Photograph: Waldemere with Nancy Fish-Barnum's personal notes, "A corner of my bedroom at Waldemere"

Photograph of corner of Nancy Fish-Barnum's bedroom at Waldemere, P.T. Barnum’s third home which sat along the Long Island Sound.  The back of the photograph features a description by Fish-Barnum. Photographed by Charles Baker in 1888 . The back of the photograph features a description by Fish-Barnum. Transcription:” As you enter my room your skirts brush against the foot board of the bed.  The bed is drapered with pale blue brocaded silk hangings and lace curtains.  The counterpane is white with a colored vine.  The chair by the bed is of a pale blue brocade.  The dressing table has a white ewer, white satin buckskin [?] and many pretty trifles that don’t show, including photographs.  In the dressing table mirror you see reflected the wall left [?] of the fire-place, the mantle, and the mantel mirror, and the ornaments in the shelves of each side of the mantel mirror.  Study the reflected mantel mirror, and you will find reflected in that, pictures and ornaments in the wall.  The fire-place is really exactly opposite the foot of the bed, being on your right as you enter the room.” Nancy Fish-Barnum sent these images the Joshua Cunliffe family, friends of hers who lived in England. The photographs transferred to the possession of Frank Worrall (d. 1947) at some point, and were then obtained by Desmond Eccleston from the Worrall estate. Eccleston owned Paul Quentin Antiques in Blackford Bridge, Bury, Lancashire, England. The photographs came to the attention of Barnum Museum curator Kenneth B. Holmes, who purchased them on behalf of the museum while in England for Christmas vacation in December 1970. An article about the initial discovery of the photographs were published in the Bridgeport Sunday Post on 24 January, 1971.