An evening s entertainment often involved singing around the piano. Many fashionable young ladies played the piano while the guests gathered around to sing favorite songs. The silver megaphone was a retirement gift for a Montgomery fire chief. Too large and decorative to a practical, it is strictly a decorative memento. Called buttonhooks, they assisted people in inserting the buttons through the buttonholes on shoes and gloves.
Many parents save baby curls and locks from children s first haircuts.
This early clothes iron was heated on the stove or in the fireplace and then used to press clothes. The image of the infamous Union General, Benjamin F. Butler, is in the bottom of the chamber pot. Butler and his men were intensely disliked by Confederates, especially the women of New Orleans. It was a means of entertainment to view faraway or amusing scenes through the stereopticon. Each time the oath of office is administered to a governor, the Bible is removed from the third floor case in which it is displayed and taken to the steps of the state capitol.