According to family tradition, this chest was made by Peter Cooper (1791-1883), a manufacturer and inventor, perhaps now best-known for his founding of the Cooper Union in 1857-1859. At the age of 17 he was apprenticed to a coach-maker, from which training in woodworking he may well have developed the skills to make this chest. See The Dictionary of American Biography, vol. II (New York, 1929), pp. 409-410.