Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
June 6, 1808
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 31
Notes:
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, has a head stool that may have once been in the Peale Museum, pictured here. It was acquired 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 Peabody also has a hand-written Peale label for a "Tahitian Pillow."
Fanning & Coles was an American firm engaged in the Old China Trade and related Maritime fur trade. The two principal partners were sea captain Edmund Fanning (1769-1841) and financier Willet Coles. The firm existed from 1798 to 1815. On several voyages they discovered new uncharted islands such as Fanning Island and Palmyra Atoll. Coles and Fanning secured permission from President James Madison for an expedition to the Fiji Islands to buy rare woods for trade with China.
"Early in 1807, this firm laid the keel of a three-hundred-ton vessel, Tonquin. In the unprecedented time of one year and five days the vessel was built, coppered, rigged, launched and, by Captain Edmund [Fanning], sailed to China and back." Walter Teller, ed., Five Sea Captains (New York, 1960), p. 107
