First Lutheran Church and the Chippendale Sofa

Sometime around 1890, members of Carlisle’s First Lutheran Church decided to create a ladies’ parlor, and one of their members donated a sofa to furnish it. Years later, when new furniture was purchased for the parlor, “the sofa was carried to the furnace room where the janitor used it for a bed.”¹ Eventually, the janitor moved the sofa to an unused portion of the basement where it sat gathering dust for years.

In the spring of 1930, a char-woman was cleaning the basement and dragged the sofa out. The church council decided to get rid of it, but before it was carted away they offered the sofa to members of the church. No one wanted it. Word got out to the public, and a week later someone offered 50 cents for it; then someone else offered $2.50. Within two weeks, antique dealers were calling from surrounding states and the offers were up to $500. Henry Ford even asked the church to send a description of the sofa.²

This was too good a prize to pass up, and thieves attempted to steal the sofa. In June, they unscrewed a portion of the wire screen covering one of the church's cellar windows, but they were either scared off, or they realized that the sofa was too big to fit through the window. In either case, when church officials discovered the attempted break in they were afraid another attempt might be made so they locked the sofa in a closet. After much discussion, they decided to put the sofa up for auction.

The auction took place on July 7, 1930 on the east lawn of the church. Nearly two hundred people attended the sale. The first bidder, at $500, was York collector and dealer Joe Kindig who dropped out at $650.³ When the bidding was over, the sofa was knocked down for $1,006⁴ to two Lebanon, Pennsylvania antique dealers, Levi J. Gilbert and Clayton Klinefelter. Reports of the sale were published in many Pennsylvania newspapers, and the new owners proudly displayed the sofa in the window of Mr. Gilbert’s store in Lebanon.⁵

The sofa had been the talk of the town for some weeks, and it was learned that it had been given to the church by the late William Egolf and his sister Barbara.⁶ “They conducted a boarding house for very many years, known as the Egolf House, which was patronized by refined and well to do people on account of its excellence. Miss Egolf was the central feature in the household and a fine hostess.”⁷ After William’s death, Barbara ran the boarding house until 1902 when she sent its furniture to auction. She died in Carlisle on June 9, 1909 without knowing that the sofa she donated to the church where she was baptized would bring its congregation such an unexpected gift. Where is the sofa now?