Local historian and Guthrie County Historical Village Foundation Board Member Rod Stanley recently took about a dozen spectators into the past. Stanley presented the contents of a 1920s travelling wardrobe trunk at the Panora Public Library Tuesday. The trunk belonged to Florence Mae Linn of Atlantic.

The Indestructo trunk contained several items the only child would carry with her during train trips. The location and history of the trunk remained unclear for about 50 years, until 1975, when the Pantier family of Perry purchased a warehouse in Atlantic. They owned a storage and moving company and brought the trunk back to Perry. When the Pantier family contacted Linn’s daughter about the trunk, she thought it was a scam and told the family to keep it. The family kept the trunk until 2002 when they donated it to the Forest Park Museum in Perry.

Stanley talks about getting the opportunity to explore the contents of the trunk. “Every time that I do this program and start digging around in the trunk I do find something different. It just tells me another part of this person’s life…From the 20’s and the 30s when you find stuff that’s not being used, with the price tag still on it, it’s just really cool as a historian.

Some of the contents in the trunk included: a letter from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, several pairs of gloves, memorabilia from Northwestern University in Chicago, and Christmas wrapping paper. Stanley believes Linn may have been an aspiring dress designer who probably never returned to Atlantic after graduating high school.