Safe

Walker’s safe, personalized with her name painted along the top, was manufactured in Richmond, VA by the R.L. Barnes Safe and Lock Company. Richmond was one of the South’s leading financial centers and businesses like Barnes’ naturally became ancillary enterprises. The company opened in 1892 and earned national attention for installing large vaults in financial institutions up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
Ironically, a fire destroyed the R.L. Barnes factory on March 27th, 1912 and even with insurance, the company could never recuperate. They filed for bankruptcy two years later though were revived on a smaller scale two decades later.

This small, yet solid, safe features four steel flanges and a combination lock, making it nearly impossible to break into. In 1935, Edward D. Barnes, son of the company’s namesake, touted his safes’ impenetrability declaring, “it is proof against just about everything except a cracksman’s oxy-acetylene blow torch.”
The inside of the safe is divided into four compartments including one metal drawer with its own key-lock for further security. When the National Park Service acquired the Walker home in 1979, it was within this safe that staff discovered a trove of Walker’s cancelled checks along with Walker’s diaries. Those diaries have since proved invaluable to staff and researchers for it is through Walker’s writing that we are afforded the most personal window into her life.