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Portable Desk
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Portable Desk

Dateca. 1852
Terms
  • Portable Desks
  • Brass
  • Velvet
  • Paper
  • Rose
  • United States
Dimensions13.97 × 40.64 × 24.76 cm (5 1/2 × 16 × 9 3/4 in.)
Credit LineGift of Miss Julia D. Wheeler (1953)
Object numberF2134
DescriptionRosewood desk box (portable desk). Brass bound corners; brass key hole escutcheon and a brass ornament inlaid in the center of the cover engraved: "Alonzo Burgess/ from/ the pupils of District No. 2/ Concord, March 1852." Lined with embossed dark green velvet. Compartments contain: two glass jars in front corners (ink); two wood fragments (part of box?); and items numbered separately. Desk contains multiple books, photographs, and other personal items, given separate records (see F2134a, etc.).

Alonzo Burgess was given this box by his students in Concord's East Quarter School. The box was filled with documents, letters, an ambrotype presumably of Burgess, clippings, receipts and mementos of Alonzo's life as a teacher in Concord, and later, after moving to Illinois, as a soldier in the 41st Illinois Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War.
Letters
Object number: F2134U
October 8, 1863
Object number: F2134T
June 6, 1857
Object number: F2134G
ca. 1852
Object number: 2007.18.1
N.C. Thayer & Co
February 11, 1895
States of Michigan and Wisconsin
Object number: TH43
John Farmer
1854
Blue Band Poultry Feeder
Object number: 2024.12.3
ca. 1930
Object number: M2095
ca. 1817 (?)