Samuel Henry Lockett (1837-1891) was an engineering officer in the United States, Confederate, and Egyptian armies, and a professor at Louisiana State University and University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He married Cornelia C. Clark in 1859 and with her had six children. The collection documents Samuel Henry Lockett's family life and his careers as a military officer, engineer, and teacher. Correspondence, chiefly with Cornelia Clark Lockett, documents their marriage, household matters, and family life, as well as the nature of the work that kept Lockett away from his family. There is some correspondence with their children, other Lockett and Clark family members, and with military and professional associates. Other materials, including writings, reports, notebooks, photographs, and maps, relate chiefly to Lockett's professional careers: he served as a colonel in the Confederate Army and chief engineer for the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana, preparing Confederate defenses at Vicksburg, Miss., Mobile, Ala., Pensacola, Fla., and other points along the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast; he served as colonel of engineers in the Egyptian Army (1875-1877) in Egypt and Abyssinia; he taught at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (1867-1873), University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and at private schools in Alabama (1877-1873); and he was involved in construction work on the Statue of Liberty, New York City (1883-1884), waterworks projects in Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, and Kansas (1883-1889), and railroad engineering projects in Chile and Colombia (1883-1891). Also included are materials relating to the odograph, a survey instrument invented by Lockett; extensive notes for a topographical survey of Louisiana; several volumes documenting family travel and life abroad, including Cornelia Clark Lockett's journal in Egypt and a partial newspaper copy of an article based on the journal she kept while she was in Colombia in 1890; lectures and writings on scientific and mathematical subjects as well as education and the arts, Egypt, Panama, Peru, Chile, and Colombia; a retrospective account of the defense of Vicksburg; a book of poetry; and a recipe book. Some items are in Spanish.
