Kearny Museum

Name: General Kearny’s Smoking Chair

Description: Napoleon III of France presented General Kearny with the pictured smoking chair. The picture shows the chair with its original blue velvet upholstery and silk fringe, with a delicately carved back with a cigar motif. Its hinged cigar box on the chair’s back is upholstered in blue velvet as an armrest. It is the only chair of its type in this country, a similar one being in a Paris museum. It was used by the general in his home at “Belle Grove”, which was more commonly called Kearny Castle. Virginia Livingston Hunt, who was Kearny’s granddaughter and Agnes Maxwell Kearny, who was his second wife, donated the chair. Hunt’s regard for the late Harold Latham and his interest in her grandfather motivated her to have the general’s favorite smoking chair returned to the town carrying his name. It had been part of the Traphagen Museum Collection until she arranged for its homecoming to Kearny in 1968.