Anna’s Box

July 27th, 2011 |

We recently came upon this lovely wooden box during our inventory of the Kemerer Museum.

The inside revealed inlaid initials “AM” and the date “10 Aug 1756.”

According to acquisition records, the box was purchased at a private auction in 1998.  Through previous owner documents, the box was identified as belonging to Anna Muenster.  Anna was born in Moravia, and was the first wife of well-known Bethlehem Moravian minister Paul Muenster.  The box, made when Anna was 38 years old, could have been given to her for her sewing tools, but the lock suggests it held more important contents such as correspondences or keepsakes.  Its design and inlaying suggest the box was the work of a skilled craftsman.  A Bethlehem visitor’s memoirs included an account of Anna’s death in 1779, “…while at Bethlehem we often went to church and enjoyed the splendid singing.  The wife of the minister died while we were there (wife of the Rev. Paul Muenster).  We saw her laid out in a separate enclosure with bars, waiting for burial; for here they never keep a dead body in the house.”

While we don’t seem to have any images of Anna, we do currently have on display at the Kemerer Museum a portrait painting of her husband.  Paul sat for well-known painter John Valentine Haidt sometime after 1754, making the painting a contemporary of Anna’s box.

Paul Muenster by John Valentine Haidt, on loan from the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem

It is always fascinating to think how objects, touched and used by connected individuals (in this case a husband and wife), could be separated for hundreds of years only to be rejoined in the same building.

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