Saturday, October 26, 2019

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Photograph(s) of Your Favorite Heirloom(s)

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!


Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):


1)  Last week we shared the heirlooms that we inherited or obtained from our families.


2)  This week, please show a photograph of one or two of them.
3)  Share your cherished heirloom(s) in your own blog post, on Facebook, and leave a link to it in the comments.

Here's mine:

a)  On the Carringer side of my family tree:



This is one of my grandfather's (Lyle Lawrence Carringer) pocket watches.  It has an hour hand, a minute hand, and a small second hand.  As seen in the photo, 12 o'clock is on the left-hand side of the photo.  The watch has stopped at 2:40:22.  


The only inscription on the watch is in a very fine hand under the XII:


M. German
San Diego, Ca.

I don't know when or how my grandfather obtained the watch - my guess is it was a birthday or Christmas gift, perhaps from his parents or his wife, as a young man.  He died in November 1976, and I think my mother gave it to me in the 1980s.  We tried to have it restarted several times but it never worked for more than a day or two, as I recall.  I have no clue how to "get into" it - my guess is that watchmakers have a special tool to open the two sides to get to the machinery inside.  
b)  On the Seaver side of my family tree:




This is a folding Union Case with ambrotype photographs behind the glass.  I am very certain that the person in the photos are Isaac Seaver (1823-1901) and his second wife, Lucretia (Smith) Seaver (1828-1884), my second great-grandparents.  Isaac is the only Civil War soldier in my ancestry, serving from Massachusetts in Washington DC in 1863-1865.  He was a blacksmith.  My understanding is that the soldiers had these made before they left for their deployment so that their family could have a remembrance if they did not return.  


My aunt Geraldine (Seaver) Remley had this pass down to her after her mother died in 1962.  I am sure that it had a favored place on the mantle of Frank Walton Seaver (1852-1922) and Frederick Walton Seaver (1876-1942).  I had never seen it, or knew about it, until Gerry passed away in 2007 and the family permitted me to have the photographs and other memorabilia that Gerry had collected.   This was a real prize.  


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Copyright (c) 2019, Randall J. Seaver

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5 comments:

Charles said...

My dad carried a pocket watch for years, and his the back unscrewed.

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

I found a few heirlooms to document. I want to do more of this!

https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2019/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun.html

Janice M. Sellers said...

My favorite heirloom is a photograph.

http://www.ancestraldiscoveries.com/2019/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun.html

Linda Stufflebean said...

My favorite is my rocker. https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2019/10/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-62/

Matthew Miller said...

I did that the first time! Here's my post:
https://matthewkmiller.blogspot.com/2019/10/family-heirlooms.html