By ERIC C. RODENBERG
AntiqueWeek Associate Editor

LIVONIA, N.Y. — Throughout his lifetime, 60-year-old William H. Pickard had heard of the family business, the Pickard Trunk Co. of Livonia, N.Y.

The company only existed for two years, 1927-1929, manufacturing trunks that were fitted onto the rear of automobiles. This was a time before such compartments were actually incorporated into the body of the car; a time when trunks and car heaters were considered an “accessory.”

Pickard has no idea how many of the trunks were produced before the company became another victim of the Great Depression (and automotive design).

It wasn’t until a few years ago that Pickard, who works as assistant curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society, actually saw one of the trunks. He now owns three of them, including one which showed up at a flea market in Germany.

One day Pickard decided to post his e-mail address on a Livonia website. Less than an hour later, a man in Berlin, Germany, ran an Internet search to see if he could find information about a trunk he had just purchased.

“He wasn’t sure why he was buying it, but he did. It was much too large for his apartment. When he returned home he looked on the Internet and found my posting and contacted me.

“It was only a matter of an hour or less between when I posted my e-mail address and when he looked. He later told me that if he hadn’t found a definite contact he would have taken the trunk back to the flea market and resold it. His girlfriend said it was karma that he purchased it in the first place.”

Getting it back to the United States was another story.
With he and the buyer working both ends of the deal, the best they could come up with was about $700 for overweight air freight. Fortuitously, a friend of Pickard’s was assigned a business trip to Zurich, he got the trunk shipped to Switzerland and his friend was able to bring it back to the United States as extra luggage.
In all, he got it home for about $250. “It has a few scuffs and nicks, but it is in very sound condition overall for something that was made 80 years ago and had traveled halfway around the world.”

Pickard’s grandfather Henry Morse Pickard began making luggage, doctor’s bags, radio cabinets and other leather objects in the mid-1920s, employing skilled carpenters and leatherworkers. However, he and a partner turned their attention to this new invention – the automobile – which was revolutionizing American society. In the years leading up to the Depression, there were hundreds – if not thousands – of auto manufacturers, most of them settled in the Midwest.

The “Roaring 20s” was a boom time; everything looked bright, especially for the Pickard Trunk Co., which was producing trunks for Ford, Chevrolet and other companies, including the Pierce-Arrow company in nearby Buffalo, N.Y.

Headlines from the Livonia Gazette of Jan. 18, 1929 read: “Pickard Trunk Co. Prospects Very Bright, Says Manager E.B. Steele”
Speaking to the town’s Chamber of Commerce: “Mr. Steele spoke briefly, but in large figures, following the supper and a program of singing and informal remarks,” the story reads.

Steele tells the Chamber that employees now number 53, with projections of 250 employees needed within three months to produce more than 10,000 trunks a week. Among the “aftermarket accessories” within the industry, there “are now only two real moneymakers left,” Steele is quoted as saying, “the heater and the trunk.”

But Steele’s projects were either overly optimistic or hyperbole. By mid-1929, the company was no more.  The optimistic expansion, the Depression and finally, the incorporation of trunks (and even heaters) into the automobile changed the lives of many individuals and companies going into the Depression years.

“I guess it’s the archaeologist part of me that helps me appreciate the way things were done back in the day,” Pickard says. “… finding out about the history of my grandfather’s trunks has been one of the more interesting tasks I have undertaken.”

During the past year, Pickard has picked up leads to trunks from just about every part of the country.

“I’ve found several of them located on the West Coast,” he says. “I think it was kind of a Grapes of Wrath type thing, is how many of them got out there.”

Most of the trunks have been found in attics, barns, and sheds, Pickard said. The quality of the carpentry, upholstery and hardware is such that they have endured many of the tests of time.
“I think old Henry Morse Pickard would be pleasantly surprised to find there was still an active interest in his handiwork 80 some years after the fact,” Pickard says.