A secret trunk reveals the accounts of an influential woman

Elizabeth Willing Powel is an American intellectual whose correspondence and personal documents have largely survived through the centuries. In late 2016 or early 2017, a descendant of John Hare unearthed an unpublished collection of 256 pages hidden in a double-bottomed trunk. This archival collection, composed of autograph registers and inventories, was transmitted to the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks.