By: Carla Eilo 2019
With the History Museum being closed for the season, we are excited to plan a new Lake Placid timeline exhibit for the 2016 season. This exhibit will be featured in the space best known to visitors as the General Store.
The General Store exhibit shares so many of the domestic items in our collection, ranging from cookware, medicines, and personal items. I enjoy learning about these everyday items that were used. What was fashionable? What made people’s lives easier? What do we still use?
As the staff is preparing for the new exhibit by moving and relocating items, I realized there were a number of items with which I wasn’t familiar. There are some artifacts that really sparked my interest.
Portable Pantry
If you have been to the History Museum throughout the years and perused the General Store exhibit, you may have noticed a large tin object sitting on top of the corner of the counter, set against the wall. It stands 3.5 feet tall and has two large top cylinders with a painted decoration of two white lilies, and the words “Portable Pantry.” The left cylinder appears to be a sift for flour. The right cylinder has a built-in crank and was used to grind coffee beans. Between the two are removable containers for storing spices. Underneath are compartments labeled, “extracts, flour, sugar, meal, bread, and cake.” Upon further inspection, looking at the side it is inscribed, “Pat’d Apr 13 ’97 & Oct 5th ’97. Portable Pantry Co.”
Although the Portable Pantry was patented in 1897, it was 1898 that was a busy year for the company. Advertisements, news articles, and announcements can be found mentioning the product being shown in various communities and sold for $15 apiece.
A Gilliam County Oregon newspaper advertises the pantries being sold at a “D.M. Sechler Wagons, Hacks and Buggies” in 1899. The term “Portable Pantry” alludes to those who might own the item are on the move and the term “Chuck Wagon Pantry” is often associated with these storage units. I am sure there were people and families who utilized the pantries as such, especially with the sales primarily being in the western states, where people were often on the move. However, the advertising focused mainly on the woman of the household and the convenience and cleanliness it brought by storing the food staples in one unit.
This item gained quick popularity, and there were many other companies that manufactured the same item, but slightly varied. Other models could be equipped with safes, clocks and mirrors, making it quite convenient. One of the other large and well-known companies was called the Perfect Pantry, Co., which happened to use the same business model as the Portable Pantry, Co.
The companies of these products would sell territories to men who would then become the representatives of the corporation. The territories were meant for one salesman who would work out of an established business or office in the town. One advertisement announces the sale of Portable Pantries by A.E. Almond, who was working out of Frank Six’s jewelry store in Wellington, Kansas. If an office wasn’t available, salesmen would make door-to-door calls trying to sell the product.
As you can imagine, being the sole salesman for a territory could be a risky venture. You are giving the company money to purchase the claim on your sales territory. On June 17, 1898, the San Juan Times reported that Mr. A.M. Larimer of the Portable Pantry Co. was arrested because there was an allegation of his selling territory that had previously been sold to other parties. By the June 24 edition of the paper, he was cleared of these charges and “was able to establish the fact that he was guilty of no intentional fraud in the sale of territory,” and the case was dismissed.
The occurrence with Larimer may have been a mistake; however, in December 1905 the largest competitor, the Perfect Pantry, Co., made the papers for the same reason. In Billings, Montana, two men rented an office and quickly sold a large quantity of their pantries. As they completed sales contracts, they would talk about selling their territories in passing and talking up their sales and how there was an opportunity to make a lot of money. The residents of Billings started purchasing the “territories” in neighboring states and quickly found out four or five other men had purchased the same tracts when they arrived to the towns. The two salesmen left Billings quickly but not before securing $18,000 from the sales of the fraudulent territories.
If instances like these didn’t slow down business for the pantry salesmen, the popularity of the Hoosier Cabinet did. These cabinets became available to purchase in the early 1900s and remained a staple of kitchens into the 1920s. They were a standalone piece of furniture and not only was it a pantry, but included a tabletop surface to work on. As quickly as the smaller portable pantries became a staple in smaller kitchens, it went out of fashion.