Provenance

For those fans of Antiques Road Show, you always hear the hosts discussing Provenance, establishign the place of orgin. For us vintage owners, this is ideally finding records or documents authenticating the history of the trailers ownership. It's also a bit of fun aluminum geneology. My compatriot, Steve H, is working hard to establish the provenance of his 56' caravanner. So in the spirit of provence, I have included a type written note that I found wedged between the water tank and the floor. I found it when I pulled the interior apart.

From this letter I can surmise that the trailer has been in New England since at least 1966 and seems to have stuck around in the Berkshires and the Pioneer valley. Further the writer appears to be a preacher and maybe used the trailer to travel and preach at the same time. That would assume that the writer never sent this letter to the owners of the Airstream, but if the letter was sent it's harder to know where it was, except there was a grandchild named Emily.

In the letter the writer describes traveling to Pittsfield, MA from Goshen. From Pittsfield to Goshen is about 28 miles each way according to google and that would line up with his estimate of 58 miles round trip. I know that there is a 4-H (camp howe) in Goshen and I recall that there was also a Baptist camp on the same lake. I wonder if the trailer spent any time there???

A little more background on my trailer, the owner before me bought it from a person in Agawam, MA as part of a purchase of a camp site and then the trailer was transported to Holliston where it had sat for the last couple years. With the passing of his wife, the PO indicated to me that he did not have the energy or the drive to work on it any longer. He wanted to see the trailer go to someone who would restore it.

Here it is now (well actually at GSM) and now I have to figure out if I'm going to make it something that the prior owners would recognize or something new. Decisions...

I wonder if I could track down who Emily is. I recall her name scribbled on the underpart of the bed with the surname Ambler. Emily Ambler and her grandmother or mother was named Pearl. hmmmmm
Doug