If you have never been to the Christian Sanderson House Museum in Chadds Ford, GO!
We guarantee you will smile. Maybe chuckle and you will certainly be amazed by the man—a man we nominate as the Delaware Valley’s all-time, premier hoarder/ collector.
Born in 1882, Sanderson died at age 84 in 1966 amid huge piles of stuff he had been saving since he was a child. However, Sanderson was more than a nutty pack rat. He was a beloved neighbor, school teacher, radio personality for four decades, musician, historian and popular lecturer.
Among Sanderson’ neighbors were artists N.C. and Andrew Wyeth. He was the subject of several Wyeth paintings. The Wyeths also gave him paintings, prints, drawing and every year a Wyeth-made Christmas card.
He saved goofy stuff from his own life and real treasurers.
There is a matchstick used to light birthday candles, painted Easter eggs starting from 1886, his baby highchair from 1882, the handles from a suitcase he took to college in 1898.
Yes, he even saved the class rosters from the country schools where he taught and notes from parents: “please excuse Mary on account of planting potatoes.”
He saved the pencil he used to vote for Alf Langdon for president n 1936.
Crazy stuff like a piece of paper where Sanderson wrote: “Written with my Waterman pen on May 6, 1935, the day Frank Waterman, company president died”
But he collected all sorts of real historical artifacts:
A piece of a bullet-shattered fence from the Battle of Gettysburg, the purse of the only woman killed at Gettysburg. Posters and photos by the thousands: reward poster for the missing Lindbergh baby, election poster from 1882 for Benjamin Harrison.
He collected weapons galore from ever war starting with the Revolution, cannon balls, arrowheads, musical instruments, a rock from Iwo Jima, a piece of Fort Ticonderoga, a small part from the airplane that crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945 and a small part from Lindbergh’s famous Spirit of St Louis airplane.
Sanderson started organizing his collection in only two of the many small rooms in his house. His friends saved the house and organized the collection. It would consume endless hours to see everything.