<p>Does anyone here have an object , be it antique or vintage, that either has an interesting history or story or association you would like to share? I bet you do and would be interested to hear about it.</p>
<p>I’ll start. We have a redware pitcher that came from a Baltimore antique dealer. It is 12 " and has dogwood blossoms on it and is typical of the 1860’s. On the bottom is an old taped tag which has been glazed over and written in fountain pen script says, “Gen.'l Grant’s pitcher- 1863”. The pitcher came from an estate sale from a man who collected C.W. items. He bought it along with other items from the now defunct museum of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. They have an ordinace museum now but at one time have a variety of items which were all sold in 1974. While I can’t prove, but can’;t disprove either it did belong to Grant, here’s the weird thing- the pitcher is wrapped up most of the time, but when unwrapped it has an extemely strong yeasty oder of strong beer or ale . Who knows???</p>
<p>Attention Will Someone Pleae Move This.</p>
<p>My family has a large amount of interesting items…</p>
<p>One year (a long time ago), my family was leaving my grandmother’s house and she had noted that she was going to clear out the garage and get rid of all of the ‘junk’. Now, we were on a tight schedule, but my dad had to fill up the van with all he could, knowing there were numerous gems that couldn’t be thrown out with the trash (which they would be…years earlier she had thrown out all of his old baseball cards, including a rookie Mickey Mantle card)!</p>
<p>When we got home, we looked through this ‘junk’ we took home from grandma’s house. Boy, did we find some gems!</p>
<p>The prize of the collection was a collection of letters dated from the civil war. It was a collection from a family in rural Indiana writing back and forth from sons in the war to their family members. The prize letter is one that is unopened. One of the sisters of the family was estranged from one of her brothers. He had written her to make ammends after getting shot in the head in the war. She had written him a letter immeadiately and was returned unopened with the word ‘deceased’ on it. We obviously don’t know what was contained within that letter (nor do we want to open it), but it truely is a gem and give a lot of insight into relationships during the civil war. </p>
<p>We have been thinking about donating the letters to a museum for an exhibit, but my parent’s haven’t gotten around to it (over 10 years later). </p>
<p>Another item of choice included within the saved antiques was a collection of first day covers my grandfather saved. My grandfather subscribed to the first day covers for years and years and saved them all. Also included within this collection are old postcards and letters, some pre-dated the creation of the postal service. I find the ones that pre-dated the postal service intriguing, they are made of leather, don’t have stamps, and are addressed by a name and city. </p>
<p>These are just a few of my family’s many heirlooms. I come from a family of pack rats…though we have a packed house with a lot of junk, there are also some really interesting finds! :)</p>
<p>I wouldn’t donate anything to a museum ever. If in their judgement it is not good or significant enough they sell items off, sometimes right away sometimes years later. What I would do is post the soldier’s name on an Indiana Cvil War forum and perhaps someday a descendant of the family will seek you out. (It happened to me in only 3 months) I wouls also go to genealogy.com and go to the sirname forum of the family . First look for desendants of that family by using key words like the location of the family. . If that doesn’t work post something like ‘seeking descendants of so and so family’, location so and so being careful to use key words but no address and not all the names. (so whoever can verify this is indeed members from that family) Don’t say you have letters but say you have found some family documents and wait for someone to contact you. I have come in contact with the descendants of many families I seek, even with common names. Don’t give them the letters, give them xeroxes. Also don’t be too specific and ask them to provide the names and addresses in order to verify this is the right family. Enjoyed your story.</p>