Jennie Hunter Rooms
Once belonging to a pioneer family of San Joaquin County, these period rooms are arranged as they would have been in the 1860s-70s. Anthony and Eliza McGill Hunter, both natives of Ireland, established a grain farm near Linden, California, Their daughter, Jennie, was a successful business woman who attended Stockton Business College and Mills College, and after her father’s death she managed the family’s ranch. These rooms were part of the family’s home until Jennie’s death in 1946 at which time they were donated to the museum.
The Victorian furniture in the four rooms, which include a parlor, back parlor, and two complete bedrooms, dates back over 150 years. Souvenirs from the family’s travels, highly ornamental draperies, and marble fireplaces accent the spaces. Personal touches like family portraits, hand embroidered quilts, hair styling tools, crocheted chamber pot cozies, and vintage sheet music paint a picture of how this middle-class California family lived during the Victorian-era.