When my dad died last year, it started the unavoidable process of sorting through The Stuff. Initially it was his personal items, but it snowballed into an all-out overhaul of the storage in my parents’ home and garage. One of the many trips I’ve made to visit my mom and work on cleaning out projects left me bringing several boxes to my home, all labeled with my grandparents’ names. None of us were too certain what was inside the boxes, and it was definitely time for my mom to hand off some of her load. My stack of boxes has been sitting stacked against a wall in my office for about four months, basically untouched.
January kind of pulls a trigger for me, and I seem to have a renewed motivation for tackling tough projects. As such, that stack of boxes began taunting me every time I walked into my office. I finally decided to just crack into the boxes and see what’s there. Ignorance has been blissful, but the not knowing was nagging at me.
Most of the contents are as daunting as I feared! There are binders of photos and documents. There are file folders of life sketches for ancestors. These are all absolute gems, and I hope to help them all see the light of day soon. It’s a project that will take a lot of time, but I’m determined to whittle away at it. About half of a box was filled with Things. The big Things are known and have good homes. These are small Things. My great-grandma lived in several mining communities in the Mountain West, and she spent many years in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The things I found are representative of the communities in which she lived.
I photographed everything, and I’ve added these photos to the FamilySearch Trees entry for each individual. I think this helps add some character to the names and dates we see. I like being able to picture some of the things that were important enough to hold onto for decades. But then I wondered what on earth to do with the actual items. My mom is the oldest daughter, so she seems to be the collection point for so many things. I reached out to my cousins and showed them the photos with the hope that maybe someone would like to be the custodian of all these objects. And yes, I have a cousin who vividly remembers this great-grandma and was so excited to have “some of the old things” because her dad isn’t one to care much for keepsakes. These objects are now on their next journey to a new home to be loved and enjoyed by someone who is excited to have them.