathers for their daughters. It was often a most cherished  piece of furniture. It would be placed at the foot of the bed to hold blankets once the house was set up. A mail order bride might carry,  a quilt pieced by family and friends, linens, china, silverware, photos, books, letters from her sweetheart, her wedding dress, veil, and fine gowns for that romantic first encounter. One important piece would be a new bible. There she would place her wedding date, dates of her children's births, and deaths. All things that would explain to the next generation who they were, where they came from, and their hopes for the future. In a sense, it was your time capsule.

I have two.

My mother's sits up on legs and she referred to it as a "high boy". Inside she kept things she was given at her marriage. She had a silk quilt she said always fell off the bed. Her grandmother crochet her a bedspread. She never used it. Down in the bottom, she had the green suit she wore on the day she and my father eloped to South Mills, North Carolina.

When I graduated high school, she took the things out of my grandmother's cedar chest and placed them in there with hers. My Grandmothers china doll with the corn silk hair and one toe that is square where she drug it across the floor loving it. A book written in 1913 about the Titanic. Her hair pins, and crochet blankets.

Once the cedar chest was emptied, it was given to me. Inside it, I have my wedding veil. I borrowed my dress from my aunt so I had to give it back, my wedding photos, blankets my mom got when I was born and she never used.Yes, I did use one for my daughter. She has that now in hers.

Perhaps its still just a southern tradition, but I hope it will always continue. We women keep the family stories going. We are the ones who pass on the traditions, the hopes, the dreams for the future. We live to tell who lives, who dies, and sing the stories.....

Until next time, 

Nan