Groton — Some years ago, a member of the Avery-Copp family packaged the contents of a desk in the family house and gave it to the Connecticut Historical Society.

The desk belonged to Belton Allyn Copp II, born in 1854.

This summer, after a process that took several years, the Avery-Copp House museum got the contents back.

Recently, archivist Kathy Leuze opened one of the many boxes and began thumbing through files.

One of the first she opened contained a yellowed newspaper, saved because it included a family wedding announcement. The Norwich Courier newspaper's date: Aug. 28, 1833.

“There are many desks in the house, and every one of them is just a time capsule of whose desk it was,” said Leslie Evans, museum director.

The items cover about 20 feet of shelving and include photos, business records and family letters.

The museum will begin sorting and cataloguing them this fall and winter, piecing together more details about the family members who lived there, to gain a greater understanding of not just their lives, but of the region at an earlier time.

“These kind of personal papers really bring the past to life,” Evans said.

The Avery-Copp House, at 154 Thames St., Groton, was built around 1800 and passed down through generations of the same family. The house was never sold and because of this, it retained items distant relatives had stored there.

Joe Copp, the last relative to live in the house, decided not to change anything after his parents died in 1930, said Natalie Livingston, a museum assistant.

Copp died at age 101, and his relatives who inherited the house decided to turn it into a museum.

“We use this house not just to talk about a fairly well-to-do banker family who lived here but the time period,” said Livingston, who gives tours.

Through small items left behind, the museum gains information that it can use to bring history to life more accurately.

For example, Evans always knew the family owned a dog named “Tim,” based on what was found. The museum later discovered a dog license, and now knows that Tim was an Irish setter.

“Even by walking into your own home, people would see so much about you just by looking at your stuff,” Livingston said.

Now imagine that you closed your desk, walked away and someone found everything exactly as it was more than a century later, Evans said.

Files from the desk include a scrapbook with news clippings pasted inside. One has the small headline: “The President Elect of the United States,” followed by a written "portrait" of Abraham Lincoln.

A business journal, possibly from a general store, lists handwritten records of goods and services bought or sold, including 17 cents paid for mending a churn in March 1806.

The Aug. 28, 1833, Norwich Courier contains advertisements by a carriage maker offering to repair and paint wagons, dentists arriving in town to perform surgery and mills seeking to employ families.

“Families Wanted,” one ad reads. “The Central Manufacturing Company are in want of two families of children — those having spinners or weavers would be preferred. Good encouragement will be given, if application be made soon.”

The museum had to wait years for the collection from the Connecticut Historical Society because the process of having items released takes time; once a historical society takes something into its care, it wants to make sure it’s protected, Evans explained.

The items are in plastic totes at the moment, soon to be sorted, reviewed and catalogued in the context of thousands of other documents from the house.

“What we have here is like a big jigsaw puzzle with some pieces missing. So bringing it all together helps us understand the whole a lot better,” Evans said.

“It really captures the mundane, day-to-day life,” Leuze said of even simple items found. “It’s a lot more than the history of one family. If you live in New England, it really captures all the families that lived here.”

d.straszheim@theday