Description:
Pencil drawings inscribed "Napoleon's Tomb" on the upper half of the paper and a roughly sketched landscape of St. Helena on the lower half, and a slightly more detailed landscape on the reverse side. These drawings are part of the documentation in the Chinese export black lacquer sewing table (HD 2005.9.1) owned by Eliza Brown Clarkson (1824-1907) who married James A. Clarkson (c.1816-1849) of Gloucester, Mass, in 1845. James Clarkson worked as a captain for ships registered as passenger and mail lines; Eliza accompanied him on 1849 voyage of the ship "Marathon," which included visits to Java, the Philippines, and Canton. James died on the return voyage; according to Eliza's obituary, James "was stricken with a fatal illness and died in mid-ocean October 29, 1849." Traditionally, corpses were committed to the sea, which most of the sailors wanted, but Eliza wanted her husband's body to be buried in Gloucester. With the help of one of the sailors, the ship went to St. Helena where she stayed with the American consulate while lead casket was made. St. Helena, an island in the southern Atlantic discovered by the Portuguese navigator, Joao da Nova, in 1502, soon became a haven for visiting ships plying their trade because of its plentiful supply of fresh water, fruit and goats. Napoleon Bonaparte died there in 1821. Eliza returned to the United States in January 1850 with James' coffin, and buried him in Gloucester's Wesleyan Cemetery; she continued to live in Gloucester and never remarried.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2005.9.10 |
