Merci Box Car of New Hampshire

New Hampshire's Merci Box Car is one of the 49 cars of the French Gratitude Train — the Merci Train — sent by France in 1949 to thank the American people for the Friendship Train, more than 700 boxcars of food and supplies Americans had shipped to Europe in 1947. The idea came from Andre Picard, a French railroad worker and World War II veteran, and more than six million citizens of France and Italy contributed gifts: dolls, statues, clothing, furniture, ornaments, even a Legion of Honour medal said to have belonged to Napoleon. The gift-laden freighter Magellan, painted with the words MERCI AMERICA, docked at Weehawken, New Jersey on February 2, 1949 before a crowd of more than 25,000, and the cars — each carrying five tons of donated presents — were distributed one to every state plus the Territory of Hawaii. New Hampshire's car is among the 43 survivors still on public display, preserved as the state's tangible piece of this transatlantic thank-you.