Provenance

According to a family tradition, this chest-on-chest was presented by Elias Hasket Derby (1739-1799) and his wife, Elizabeth Crowninshield Derby (1735-1799), of Salem, Mass., as a wedding present to their daughter Anstis Derby (1769-1836), who married Benjamin Pickman, Jr. (1763-1843), of Salem in 1789. The discrepancy between the date of marriage and the date of 1791 on the bill for the complete chest is usually explained by the theory that the chest was ordered as a wedding present but not completed and delivered until nearly two years later. Elias Hasket Derby's will (docket 7571, Essex County Probate Records, Essex County Courthouse, Salem, Mass.) makes mention of a bequest to Anstis and adds: "And I do in addition to the foregoing give and confirm unto my said daughter Anstis all and what I gave her at the time of her marriage." There are no probate records on file for Anstis Derby Pickman. In the inventory of the estate of Benjamin Pickman, Jr. (docket 50218), which was taken room by room, the only two possibilities that might refer to this object are a "Case Draws" in the "Middlechamber" valued at $12 and a "Case Draws" in the "Front Western Chamber" valued at $6. No mention of the object is made in Pickman's will of 1843. The next likely owner, however, is Pickman's daughter Martha (1802-1885), who married Samuel Baker Walcott (d. 1854) in 1829. The Walcotts seem to have divided their time between Salem and Hopkinton, N.H. No detailed specification of household goods is given in Samuel Walcott's estate papers (doct 56152), although he did own "furniture in house in Salem" valued at a total of $900. In his will, dated 1851, Samuel Walcott bequeaths all of his "furniture and household stuff of every kind" to his wife. Martha Pickman Walcott died in Salem in 1885. She left all of her "household furniture and good, silver and other plate, clothing and books, not enumerated and specified, in a memorandum in writing under [her] hand" to her daughter Elizabeth Packard, wife of Alpheus S. Packard. (The "Schedule of Legacies" bequeathed to her other children does not mention any object that could be the Yale chest.) Martha Walcott's household furniture at 133 Lafayette Street in Salem was valued at only $250 but was not itemized (docket 61881). The chest appears to have been owned by Elizabeth Derby Walcott Packard (1824-1929) and her husband Alpheus from about 1885 to 1919; they lived in Andover, Mass. Elizabeth Packard's will of 1906 (docket 162422) states: "All my household furniture, books, pictures, china, glass, silver, jewelry, and all other articles of household use or ornament, I give to my executor hereinafter named to be distributed by him among my children in accordance with directions which will be found among my papers at my death." This "List of articles to be distributed," however, makes no mention of the Yale chest, for it had already passed to her daughter and out of the family's hands. One of Elizabeth's beneficiaries was to be her daughter Martha W. Packard of Andover. Elizabeth's will specifies that Martha, acting on some misguided advice from her mother, made a bad investment and lost a considerable amount of money, a sum her mother felt obliged to repay. Elizabeth may have given her daughter the chest about 1919 as one way of repaying her, since the chest was sold in that year to New York dealer Charles Woolsey Lyon. An undated letter from Martha Walcott Packard to Francis P. Garvan gives the following family tradition: "This is the history as it has come to me from my mother: Elias Hasket Derby of Salem (my great-great-grandfather) had the chest made for his daughter Anstiss, when she married Benjamin Pickman, also of Salem, in 1789. It then belonged to their daughter, Martha, who married Samuel Baker Walcott in 1829. My mother inherited it and handed it on to me." Lyon sold the chest to Francis P. Garvan, New York, in 1919. Gift in 1930 to Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.