Wish you could come to dinner and have a visit!

Tonight, we are having some new friends over for dinner at "The Blue Fox on Savannah Lane"....

and we wish we could have all our old friends and our family over, too. Here's the table all set--I'm going home from JBU to cook in just a little while...

See our new chair covers? A friend of ours (Heather Lanker of Heather Hill Children's Clothing!--husband teaches in our division at JBU--2 PRECIOUS daughters and they go to our church, too!)

is recovering the Castleman antique chairs for us in a Fleur de Lis pattern to go in our "New Orleans" dining room!

This dining set was inherited from Breck's dad and dates to the middle of the 19th century, as in Civil War era Kentucky. We think it's mahogany.

Next Friday is our "First Friday Salon" group--and we'll expand the table to seat 10 people. (We have eleven chairs...no one knows what happened to the 12th, but I've decided to begin a family story-rumor about its demise....

The 12th chair was given to the Smithsonian archives for their Lincoln collection in the 1920's. Yes, Abraham Lincoln dined at this table while an Illinois Senator. The visit took place as he returned to his home state to lobby for anti-slavery concerns in the late 1850's. The Castleman family, who lived near Louisville, (the statue of General John Breckinridge Castleman is located near an entrance to Cherokee Park in Louisville) hosted Mr. Lincoln during his overnight stay which is why we did not inherit a bed. (This statue part is totally true and

here's a picture....

This part is also true: John B. Castleman was captured as a traitor

by the Yankees and he was exiled to Canada for the duration of the

war. Less than six months prior to Lincoln's assassination, the

President granted a pardon so that the General could return to

Kentucky and help rebuild the South as the war drew to a close.

This Gen. Castleman did with great distinction. The letter is part of the Lincoln archives.

But, back to our furniture.... the 12th chair was known for decades in the family as "the Lincoln chair" and was held in some honor despite the general political sentiments of the family at the time. Upon hearing the devastating news of Lincoln's assassination, the chair was retired from the dining room out of respect and honor at the request of John B. Castleman himself.

On a side note, it has been a family tale for several generations that the table itself was used during the war as an operating table for the wounded. Many a Yankee did indeed die on that table as did a few "sons of the confederacy".

So, when you come to dinner, you will be feast at table full of history, some true, some not, but all in the family.