One of the most thrilling aspects of being an historian is when you get the chance to physically touch an item that in real life belonged to the person of your interest. Something she or he has touched, sat on, used, worked with. Diaries and letters written by that person have that effect too, but an artifact is even more moving.
On November 16, 1792, Gouverneur Morris, then America’s minister to France, recorded in his account book the purchase of two mahogany tables, “one of them a Dressing Table.” He paid 216 pounds for the two tables:
He did not indicate where he had bought them, but it is very likely that they were in a sale of items belonging to a distressed French aristocrat. The King had fallen three months earlier, and would be guillotined two months later, and aristocrats had been forced to flee France or face imprisonment and possible execution. Morris bought quite a few pieces of furniture, beddings, curtains, etc. in these sales, and shipped them to his home in the Bronx. When he returned from Europe in December 1798, he start