In late November 2025, a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of American History opened a cardboard box that had arrived with a handwritten note from an elderly woman named Dorothy Callahan. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was a sepia-toned studio photograph dated 1915. It showed a formal family portrait: a distinguished man seated in an ornate wooden chair, a woman in a high-necked lace dress beside him, and three children arranged around them. The room behind them spoke of wealth, with Persian rugs, gilded paintings, and velvet curtains.
But it was the chair that stopped the curator cold. Carved into the wooden crest directly behind the man’s head was a half sun with rays extending upward above a horizon line, the same symbol that adorned the famous Rising Sun chair used by George Washington during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The curator called in Marcus Williams, the museum’s leading expert on 18th-century American furniture, who confirmed her suspicion within minutes. The photograph appeared to show a private replica of the Rising Sun chair in someone’s home, a discovery completely unknown to historians.
The original chair still rested in Independence Hall, preserved behind glass, where Benjamin Franklin had supposedly remarked that he had long wondered whether the sun on its backrest was rising or setting, concluding after the Constitution was signed that it was indeed a rising sun. The idea that a wealthy family had commissioned and displayed their own copy in 1915 was extraordinary. The curator visited Dorothy Callahan at her modest row house in the Fishtown neighborhood. Dorothy identified the family in the photograph: her great-grandfather William Hartley, a prominent Philadelphia banker; his wife Catherine; and their three children, William Jr.
, Robert, and little Elizabeth. She recalled her grandmother Elizabeth telling her stories about the day the portrait was taken, how the children had to sit perfectly still for nearly an hour. Dorothy also remembered something else. Her grandmother once mentioned that the chair was her father’s most prized possession, a gift from someone important, but that it had disappeared after William died in 1932 and no one knew what became of it.
Research in the archives of the First Pennsylvania Bank, which had absorbed Hartley & Sons Bank, uncovered a letter from February 1915. Written on stationery from the Harrison Family Trust, it thanked William Hartley for his discretion and financial expertise in managing the trust for a special commission project, and it confirmed that the chair would be delivered to his residence as a token of appreciation. William Hartley had not simply owned the replica; he had financed its creation. The Harrison family had commissioned it, and he had received the chair as his reward for keeping the project secret.
Tracking descendants of the Hartley children led to David Hartley, a grandson of Robert Hartley, living in Boston. David explained that after William died, his children fought over who should inherit the chair. William Jr. claimed it as the eldest son, but Elizabeth, the daughter, then only 24, argued that the piece was too historically significant to remain in private hands.
She convinced her brothers to let her preserve it somewhere safe and sworn them to secrecy about its location. Elizabeth Hartley had become a historian and one of the founding members of the Philadelphia Historical Society. The curator realized where she would have taken the chair. At the Historical Society’s townhouse in Society Hill, the head archivist led her to the basement archives.
There, in the restricted section, they found a record for item H237: a mahogany chair in 18th-century style, donated by Elizabeth Hartley in 1935, sealed by donor request and not to be opened or examined until January 1st, 2025. That date was only weeks away, but given the proven provenance, an exception was made. In a secure vault in the sub-basement, they removed a canvas tarp and found the chair, its mahogany surface perfectly preserved, the carved sun on its backrest glowing under the vault lights. Tucked into a carved recess behind the seat was an envelope marked to be opened with the chair.
Inside was a letter in Elizabeth Hartley’s handwriting, dated October 15th, 1935. She explained that after her father’s death, her brothers had disagreed over the chair’s fate, one wanting to display it, the other to sell it. She had believed neither was appropriate. The chair represented the faith of two men, Jonathan Harrison III and her father, in the enduring promise of American democracy.
She had donated it with the condition that it remain sealed for 90 years, trusting that enough time would pass for it to be studied and appreciated for what it truly was: not a forgery, but a deliberate act of historical preservation created in an era of global crisis. The curator also sought to identify the craftsmen who had built the chair. Catherine Hartley’s personal letters, preserved by Dorothy, contained an August 1915 account of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Russia coming to the house to ensure the chair had survived its journey. Their names were Thomas Brennan, Giovanni Rossi, and Jacob Friedman.
Immigration records and city directories revealed their stories: Brennan had fled poverty in County Cork; Rossi had brought centuries-old woodcarving techniques from southern Italy; Friedman had escaped religious persecution in Russia. Together, they had studied the original chair in Independence Hall, taken precise measurements, and recreated it in secret, sworn to silence, knowing their masterpiece would sit in a private parlor rather than a museum. In January 2025, the Philadelphia Museum of American History opened an exhibition titled Two Suns Rising, The Secret History of America’s Most Symbolic Chair. It displayed the replica chair, the 1915 family photograph, Catherine’s letters, Elizabeth’s sealed letter, and documentation of the craftsmen.
Dorothy Callahan attended with her extended family, moved to see her great-grandparents and grandmother honored. Among the visitors was an elderly man whose grandfather had been Giovanni Rossi. He told the curator his family had never known the master carver had created something so important. The discovery sparked wider conversation about how Americans in later generations related to the founding era.
In 1915, as World War I raged in Europe, a banker, a philanthropist, and immigrant craftsmen had decided that the symbol of the Rising Sun needed to be preserved and duplicated. Documents from the Harrison family showed Jonathan Harrison III writing in his diary that the replica was not a copy but a commitment, a private symbol reminding citizens of their responsibilities to the nation. The replica chair found a permanent home in the museum, where it continued to draw crowds. Descendants of the craftsmen came forward, donating their own family artifacts.
The story, hidden for 90 years, had finally been told, and it remained tied to the question Benjamin Franklin had asked in 1787: was the sun rising or setting? Each generation had to answer for itself. In 1915, Harrison and Hartley had chosen to see it rising. In 1935, Elizabeth Hartley had preserved that choice for the future.
And now, visitors could stand before the photograph and the chair and ask the same question, because the answer, as the carved sun itself suggested, depended on those willing to believe it.