On Thursday, October 17, Brunk Auctions, located in Asheville, North Carolina, will auction items originally from a local historic home. The Nanticoke Historic Preservation Alliance, in collaboration with the Trippe family, is working to bring those items back to the Eastern Shore.
Extraordinary architectural paneling from three rooms of the Henry Trippe house, built in the 18th century in Secretary, Dorchester County, will be auctioned. The rooms are currently owned by the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York, where they are part of the museum’s decorative arts collection.
Henry Trippe, a landowner and political figure, called his house ‘Carthegena’; it is also known as ‘My Lady Sewall’s Manor’. In 1917 the paneling to be auctioned Thursday was removed from the house and installed at the Brooklyn Museum.
This and more information about Henry Trippe’s ‘Carthegena’ is available online at the Maryland Historical Trust archive (apps.mht.maryland.gov/medusa/PDF/Dorchester/D-5.pdf)
If Nanticoke Historic Preservation Alliance is successful in its bid for the rooms, they will be incorporated into historic Handsell’s ‘Three Cultures Center’. Here the rooms will be available to the public, promoting local architecture and history.
Handsell was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008; it is located in Vienna, Dorchester County, Maryland, about 15 miles southeast of Secretary. Handsell is also an architecturally significant structure. Together the Henry Trippe house rooms and Handsell would be an educational resource to help us all better understand the history of Dorchester County, the Eastern Shore, and Maryland.
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