Trunk

1840-1845

Measurements

11-3/4 in x 28-3/4 in x 14-1/2 in

Materials

Animal hide, unidentified wood, leather, brass, paper

Credit Line

Historic Odessa Foundation, The David Wilson Mansion, Inc.

Accession Number

1971.1037

Condition Notes

Most of the leather straps nailed to the trunk have deteriorated and broken away. 

Provenance

Ex coll. Mrs. E. Tatnall (Mary Corbit) Warner.

Comments

This domed trunk is covered in hides.  The interior is lined with newspapers.  Prominent among them is the Episcopal Recorder, published in Philadelphia on January 7, 1832.  Other newspaper includes an article about a Cantwell’s Bridge Temperance Society meeting on January 28, 1840.  Although trunk makers occasionally lined their work with more expensive papers, used newspapers were the norm for these utilitarian objects. 

A printed picture entitled “TRINITY CHURCH, MONROE, MICHIGAN TERRITORY” is pasted over the newspaper lining at the top center underside of the lid.  That Episcopal church was established in 1831; the house of worship was completed in 1833, but it burned in 1868.  Inclusion of this image in such a prominent location and almost certainly by a trunk owner rather than maker raises intriguing questions of the trunk’s ownership and use.  It is part of the large body of objects gathered and preserved by Mary Corbit Warner, but no one from the Corbit or Wilson families is known to have had connections to Monroe, Michigan.