SpringfieldNewsSun.com

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Identified on a Pennsylvania House Museum reference card as item 51, the 25-by-19-by-14 travel trunk in the second-floor bedroom is showing its age.

Fur that once covered and protected its exterior is largely worn away; the hinges seem brittle.

Believed to have been made in the first half of the 19th century, its contents long since have been scattered.

But it still carries lessons about a term we've heard in the past few years but only sketchily understand: nation-building.

What does that mean?

How is it accomplished?

What is involved?

The answers the trunk provides were left to us by accident.

Given that the owner could have lined the wooden trunk with any kind of paper, why he or she chose to line it with reports of the proceedings of the legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is unclear.

The reports are from the spring of 1792, the last year of George Washington's first term as president — or, as the text in the trunk would put it: "The laft year George Wafhington'f firft term as prefident." S's were often written as F's.

Because of that, the pages provide the kind of look at the formative stages of the state and nation that documentaries on the development of a child in the womb reveal about humans.

Here are a few glimpses.

Who's on firft?

A Mr. Gallatin had introduced the bill on Jan. 25, 1792. Mr. Evans had seconded it. By spring, it was time for a second reading.

Given the way the bill reads, it may have taken that much time for the legislators to recover from the first reading, as this tortuous paragraph illustrates.

(To get through it, try counting the shalls along the way.)

"Resolved, that after a bill shall have been thus signed and returned to the House where it shall have originated, it shall be signed by the Speaker of that House and transmitted by the Clerk to the other House where it shall likewise after examination, be signed by the Speaker, and returned by the clerk to the House in which the bill shall have originated."

What seems like so much bureaucratic gobbledygook is, in fact, an attempt to set up standard operating procedures for the Pennsylvania legislature — to make sure both houses have the same versions of the bill and have agreed to it before sending it to the governor "for his approbation."

Not nearly as dramatic as the battles for Bunker Hill or Yorktown, such measures nonetheless are crucial to state- and nation-building. Figuring out how to dot the i's and cross the t's of legislation is an early step toward building confidence in the legislature.

More obviously necessary is another bill that came before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives the morning of Saturday, April 7, 1792.

The committee appointed for the purpose reported that they had, in conjunction with a committee of the Senate, compared the bill titled "A bill directing the time, place and manner of holding elections for Representatives of the people of this state in the Congress of the United States and the electors of a president and vice president of the United States."

Finding the bill correct, the same was "signed by the speaker," the account said.

Assuming the governor's approbation was forthcoming, the people of Pennsylvania were about to establish rules for electing their representatives in the national legislative and executive branches.

Another part of the foundation of democracy was about to be slid into place.

Other bafic bufineff

The titles of other bills in the chest indicate other parts of the state-building in the works in the Pennsylvania of 1792.

• "An act to appoint and authorize commissioners to build a courthouse and offices for preserving the records of the county of Dauphin, on the lot of land laid out for that purpose, in the borough of Harrisburg, and to appropriate the money now in the treasury of said county, with the emoluments of the Harrisburg ferry to discharge the expenses thereof."

The title indicates three things: 1) the need for a courthouse; 2) the need for money to build it; 3) the Harrisburg ferry as a good source of making up the difference between what the state had and the courthouse required.

• An act directing the sale of certain islands in the river Susquehanna also was read. The pages did not indicate what the funds would be used for or who would benefit, but it might be interesting to find out.

• Those who have traveled over the Chicago Skyway or any other toll roads or bridges will find familiar the title of this bill: "An act to authorize certain trustees to receive the tolls therein mentioned, from travellers and others going over the bridge erected over Connestogoe Creek, in Lancaster County, at the place where the Martrick Forge Road crosses the same, for a limited time, as amended in committee of the whole, was read the second time."

The words "for a limited time" may indicate the legislature's sensitivity to voter reaction to taxes and fees. But the act itself indicates a requirement for building a nation: bridges.

• The same kinds of concerns are reflected in "an act to enable the governor of this commonwealth to incorporate a company for making an artificial road from the city of Philadelphia to the borough of Lancaster."

Those who have visited Niagara Falls may remember a moment spent looking at a map of the area and coming to the realization that, in earlier times, the rivers served as the highways and superhighways of the day. It was in an attempt to gain more use from two natural highways by opening an artificial river that legislature was dealing with:

• "An act to enable the governor of the Commonwealth to incorporate a company for opening a canal and water communication between the rivers Delaware and Schuylkill."

The lining of the trunk in the Pennsylvania House tells us how a young state went about building the political, legal and transportation infrastructure of a new state and nation.

Poft fcript

That a trunk in the Pennsylvania House was fitted out with a lining carrying the proceedings from the Pennsylvania legislature seems fitting.

Historians' best guess is that the name of the Pennsylvania House is part of the story of nation building, as well.

Operated now by the Lagonda Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, the museum's Web site says the museum was given its original name by an early innkeeper "out of respect for his native state or out of a desire to attract the numerous Pennsylvanians traveling the National Road."

Many of those Pennsylvanians traveling the National Road were indeed involved in helping to build the rest of the nation.

Some of them helped to build the city of Springfield.

Perhaps best known are the Warders, a Philadelphia family that brought its traveling trunks to Springfield in 1830.

A generation later, the family name would appear on the letterhead of Warder, Bushnell and Glessner, a firm that produced agricultural machinery and a governor, and helped to build Springfield into a city of note on a growing nation's industrial map.

How they lined their trunks, we don't know.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.