Wooden carved pipe in the shape of a kneeling man in Civil War military uniform.
The American Civil War Museum (acwm.org)
Sometime in 1863, after a gunboat on the Potomac River fired a shell that hit a dogwood tree on the riverbank, First Lieutenant John F. Brooks of the 4th Texas Infantry picked up a piece of the damaged tree. Using his penknife, he carved this pipe, in the shape of a kneeling man in uniform, which he would use during the remainder of the conflict. Little more is known about Brooks, except that he would rise to the rank of captain by war’s end and live until 1908, when he died in Virginia at the age of 87.
