In the early 1900s, Sears-Roebuck offered its first mail-order home kit. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, modern versions of the “house in a box” are getting renewed attention. These contemporary kits come with “some assembly required” and are often not the panacea they are touted to be. But, this story is not about the new fad that you order and assemble yourself. It’s about the very first home in a box, the ones built by early American carpenters with their low tech tools kept in a handmade chest.

From the 1600s through the 1800s, whole cities in the United States were literally hammered together by carpenters. In the centuries when most structures were built from wood, no tradesmen were more important than the carpenter, a trade that can be traced back to the beginning of recorded history.

Carpenters in early American history worked from a building’s foundation to its roof ridge. They laid floors, chiseled mortise-and-tenon joints, framed walls, raised rafters, carved moldings, hung doors, and nailed weatherboard. Carpenters sometimes acquired building materials from less-skilled laborers, frequently using planks cut from logs by sawyers and shingles made by joiners woodworking at the job site. The same joiners would often finish the interiors by piecing wood together and might work on doors, windows, staircases, trim, and paneling within a house or building.

As cities blossomed and took shape, the demand for new homes, shops, outbuildings, stables, sheds, and their repair grew at a rapid pace. Carpenters 200 years ago had to be adept at mathematics and geometry, apply calculations, and make sure that buildings were level and square. All of this was accomplished with primitive levels, string, and a plumb bob.

The tool chest of the early American carpenter reveals the life of the man himself, from the beginning of his family to the death of his loved ones. Looking into this pictured preserved chest with its original tools, we see the story of Master Carpenter, Ely Otto Creager of Creagertown, MD. In 2006, we purchased the Creager chest from Allan Miller, the great grandson of Otto (born in1837; died in1914). Mr. Creager only needed wood for all that he crafted: clocks with wooden gears, violins, cabinets, and the interiors of private rail cars. These tools also gave him the ability to create houses and, ultimately provide services for communities and cities like so many carpenters of this period.

Items like this tool chest, while seemingly ordinary to most observers, are often actual works of art. The exterior of the box has become rough and spattered with paint from years of use. But, the interior reveals the fine finish of the various species of wood used in its construction. The collection of tools in the box (most still sharp and ready for use) did a great job of building homes and a good many other things. The real beauty, however, lies in the impact of what these simple analog tools could create in the hands of a master builder.