I enjoyed many things about living in Manitowoc Wisconsin. We discovered there were 15 bars within a 20 minute walk from our house. I’m not kidding. The bars all had high chairs, because going to the bar was a family activity, so our second daughter who was born while we lived there was always included in any bar visit.
This is one family heirloom that I wish could find the family that gave it up.
The culture was very German, and perhaps the love of drinking beer with friends was genetically influenced.
Besides bars, Manitowoc had a lot of wonderful antique shops. Unlike prices on the East Coast where I live now, Manitowoc had wonderful shops where I could easily afford something vintage for my home. These antiques come with me when I moved to New Hampshire.
My husband jokes that some covered wagon must have carried those antiques over the mountains and prairies to Wisconsin. I simply had a moving truck bring them back. I don’t feel guilty at all for the old Thomas clock from Connecticut that made it back. I like the old hardware store cabinet with the beautiful pulls that came out of a Manitowoc store.
I do feel guilty about owning one item. It is an immigrants trunk. These are not found on the East Coast. But in the Mid West, immigrants often shipped trunks with beloved items from their homes in Europe to their new homes. The best examples of these trunks are in museums, or beloved by families.
My trunk was purchased at Viking Antinques. It was my favorite store, and I saw the owner unpacking this item. It is in rough shape, there are initial carved in the front and there are the usual dings and some damage to the paint at the bottom. I couldn’t imagine any family letting this trunk go, but was glad to purchase it for what I felt was a ridiculously low price. The owner of the shop told me the family had it up in their attic and since it wasn’t being used why not sell it?
It has served as a coffee table and held a television for a bit. Now it resides in my husband’s office, simply holding overflow papers. I am downsizing, getting ready for a move to a smaller home, and this trunk is on the “to go” list.
It has history with our family, being owned by us for almost 20 years, but that’s not our name on front. The writing is beautiful. I’m glad the trunk made it to Green Bay, which is a city in the Brown County, but I wonder where the descendants of these early immigrants are today.
The sides have hand made metal handles. From Europe to the Mid West to New Hampshire. It’s out of place here.
I wonder how things worked out for Christine, Nicoline and Leu (?) in Nord Amerika. I take it things went well enough that someone took care of their trunk for all those years. I’ve never met an Ingeborg family, or I would have probably given them the trunk.
Still, I have enjoyed it, but wish the trunk could somehow make it back to Wisconsin, Green Bay,Staat Brown, Wisconsin, Nord Amerika.
The family in Manitowoc, we could possibly all be going to one of the many local bars!
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Categories: Family, General Stuff!
Two Different Girls 
Hi Kitty,
Ingeborg is a Nordic name, not a surname, which was more popular in the first half of the 1900. I’ve never heard of the name Leu so that might be a surname. Good luck to the trunk finding its way back home!
Regards,
Sofia
Well, I second Sofia’s remark. My sister is Ingrid, which is the anglicization of Ingeborg — so the family name must be Leu. That raises the odds that the family might be found! What a lovely piece of history to own — maybe somebody who has already signed up to ancestry.com or the equivalent can track them down?