We’re already at mid0June with a week to go until the official start of summer – even though, it’s 103 today in Tucson! Thankfully, there is a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge to keep my mind off the heat!
Randy Seaver has an intriguing topic for us this week.
1) Were you lucky enough to receive or find artifacts from your ancestors (parents, grandparents, outhers) as you pursued your genealogy research?
2) Describe one or more of the artifacts you found or received and where you obtained them?
Thank you, Marian Wood, for this topic!
I didn’t have to think much about this one. My Nana, Julia (Scerbak) Sabo kept everything. When I say everything, I mean it!
She passed away in May 1985 and, as I was going through her closets, I found several boxes of papers and photographs. Some of the photos I remembered as she told me about her family in Slovakia and who all the people were in the pictures that had been sent to America.
Other photos were a complete mystery – it turned out that they were photos of my grandfather’s family. My grandfather, George Kucharik aka Sabo, died of TB in 1936. While Nana said she loved her mother-in-law, she wasn’t too fond of her brother- and sisters-in-law and had a strong dislike for her father-in-law.
In spite of not liking most the of other side of the family, being a keeper, she didn’t toss the photos. Thank goodness or else I wouldn’t know what any of them looked like.
I mentioned she didn’t throw stuff out. Well, in other boxes of papers, I found all kinds of family items – the original sketch for my grandfather’s gravestone, the purchase papers for six graves in St. Michael’s Cemetery, drawings of a few house modifications she had done at 49 Summer Street, and, a bit oddly, I also found coal bills from the 1930s that she kept! We had a gas heater when I was growing up, so I have no idea when the conversion happened.
She also had piles of letters in Rusyn from Slovakia, Christmas cards from many friends and family members, and a huge stack of funeral cards for those who had gone before her.
Thank goodness, Nana kept so many odds and ends. Not only do I know what a number of extended family members looked like, but I know a lot about her friends and FAN club in Passaic.
Thanks, Randy, for this week’s challenge!
You are so lucky to have a grandma who kept so much. My other grandma (Mam-ma) did keep some stuff but nearly enough. Her things were more of the “important” stuff. Plus she lived to 99.9, she had time to get rid of stuff.
Agree with Lisa, you are fortunate that your grandma kept so much stuff, both everyday and official. Photos are a particular bonus or those faces would be lost to the mists of time!
That’s amazing! I wish I had anything like those artifacts! I have a few bowls and other china pieces that belonged to my grandmother, but that’s about it. My mother was the opposite of a hoarder. She threw out everything—sometimes my father had to retrieve the mail from the trash the day it was delivered!
Genealogists are probably some of the few people who truly appreciate packrats! How fortunate you are that your grandmother kept so much. I hope you have had all the Rusyn translated.