Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
August 3, 1805
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 7
Additional Source Text:
United States Gazette (Philadelphia), 7 Feb 1806 adds: displayed "in the department with the Mammoth, &c."
Notes:
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Harvard University, acquired a number of such garments in 1899 from Moses Kimball's Boston Museum. Kimball and P. T. Barnum jointly purchased many of the Peale collections when they were sold about 1849. The Peale Museum had many such items; the 1848 sheriff's sale included an entire case of "Dresses Made from the Intestines of a Whale, &c." This donation cannot be positively identified with a particular extant garment, but it may have resembled the one at the Peabody pictured here.
