HATFIELD — A Hadley chest engraved prominently with the initials A.M., made in 1694 as a gift from a father to his soon-to-be-married son, has been returned to Hatfield, after some 50 years of being cared for by a North Carolina couple.

On Thursday, Paul and Katharine “Kit” Ervin, longtime Waynesville, North Carolina, residents now living in Florida, formally presented the nearly 330-year-old piece to the Hatfield Historical Society, after arriving in town following a two-day drive.

“I’m really thrilled there is so much interest,” Paul Ervin said after the society held a welcoming reception for the early American board chest at its storage room inside the DiamondBack Properties building on Elm Street.

“We wanted to make sure this got to the place where it should be,” Ervin said. “This is it.”

Meg Baker, curator for the Hatfield Historical Museum, said she is “overjoyed” at receiving the gift.

“I think it’s a treasure,” Baker said, adding that a testament to how important the Hadley chest is was shown by more than a dozen people coming out for the midday ceremony.

Made by a Colonial-era woodcarver, the Hadley chest is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an early American chest that has three panels in the front, a well, and one, two or rarely three drawers, and that is ornamented over the entire front with flat carving, usually involving a tulip motif and sometimes including the initials of the owner.”

Baker said it will be an important addition to a collection for which many of the surviving relics of that time period are related to war. “It’s magnificent to have an item from that era that is about love and family,” Baker said.

Baker also observed that Bob Osley, president of the historical society, is himself a woodworker, and his eyes lit up as he examined how the chest was built, particularly its hinge construction.

While the Ervins have been stewards for the board chest, placing a glass surface on top to protect it from damage as they used it in living rooms at three homes, it was by chance that they gained possession of the chest.

“It was in my mother’s basement when my dad passed away,” Paul Ervin said. “I thought it was just an old chest until I found the details about how it was made for Abraham Morton.”

That was about 25 years ago when he discovered a paper inside that provided a narrative of its history, detailing its passage from fathers to sons in Hatfield throughout the 1700s and 1800s, ending with the possession of Charles Kellogg Morton, as his sons died before him. The chest then passed out of the family and left Hatfield.

“That was the end of the line,” Ervin said.

How it came to the Ervins is explained by his father being a family lawyer for the Randolph sisters in North Carolina. When the elderly women died, his father bought the chest from their estate. It’s possible that the Randolph sisters were nieces of Charles Morton or his wife, Mary, as one of the records states, “purchased from Aunt Molly, May 1931.”

Baker suggested the possibility that Mary Kellogg, who also died in 1931, may have been called Molly. “Molly is a common nickname for Mary,” Baker said.

Paul Ervin, 83, said his research didn’t begin in earnest until about three years ago when he had curiosity about the lineage of the board chest and found it was a wedding gift from Richard Morton of Hatfield to his son, Abraham Morton, as he was about to be married to Sarah Root Kellogg.

“They built the chest in Hadley as a wedding present for Abraham,” Ervin said.

Finding the Hatfield connection, and an active historical society, Ervin’s first contact was with Wayne Schlegel, a volunteer with the society, who put him in touch with Baker. That began the process of discovering if there was interest in taking the chest. The Ervins are moving to Florida to downsize, but they considered keeping the chest in storage.

“We wanted to see the town and to meet the people here,” Ervin said.

Baker said similar Hadley chests are found in Memorial Hall in Historic Deerfield, but often the ones displayed there are from a later period and also more decorative and taller, as chests made for women were more elaborate and fancier than the simple and lower board chests constructed for men.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime donation,” Baker said. “When Paul told me the story of how the Morton chest came to be in his care, I was entranced. That he would offer it to the museum is just fantastic.”

While initially the chest will be held in storage, Baker said she expects it to become a cornerstone of a coming exhibit and programming at the museum centered on the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026, when people will be interested in seeing Colonial-era artifacts.

Ervin said he is interested in the possibility that the Mortons are descendants of George Morton, who helped write the first account in Great Britain of the founding of Plymouth Colony following the arrival of the Mayflower, and also related details about the first Thanksgiving after he arrived on the ship Anne.

There is so much study still to be done, including potential leads to follow, that Paul Ervin suggested that it might make for a good local college student project.

Baker said there also are connections to stories from Hatfield’s early days, and studying the construction and the chest’s latches could identify who built it.

“If we could find the maker, that would be amazing,” Baker said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.]]>