top of page
  • Writer's picturesteinermp1980

Solving the mystery of the 100-year-old family trunk in the attic

During the summer, our patio is home to a rather beat-up primitive steamer trunk with a rusty clasp that doesn't quite connect the top to the bottom. Inside the trunk is a collection of seeds, weeds, and other plant detritus. Some might question our use of the piece as decor, but there's a story behind the trunk. Actually, there are two separate but connected stories.

In 1923, my grandparents, Dr. S.F. and Sylvia Tschantz Pannabecker and their 1-year-old son, Richard (my dad), left the U.S. for the beginning of 20 years as educators and missionaries to China. Their luggage, including a steamer trunk, accompanied them on the long trip via passenger ship.


After 20 years (including several furloughs home) they returned to the U.S. permanently, staying in various homes, including a summer stay in a house in Bluffton. Presumably, the trunk followed them to Bluffton. At that point, apparently no one in the family gave it another thought.


Fast forward almost 80 years: One of my friends in her 20s bought a fixer upper on Lawn Avenue, just one block east of our house. She began cleaning up the property, carefully renovating the house. One day she ventured into the attic of the small barn at the back of her property, where she found a treasure. Well, she thought it was a treasure -- others likely would have called it junk and thrown it out. But she saw a familiar name printed on the top of what is actually a very old trunk. What confused her is that the address on the trunk is Kibler St., Bluffton, not Lawn Ave.

She sent a message to one of the few persons in town with the same last name that is on the trunk (me) to see if I could identify S.F. Pannabecker and why the trunk was in her barn. This is one example of why small towns are so valuable in terms of genealogical history. Everyone knows someone related to someone with an obscure last name.


My connection to S.F. established, she immediately decided I should have the trunk. End of story? Not exactly. My dad had died 20 years earlier, but his little sister was still living and had settled in town after she and her husband retired after a long career as missionaries to Japan. I hoped she'd be able to explain the trunk.


It turned out that she and my grandparents (my dad and uncle were in college) had spent one summer living in the home now owned by my friend, where the trunk had been stored in the barn's attic. When they moved into the house on Kibler, the trunk must have stayed behind. When she saw it so many years later, she just grinned. They had taken multiple pieces of luggage with them on the ships, and each was labeled by name, home address, and numbered.

The mystery remains as to why they left the trunk there. Maybe they simply forgot it or (conveniently) failed to take it. Either way, we think it's an interesting conversation piece for the patio and a fun reminder of the value of storytelling. If it falls apart, that's okay. My dad wasn't very sentimental about "things" and would have said we'd done our part of caring for it.

103 views2 comments

Recent Posts

See All
Post: Blog2_Post
bottom of page