Homage at a home altar: the golden wedding anniversary of Asa and Sarah Packer
Date
1997
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This study examines the nineteenth*century social and physical context of the Asa Packer Mansion in Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe), Pennsylvania- Asa Packer, a coal and railroad company executive, and his wife Sarah built this Italianate villa in 1860 on a prominent bluff above the community. The mansion’s dominance over the surrounding landscape prompts questions about the Packers’ identity, and what motivated them to build this house. The influence o f their social peers is pertinent to this discussion, because the Packers strove to win their approval. It is also useful to consider how Asa and Sarah Packer communicated their status to Mauch Chunk residents. ☐ To understand what the mansion and its setting meant to the Packers, their peers, and local residents, this study focuses on one event which happened there. On January 23, 1878, members and close friends of the Packer family invited hundreds of guests to attend a celebration in honor of the couple’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. The cultural complexity of this event is revealed through analysis of two journeys: the Packers’ development as a social force in their community, and their guests’ procession through Mauch Chunk and into the mansion. The Packer Mansion was well suited for this type of inquiry, because only two generations lived in the house before it was set aside as a family memorial. Newspaper accounts contained in an anniversary scrapbook were another important primary source for this study. ☐ The results of this research show that Asa Packer saw the community as an extension of himself and that the mansion was at the center of his efforts to earn the admiration of his peers and fellow citizens. The Packers’ anniversary gala was a carefully planned ritual designed to display the family’s wealth and establish rules of membership in a new class. Moving through the landscape was an important part of the experience, because it reminded guests of the symbolic and material layers which separated the Packers from the outside world.