HOULTON, Maine — A 200-year-old corner cabinet is now part of the collection in the Aroostook Historical and Art Museum thanks to a donation by a descendant of the town’s founding family.
“It is a critical part of our history because it goes back to our earliest family, which was the Putnam family,” said Leigh Cummings Jr., one of the museum’s directors.
Christian Putnam said the family struggled with the decision of what to do with the cabinet after his father died.
“We talked about it in great depth and detail. And we didn’t want to store it, since we wanted to do something meaningful,” explained Putnam. At first, he said, the discussion revolved around keeping it. Finally, the family members decided to donate the cabinet to the museum, since “it will always be in Houlton if we ever want to see it.”
Putnam said the cabinet may have been hewn from pine, but he recalled the smell of cedar from hiding in it as child, even though he and his siblings were supposed to stay clear of the heirloom.
“I probably bounced my head off that about 50 times,” he recalled. “It was a place to hide Christmas presents, Easter eggs and other things. It was so valuable to my mother and father that we were not allowed to go near it when we were very young children.”
The cabinet came to Houlton, said Putnam, from New Salem, Mass., when the only transportation was by river —in this case, the St. John River. The 13 delicate and very thin glass panes in the cabinet doors appear to be original and represent the 13 original colonies, according to Putnam. Over the years and generations, the hutch eventually went to the home of Putnam’s father, Arthur Otis Putnam Jr., where it remained for some 50 years until it was moved to the museum.
It is now located in a room the museum has re-created as a kitchen.
Catherine Bell characterized the donation as “very important because it complements and completes the room and allows us to display some very old items that we didn’t have a spot for.”
Among those items now on display is “a punch bowl with matching cups, which had been waiting for a home,” she said. The items, Bell said, were donated by the Houlton Eastern Star, a local chapter of an international women’s fraternal organization that disbanded in the town about eight years ago.
“All old families go back to the Putnams,” said Cummings, who noted that the town was named after Joseph Houlton because he had the most land. But, he added, “There’s no question when you look back at the genealogy and the early writings that the real boss of the organization was Joseph’s mother-in-law, Lydia Trask Putnam.”
Cummings said she was the one everyone turned to when there was any type of illness and that she was the matriarch of the family.