Trivial Trivia - taking trivia to new levels

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Your wife is 100% correct! Congratulations. It is more precisely termed a tea urn or tea maker. I will do my darnedest to post a picture of it because it is absolutely adorable - and I would love to own it. In the meantime, here's the story:

This gift arrived during the early years of the Civil War when the Confederacy was winning battles and felt on top of the world. No one knows for sure who sent the gift to Davis, but it is suspected that it came from a Frenchman hoping to establish business relations with the Confederate government or a wealthy admirer of President Davis. It was a unique and costly item and was placed on display in the Confederate White House.

It measures 23-inches long by 15-inches high by 7-inches wide. It lacks the cowcatcher, a headlight, and other American features - which suggests a definite European item. It is very decorative with elegant scrolls, lettering, banners, and flags. A panel on the side of the boiler is inscribed "President Jefferson Davis," and the smokebox on the front has a banner which reads "Confederate States of America" with the Confederate flag and its battle flag entwined with the French national insignia. Just below the flags is another banner that reads "God helps those who help themselves."

The smoke stack would serve as the hopper for the tea leaves with its loose-fitting cap lifting up to make a opening. A glass tube served to siphon the hot water from the boiler to the hopper. Just behind that tube, a funnel-shaped opening with a china plug introduced water into the boiler. A brass turn-***** behind the china plug, when left open, would indicate when the water had reached boiling. A little platform behind the boiler once supported a small figure representing an engineer or fireman ringing a huge dinner bell. Below the boiler, a large sheet metal platform held a small spirit or alcohol lamp that kept the water hot. A spigot at the very front of the locomotive delivered the brewed tea to a cup or glass.

The tender is a small, four-wheel car behind the locomotive. When new, it held four, cut-glass tumblers inside the railing (it now holds two large china cups - the glasses long missing). A cognac decanter fit just behind the tumblers, and at the end was a china box that could hold tea leaves or sugar. Below is a music box that could play eight popular tunes of the day. The mechanism no longer works, but we can bet that one of the tunes was "Dixie!" Six hoops on each side of the tender were there to hold cigars.

By the spring of 1865, however, there wasn't much time to enjoy this object or the luxury of tea time. When the Davises packed hurriedly to evacuate the city, much was left behind and consigned to Bell, Ellett & Company's auction house on Pearl Street. A Richmond newspaper for April 17, 1865, reported on the sale of the locomotive tea set to an Italian named A. Barratti. Within a few days, he resold it to Col. Friedman of Philadelphia, who intended to give it to Mr. Lincoln. With Lincoln dead, however, Friedman presented it to Andrew Johnson; and the tea set went from the Confederate White House to the U.S. White House.

Since Johnson did not take up residency in the White House until Mrs. Lincoln vacated it, Johnson was invited to share an apartment in the Treasury Building with Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch. Both men enjoyed each other's company as well as tea time - courtesy of the locomotive. Once Johnson took up residency in the White House, the set was placed on display in the library.

When Johnson left the White House and retired to his Greeneville, Tennessee, home, the tea locomotive went with him and was eventually passed down through succeeding generations until it became the property of his great-great-granddaughter, Mrs. Margaret P. Bartlett. It was Mrs. Bartlett who gathered her ancestors' papers and effects together that were later given to her college in the town, Tusculum College. However, in the fall of 1959, Mrs. Bartlett visited First Lady Mamie Eisenhower in the White House and brought the tea locomotive with her.

The set was subsequently given to the Treasury Department for display after the visit. The Washington Post caught wind of it and alerted the Smithsonian. W.E. Washburn, then in charge of the Political History Division, made contact with Mrs. Bartlett, and after a year of negotiations, it was lent to the Smithsonian. When the First Ladies Hall and all associated specimens were moved from the Arts and Industries Building into what is now the National Museum of American History (ca. 1964), the set went there. Finally, in 1982, Mrs. Bartlett recalled the loan, and the Davis tea maker went back to Greeneville and Mrs. Bartlett. Sometime in the 1990s, it joined other Andrew Johnson memorabilia in the Tusculum College archives. As of 2008, it was still there.

Source: John H. White, Jr. White House History, Journal of the White House Historical Association, No. 24, "Life in the Lincoln White House."