At the Family History Expo in St. George last year I did some "on the fly" interviews with participants who stopped by The Genealogy Gems Podcast booth. One of the questions I was asking was "what's your most precious heirloom?"
I got some wonderful answers: A flapper dress, a door knob from a honeymoon suite, a pocket watch...but there was one answer that stopped me in my tracks.
"I have no heirlooms" a tall, nicely dressed lady said flatly. "They're all gone. No one thought there were worth keeping, and the family photos were tossed - everything."
The eternal optimist in me hoped for her sake that this wasn't the case, and that perhaps someone out there still had a precious photo from her family.
In my conference presentations I share techniques that I have used to find family heirlooms on Ebay, as well as through tracking down long lost cousins. After sharing some of these ideas on the podcast, listeners have written me in excitement to share their discoveries. (above is a matchbook that one listener found on Ebay that is from his great grandparents store!)
But a recent article in the Pekin Daily Times is a testimony for why we as genealogists should NEVER give up hope!
Read the article to learn how a box chock full of family photos and mementos that was sold at a garage sale made it's way five years later into the hands of a family descendant, John Engstrom. The Pekin Daily Times is a GENEALOGY GEM for assisting the purchasers in reuniting the box with John and his family!
1 comment:
You are absolutely right. We have had a very precious moment with our Parents and our Grand Parents. We never ever give up “the moment” we had spent. We need to keep our ancestors alive in our memory in a most eloquent and it would be possible if and only if the records have been kept safe place.
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