When Col. Charles C. Mason left North Carolina in 1851 to journey to Bagdad, Texas, he brought his family’s possessions inside two large trunks.

Mason and about 300 others traveled for six months, covering 40 miles on a good day, with all their goods loaded on 100 wagons. He become a prominent landowner in Bagdad, which is now part of Leander. Mason was a Civil War veteran and is buried in Bagdad Cemetery.

The 165-year old trunks were passed down through the Mason family, and Leander resident Karen Thompson and her daughter, Kathy Thompson Howell, donated the artifacts to the city of Leander in October.

“For millennia, our ancestors put their most valuable possessions in trunks,” Thompson Howell said. “Sometimes they put everything they had into trunks. That’s kind of humbling because we have all kinds of stuff now, and there’s no way we could fit everything we owned into a trunk.”

The donation adds to the city’s collection of historic artifacts of the Mason family. In 2005 Leander acquired and restored the Mason Homestead, an 1860s-era farmhouse at 1101 S. Bagdad Road that is now managed by Leander Parks and Recreation.

Leander Mayor Chris Fielder said he and city staffers picked up the trunks from Thompson’s property.

“They had been in a barn for [165] years, so you can imagine what they looked like,” he said. “They were actually in better shape than what I had thought.”

Smithers Furniture Refinishing in Austin restored the trunks, and a member of the city’s building maintenance department built the wooden display cases and two plaques for the trunks, Fielder said.

One trunk is on display in Leander City Hall, and the second is housed in C.C. Mason Elementary School.

Amy Bray, an instructional coach at the school, said the students have been asking questions about the trunk since it arrived in early November. She said she is aiming to acquire more artifacts to create a small museum of Mason family history.

“It’s cool to see the kids’ excitement over an old trunk,” she said. “I love the enthusiasm it has brought to the kids to want to learn more about the community.”