| Title: | box
| | Type: | Container; Personal Gear
| | Materials: | cardboard, paper, ink, porcelain, paint, textile, gourd, coffee bean
| | Measurements: | overall: 1 in x 4 3/8 in x 25 in; 2.54 cm x 11.1125 cm x 63.5 cm
| | Accession Number: | HD 64.173
| | Credit Line: | Gift of Mrs. Dorothy Williams Hartigan
| | Museum Collection: | Historic Deerfield
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Description:
Small cardboard trinket box covered in impressed brown paper and gold band around the top edges, which was given to the donor. Mrs. Hartigan, by her friend, Martha McCulloucb Williams. In her letter (in box), Martha wrote: "This little black box came from England before the Revolution. What it held I don't know - something dainty and pretty I hope. It was given me in 1855 by a Virginia bred gentlewoman, Mrs. Julia Walker Manson, my mother's best friend, then about forty five years old. She said that she had it since she was a tiny girl and that it came to her as a gift from a very old lady back in Virginia, who told her she had had the box before the War of Independence. When I got it it was protected by a blue-checked gingham bag with a drawstring mouth - which I am very sorry it does not now boast. The tiny gourd and coffee bean were in it - so they are witnesses to the fact that I was not wholly destructive. I kept them intact though the box furnished with cedar rockers, a tiny down mattress, linen sheets and a purple velvet coverlid, was for several years the state couch of my best-beloved - and smallest - doll, a black-haired blue-eyed solid China beauty, about 3 inches high - winsomely appealing. I outgrew her of course, but confess it gave me a pang, to have the nephew who superceded me as Baby in the family, come one day holding dolly in one hand, her poor severed head in the other saying with quivering lips: "B'oked Mattie! Her B'oked." After that tragedy the black box became in a sort my treasure chest - stored with rose buds and carnelian rings and peach-seed and hazel-nut baskets, carved industriously by sundry and several youths. Now, empty of all but its original contents, I give it, in token of lasting love to dear Dorothy Williams Hartigan knowing she will care more for it than any other body I know. To have and to hold from: Her Claim-Kinfolk, Martha McCulloucb Williams 1919." The contents include: china doll dressed in lace; miniature gourd with a coffee bean inside; piece of paper with hair in it; $5 Confederate bill; $100 Confederate bill; 5 cent coupon for Bishop's General Store, Salt Lake City, 1898; letter from Manson. There is an undecipherable ink inscription on the bottom.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+64.173 |
