Niederkorn column 7-13-24: The allure of a mystery box

At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson, we never know who will walk through the door with an intriguing document or item — and in this case, it was Doris Dace, a friend who is on the board at Old McKendree Church in Jackson and is generally very knowledgeable about local history. On this particular Monday, Doris brought us a small, lightweight wooden box, kidney shaped, roughly 6 by 3 inches, with a small drawer. “Cape Girardeau MO” was drawn across the top, with a sketch of three yellow roses in the middle. Then, Doris showed me, under the drawer was an inscription reading “From Noah to Cassa, 9-1-41.”

Since “Noah” was a fairly unusual name for the time period, I checked familysearch.org for World War II registration cards from Cape Girardeau with that first name. I got a manageable number of hits and narrowed it down to those prior to September 1941.

Several Noahs had already married when they registered: Noah Hunter to Mary, Vester Noah Huffman to Sadie, Noah Hopkins to Beulah, Noah Baldus to Katherine, Noah Hale, Noah Caler to Julia.

One possibility, Elven Noah Nobles, was not already married. I couldn’t find a marriage record for him, though, which while not conclusive, was also a dead end.

Maybe I was making incorrect assumptions. Maybe, I thought, the box was purchased locally, and Noah could have decorated it. I thought it was pretty exotic looking for a Missouri-made piece from the 1940s, but September 1941 was a few months before the United States officially entered World War II, with the attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. Maybe he got it from a vendor at the SEMO District Fair, I thought.

Except, thanks to a “From the Morgue” article by Sharon Sanders, I learned that the 1941 SEMO District Fair was held later in September, so that didn’t wash either.

Inside the box were colorful marks, too bright to be from makeup (probably). I took a deep sniff of the box’s interior, and it did smell faintly waxy, as if from crayons, so possibly this box had held crayons or pastel sticks. The box could have been a gift from a father to a daughter, then, but again, not super helpful in establishing the original owner’s identity.

I did think it was interesting that the box is decorated with a small cluster of yellow roses, as yellow roses signify friendship, but moreover, Cape Girardeau’s nickname is the City of Roses, so I thought that was both interesting and significant. The city once had several groupings of roses planted along Highway 61. Planting began in the 1920s, and the “Ten-Mile Rose Garden” flourished until it didn’t -- maintaining roses is not as easy as maintaining a grass median, for example, and eventually the roadside roses went away. That wasn’t until the 1960s, though, so in 1941, yellow roses would have been perfectly emblematic of Cape Girardeau.

This box will have a new home one way or the other -- if Noah or Cassa has living descendants who would be interested in having the box back, we’d be happy to hear from them, or we’ll move it along to a museum where it can be properly cared for and potentially displayed to the public as part of a future exhibit.

Related articles:

semissourian.com/blogs/fromthemorgue/entry/67038

semissourian.com/blogs/pavementends/entry/35350

Marybeth Niederkorn is the director of the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center in Jackson. She is a member of various societies devoted to the region’s history, and is on Jackson’s Historic Preservation Commission. Educated at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, she holds degrees in philosophy and professional writing.