General Robert E. Lee’s Pocketknife

all I can think was upon surrender that lee asked to keep his family heirloom,to which grant agreed under the condition that it could not be used to injury an enemy soldier,thus the blades were decommissioned.
 
To my eyes it looks like a three blade swell center whittler. Granted, the picture is not clear enough for a really good zoom, but it looks like only one tang on the right side. That would make more sense, three blade whittlers were not that uncommon.
 
Will Power said:
Agree with L lambertiana on closer inspection it looks like a 3 blade knife.Time to scour Sheffield catalogues of the 1850-60s :cool:

Whittled to nubs..
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Perhaps it is like this Wolstenholm three blade ivory handle. Petite 2 1/2 closed.
5HUZqHp.jpg
 
veitsi_poika said:
My wife thinks their main function is prying open paint cans LoL I have a pile of junkers I let her use 😁
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She gave it back to me at dinner time, I'm happy to say she cut some twine and it was returned in nice condition, same as when she borrowed it. OH
Ps. I was fearful it was going to come back looking like General Lee's pocketknife!
 
GaiusJulius said:
I hope we can identify some candidates for maker and model… really cool that we have some provenance.
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I'm pretty sure it is a three blade swell center whittler pattern with ivory scales, similar to the IXL that I posted above. If Culprit99 Culprit99 could give us approximate size we might have more useful information. Sadly, without being able to inspect the tang stamps, it would be impossible to determine who made it. Most likely English.

This link includes an image that can be zoomed, and it is clearly a swell center pattern, and appears to be petite like my IXL.

 
Now I'm curious as to how Gen. Lee could have broken all the blades on his knife. What manual tasks would a general (presumably with orderlies, servants, aids de camp, slaves, etc.) be doing that would cause so much damage to a knife?
 
hsherzfeld said:
Now I'm curious as to how Gen. Lee could have broken all the blades on his knife. What manual tasks would a general (presumably with orderlies, servants, aids de camp, slaves, etc.) be doing that would cause so much damage to a knife?
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He wasn't a general after the war, maybe he broke it while he was President of Washington & Lee College? Sheer speculation on my part. OH
 
This is getting intriguing, gots to know :)

I wonder if somebody could e-mail the Fort Worth Museum and ask one of the curators to take a look or pic of those tang-stamps ? I mean they must clean & adjust exhibits from time to time and knife collectors need to be assured this knife is not a FAKE:eek::D and that it was made by a firm of the era .
 
hsherzfeld said:
Now I'm curious as to how Gen. Lee could have broken all the blades on his knife. What manual tasks would a general (presumably with orderlies, servants, aids de camp, slaves, etc.) be doing that would cause so much damage to a knife?
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If it is anything like the small IXL swell center that I have, it is not terribly surprising. The blades are very thin.
 
I'm questioning that museums authenticity, if they can't identify the wood pick and how many blades are on a knife,interesting.
 
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