Box of memories (zaibatsu.circumlunar.space), 04/14/2020
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Grabbed a  box from  the garage  yesterday, marked  "Harrys Memories."
Harry was my grandfather, who passed away a couple years ago.

It was filled with treasures.

One of these was a tintype photo (a picture on metal plate) from 1845.
A 175  year old photo, easily  the oldest photo in  my possession. Did
some research online and  found out that it was a  photo of my fathers
mothers mothers  mothers mother...  my 3rd  great grandmother  I think
they called it. I can't remember now, but in any case, it was a direct
line relative on my father's side.

I suppose I should post a scan of it to gopher, but I'm on a tablet in
my living room right now.

The cool thing about  this photo was, it connected a  whole line to my
family tree that I didn't know  about. I who this woman's daughter was
(my 2nd great grandmother?), but I  didn't know her parents. Now I do,
and that linked up a bunch of  other stuff. I've never been able to do
that before.

It was an adventure.

I also found  lots of military docs from WWI  and WWII. My grandfather
was in the Marine  Corps in WWII, my grandfather was  in the Air Force
in WWI and WWII.

Another interesting  find was an  estate appraisal and  accounting for
Samuel  A  Hart,  my  3rd  great  granduncle.  Or  was  it  6th  great
granduncle?  Anyway,  someone's estate  valuation.  He  owned lots  of
property and  stocks, etc.  I ran it  through an  inflation calculator
online and it totaled 2.3mil in  today's dollars. He died in 1926; if
he  had died  any  later,  that estate  probably  would have  suffered
greatly in the Depression...

I have  no idea why  that document  was in this  box, but it  did help
verify a relation, which is interesting in and of itself.

On a  more serious  note, my  grandfather was  adopted, and  his birth
mother wrote some  letters to his adoptive mother.  Those letters were
in there. She gave the story of  her pregnancy at 16 and his birth. It
was pretty  raw, I choked  up reading it. She  was quite alone  in her
experience, no  one explained  anything to her.  She didn't  even know
where babies came from until one came out of her. Even while in labor,
no one told her what was going on. How horrible. Man, my life is easy.

There were also a lot of family  letters from my dad and his siblings,
and from my grandmother and grandfather  on that side. They had a lot
of problems. I knew that, but it's different reading their words, very
different. That was pretty rough to read too, which is odd considering
almost all  of them have  already passed.  Still, I knew  these people
growing up, but never knew about their pain.

I look forward to  going through the rest of that  box, and getting to
another. When my  grandfather passed, I basically  ransacked his house
looking for documents and photos. I just haven't had time to really go
through them in detail yet.