This is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate DeMayo. There were chips in the China, and that wasn't going to fly.

And let's talk about the China first, though the dishes themselves didn't seem to have been Josephine's primary concern.

It was good China. Dating back, it appears to the 1670s, which even in the latter half of the 1800s when the China was being chipped,

made it plenty old. The set was a treasured heirloom in the respected Ohio family into which Josephine Garris was born,

a family of successful merchants and craftspeople. Her great-grandfather was an important figure in the development of steamships.

And so, when at 19, Josephine was introduced to a handsome 27-year-old man of even greater means,

a budding captain of industry, it all seemed quite natural for her to ascend to the role of society wife,

a woman of leisure, a thrower of parties, a connoisseur of life's finer things.

Upon taking the name of her husband, John Copran, Josephine added an E to that name,

because it seems it seemed more European and therefore more appropriate for a woman of her

leveled up social class. But there were chips in the China.

She would tell the help to be careful.

It was delicate, it was old, it was valuable, and it was necessary.

The people that were coming to dinner in the Cochrane home were the finest in all of Shelbyville,

maybe even in all of western central Ohio.

The creme de la creme could not be served

that creme on chip china. So she would admonish the servants to be careful. They might not understand

its value, monetary, aesthetic, historic, coming as they did from the humbler classes,

but they should be able to understand that delicate things needed to be treated

with delicacy. Yet, there were chips in the china. One thing about being a person of leisure is that

you need to fill that free time. So much of our lives are determined not just by how much free

time we are afforded, but by what we choose to do

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