It’s Not Always Finders Keepers

Back in October I wrote a blog about a bag of sheet music that my son had found in a house he had purchased. (See This Sheet Music Had One Heck Of A Song To Sing 10/6/23) There was a very interesting newspaper clipping in that bag, that I wrote about, but the most important point was that I was able to find the descendants of the woman who had originally owned the sheet music and return these personal items to them.

Finding and returning that sheet music wasn’t my first experience with a situation like that. My very first experience happened almost twenty years ago. I attended an antique auction with a friend and one of the items that went up for bid was a cigar box full of letters written during World War II. Now that era is not really of great interest to me. I’m often asked which time period in history do I find the most fascinating and hands down it would be anything pre 1870. So World War II not really of interest to me. But what did interest me was the possibility that the letter writers were still alive. So I bid on the box until I won and then promptly set out to read all of the letters to try and learn as much as I could about their original owners.

The letters were exchanged between a man named Basil, who had been sent from Maine to an Air Force Officers Training School in California and his new bride, who’s name I have sadly forgotten now, she remained in Maine living with his sister. The letters were full of all of the aches and pains you would expect from a young couple who have been separated in the early days of their love. As well as interesting notes on his schooling and the comings and goings of family members in Maine. None of the contents of the letters were really of any interest to me except the names of as many of the parties involved that I could gather. Armed with this information, and thank goodness the internet, I was quickly able to locate Basil and his wife, both still alive and living in Florida. I remember the day I called and spoke with them, telling them that I had purchased the letters and wanted to return the box to them. Basil’s wife was so surprised! She had remember saving them in that cigar box but over the years lost any memory of what had happened to them. Now, nearly sixty years on, it was such a surprise for them to learn that the letters had survived. I mailed them off to them and heard back later how thankful they were to have them. I heard from Basil’s wife only one more time after that, about a year later, when she sent me a letter thanking me again for the letters. Basil had just passed away and she was so thankful for the opportunity I had given them to relive the early days of their love in his final year.

Another time I had the opportunity to return items to a family was something that I had found in an antique shop. It was a very large and ornate marriage certificate framed in a large filigree, gilded frame. Fancy doesn’t even begin to describe this work of art! Personally I thought it was a bit much for a marriage certificate but it harkened back to a time when milestones in people’s lives actually meant something. Like that all important high school diploma that used to be hung on the wall proudly, so it was with this marriage certificate. It was dated 1880 and the bride and groom were listed, as was the town, which really was only one town over from where I was living at the time. So of course I had to buy it and try to find the family who would appreciate it. for more then just the frame Again I headed to the internet and quickly found a descendant and contacted them. Because we lived so close, literally within a 10 minute drive, the woman and her husband came to my house to pick up the item. They were thrilled with it! I learned that since I had contacted them, they had reached out and spoken with older family members who remembered the marriage certificate hanging on the wall of “Gram’s Farmhouse.” That was until there had been a fire. After the fire no one knew what happened to the ornately preserved document and even less idea how it ended up in an antique shop so many years later. It didn’t matter though, they were just so happy to have it back in the family.

My most recent experience with returning an item or items to a family happened just this past summer, and honestly it was the first time I felt awkward doing so. We were renovating a third floor apartment in a building we had recently purchased. The space had originally been an attic in a big old Victorian era home, but somewhere in the 1940’s the space had been turned into an apartment with the weirdest layout and ceilings that followed the chopped up roofline that you would expect in a victorian style home. Dormers, turrets and the like making slanted ceilings and half walls the norm in this very cramped space. So the decision was made to tear out a closet to make more usable room in the kitchen. As the crew began demolition they found, tucked way in the back of this closet, almost pushed into an unused crawl space, a stack of old papers. Knowing me like they do, someone was dispatched to my house immediately bearing this hidden treasure.

In looking through it all I realized it was just a pile of homework papers that some child had brought home from school, along with a few copies of a Catholic youth magazine. At first I almost threw them away but then I noticed the child had written their name on the homework and even his age. So armed with a full name, an age and a date on the magazines I went to the internet again! It didn’t take me long to realize that this young man, who’s homework I held from when he was only 13 years old, was now deceased but both of his daughters were active on genealogy websites and I reached out to both of them. One lived in Michigan and the other was in Ohio. The daughter in Michigan got back to me almost immediately and we exchanged a few messages regarding her father’s life. Apparently he had lived in that tiny apartment with his mother after his father had left them. His teenage years and young adulthood had not been easy years for him but he had a good life overall. Because of his rough start he had never spoken much to his own children about his childhood. I mentioned to the Michigan daughter that I had also reached out to her sister and she informed me that her sister was away on a cruise at the moment so that’s probably why I hadn’t gotten a response. Off I shipped the homework to the daughter in Michigan and a week later got a nice message back that she absolutely was thrilled to have received even this tiny bit of his father’s childhood and was so thankful that I had reached out. I was satisfied that I had returned another piece of someone’s family history to them.

That was until about a month later, when the sister in Ohio finally read her messages on the genealogy website and reached out to me asking to have the items sent to her. I replied that I had sent them to her sister in Michigan. The response I got was a first for me. Apparently these two sisters did not get along, they were not even speaking to each other! The Ohio sister was very upset that I had sent the items to the Michigan sister. I replied that I was terribly sorry, that I had no idea that there was this ongoing family problem and I simply had mailed the items to the first family member who had gotten back to me. I wished her well and then metaphorically backed quietly out of the room! That was terribly awkward!

Months went by, and I honestly had completely forgotten about this situation when I received a message from the Ohio sister just last week. She wanted to tell me how very thankful both she and her sister in Michigan were that I had sent their father’s homework and not just thrown it away. You see, this much sought after bit of their father’s childhood had forced them to communicate. The Ohio sister had had to reach out and talk with her Michigan sister. In doing so they were able to move on from the homework and discuss the reasons why they were estranged and then ultimately come to realize that their father wanted them to reconcile. So this sister made sure that I knew that. They truly believed that I had found that homework and sent it to them under the direction of their father so that they would mend their fences. She wanted me to know they had spent the holidays together for the first time in years. She thanked me profusely for my part in not only bringing them back together, but in delivering a message to them from their father.

Seriously how much cooler could my life get? Ever thankful for this journey I am on!