Antique toolbox: Can you guess how this Landis Valley Museum tool was used?

This month's mystery tool comes from the collection of artifacts at the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum.

Landis Valley curator Jennifer Royer says it’s 14 3/4 inches tall, 7 3/4 inches wide and 3/4 inch in depth.

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Do you know what it was used for?

If you think you do, send your guess to Mary Ellen Wright at features@lnpnews.com, with “Antique Toolbox” in the subject line, or mail to Mary Ellen Wright/Antique Toolbox, LNP Media Group, P.O. Box 1328, Lancaster, PA 17608-1328.

Important: Please include your full name and the town you live in with your guess.

Guesses are due by Monday, Jan. 15. We’ll reveal the correct answer in LNP and on LancasterOnline on Friday, Jan. 26.

Antique toolbox november tool 2023 — LANDIS VALLEY VILLAGE AND FARM MUSEUM

Last month's mystery tool: A corn germinating box

While we had plenty of interesting guesses as to the identity of November’s mystery tool — from the collection of the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum — we had just one correct guess.

Jennifer Royer, museum curator at Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum, says that the tool is a corn germinating test box, made circa 1900, from International Harvester Co.

To test corn kernels to be used in a season’s planting, farmers would deposit in each little section a seed and wet sawdust made from soft, coarse-grain wood, Royer says.

The box was part of International Harvester Co.’s appeal to all farmers to test every ear of corn to be used in the upcoming year’s planting.

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Martin Greenleaf of Kirkwood, who identified the artifact correctly, remembers his family using a box like this.

“You put, say, 100 seeds in, cover with a wet cloth and in about a week, count how many have sprouted,” Greenleaf writes in an email. “If 74 sprouted out of 100, that is 74% germination. We did it every year with clover seed, which we grew on our farm.”

n Best guesses: Egg candler, sorter or collector; soap mold; rack for storing spools of thread; eyeglass display case.

Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum, a living history site exploring aspects of Pennsylvania German farming culture, is at 2451 Kissel Hill Road in Manheim Township.