H1041 19th century North Carolina Paint Decorated Chest of Drawers attributed to Karsten Petersen (1776-1857) of Salem, Forsyth County, North Carolina - retaining its beautiful original red and black faux grain painted surface. This beautiful chest features rounded corners, four graduated drawers with beaded edges along the tops and bottoms of each drawer, and rests on Petersen's signature 'peg leg' style feet that are 9" tall! The top is dovetailed slotted on to the ends as well as the drawer runners are dovetailed into the chest The back consists of two wide, hand-hewn boards with chamfered edges mortised into the sides. The woods are poplar and yellow pine. Circa 1840-50. Measurements: 43 ¼” wide x 20 ¼” deep x 44 ½” tall.
Here is a little History on Karsten Petersen.
Karsten Petersen immigrated to this country in 1806 from Gnadau, Germany. He was a Moravian who, along with Christian Burkhardt, was called by the Unity Elder's Conference of the Moravian Church in Herrnhut, Saxony to mission service among the Creek Indians (tribe of the Cherokees). From 1807 to 1813 he and Christian Burkhardt served as Moravian missionaries to the Creeks in the Flint River Basin at a trading post on the Flint River in west central Georgia near Spring Place. Illnesses beset the two, and then the War of 1812 snuffed out their efforts. Due to the unrest in the Creek Nation and because the Cherokees had been ordered by the government of the United States to take up arms against the Creeks, church officials called brothers Petersen and Burkhardt back to Salem in 1813. Upon his return to Salem, Karsten Petersen resumed his trade of cabinet maker, and some of his furniture pieces are on display as part of the restoration work that has been undertaken in Old Salem. In 1816 he married Agnes Susanna Praezel who was a teacher in the Girls Boarding School in Salem. She was the daughter of Gottfried Praezel and Maria Elisabeth Engel. Gottfried Praezel was one of four men who arrived in Salem in 1766 and delivered the directive from the Unity's Directing Board in Herrnhut, Germany that the Lord had willed that the central community of Salem was to be built. Gottfried was then one of the eight men that built the first structure in Salem which was the Single Brothers House.
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