Your History-related Treasures

angeliz2k

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Hi, all. It's been pretty quiet around here, and I was inspired by something posted to social media by the museum where I volunteer. They asked people to share any history-related treasures they have at home. It might be a memento from a historic site you visited, or an actual artifact, or just something that gets you into the historical mindset.

One of my favorites is a 1913 George V shilling coin. They're fairly cheap on Ebay, actually, and that specific coin plays a part in a ms I've written (and kind of shelved but keep going back to now and then).

Another is a print of the floor-plan of J.M. Barrie's London flat. I think I mentioned it here somewhere before, and I blogged about it, but, basically, I stumbled across it while Googling. It came from architecture.com, and I got a small (somewhat expensive) print (sent from the UK--it took forever; like, seven or eight weeks). I wanted it because I wrote a whole ms about Barrie and the boys who inspired Peter Pan--two of whom lived in this flat with Barrie for several years. The Adelphi flat plays a pretty important part in the story, so I was ecstatic to get the actual floor plan of the place. And marked in red are the changes Barrie made for when Michael and Nico moved in--that work was the purpose for these plans.

I wish I had some actual Civil War-era items (since that's the era I write in most frequently), but those are harder to come by.
 

TellMeAStory

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My fictional sanitarium is near Lancaster, PA, a good place for snarfing up tacky souvenirs. Of course I've got one--surely made in China--gracing my writing desk. It's an Amish horse and buggy in some kind of metal. Either the horse touches the "ground" or the buggy does. I love it.
 

Tepelus

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The coat in my avatar (as of writing this) is from the 1920's. The brooch on my hat is from either the late 1910's or early 1920's. I have a hat, a purse, and some other jewelry from the 1920's, and a 1929 Apex 80 radio, which sadly doesn't work but that's not unusual. The cabinet is in really good shape, the only part that seems to be missing is the power switch, but I had someone take a look at it to see if they could get it working again and they said the power supply is shot. My bedroom furniture is from around the 1870-80's time period. My desk the 1930's. So yeah, I collect antiques.
 

angeliz2k

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My fictional sanitarium is near Lancaster, PA, a good place for snarfing up tacky souvenirs. Of course I've got one--surely made in China--gracing my writing desk. It's an Amish horse and buggy in some kind of metal. Either the horse touches the "ground" or the buggy does. I love it.

Oh, fun! I grew up not far from Lancaster and Amish country. Still can't manage to pronounce Lancaster the English way...

Also, just saw a post from Kate Quinn remarking on how her word processor doesn't know how to spell sanitorium (sanitarium? sanatorium?).

The coat in my avatar (as of writing this) is from the 1920's. The brooch on my hat is from either the late 1910's or early 1920's. I have a hat, a purse, and some other jewelry from the 1920's, and a 1929 Apex 80 radio, which sadly doesn't work but that's not unusual. The cabinet is in really good shape, the only part that seems to be missing is the power switch, but I had someone take a look at it to see if they could get it working again and they said the power supply is shot. My bedroom furniture is from around the 1870-80's time period. My desk the 1930's. So yeah, I collect antiques.

Oh, wow, those pieces are absolutely fabulous! The one's I can see in your picture, that is, and I'm sure the others are also very cool. They sound amazing, and I'm kind of jealous.
 

Marissa D

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I'm an unabashed collector of early 19th century magazines (yay eBay!) and small items like vinaigrettes, fobs, seals, and especially dance cards, of which I have a fairly substantial collection. They're just so pretty, and somehow just contemplating them pulls me into the right mindset for writing.
 

Jason

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Mine is the letter from the Secretary of State to my great grandfather, granting citizenship to my Grandmother. He was a missionary in Mexico at the time (he himself a first generation born US citizen) when she was born, and a mere letter from the State Dept. said that she is granted citizenship as she was born to a U.S. citizen, regardless of where she was born (circa 1946). Quite stunning when you think about it in this day and age.
 
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Taylor Harbin

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Two really stand out in my mind as the most important ones in my small collection.

The first is a .45 caliber rifled musket of unknown make that my great-great-grandfather George carried as a Union private during the Civil War; carried it through several battles including Shiloh, Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain, and the March to the Sea. My grandfather Samuel was one of six grandchildren and never got to meet George. He spent most of his adult life trying to find that gun, wanted it to stay in the family; was absolutely terrified somebody else might pawn it. Since I was a boy he would talk about it, establishing a connection that he never got to enjoy with his own grandfather (my only regret is that I didn't get him to talk enough about his own life, the Depression, Korea, etc.). The last time I saw him alive, Thanksgiving 2013, he gave it to me after one of his only surviving brothers revealed he had it the whole time. He died January 1, 2014.

The other is a Hitler Youth dagger. I spent two years in Sikeston, Missouri (my birthplace) living with my grandmother while I studied for my MA in Historic Preservation. While I was there I got to know a sweet little old lady named Jenny, whose husband had died when I was very young; both good friends of my parents. Her husband was part of an anti-air crewman in Patton's Third Army and fought at The Bulge. As the story goes, he took the dagger off a dead German. Very sobering to think he probably carried that with him since he was twelve years old. It's beat up pretty good. Jenny gave it to me because her own son didn't have any interest in it, something I could never quite comprehend. Antiques is one thing, but an heirloom?
 

Kat M

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Hi! Can I play? I don't write historical but I love history.

The family "heirloom"—I saved it from the trash—is a curling iron my great-grandmother used on my grandma and her sisters. It's the metal sort that you had to heat up manually. I'm too scared to use a modern curling iron on my hair, much less this one, so it's sitting on my dresser like a strange cross between a dagger and garden shears.

I moved "back" to the city where three previous generations on my mom's side grew up. They were from the south side of the tracks and I moved to the tony part of town. There is a castle-like 19th-Century hotel in my neighborhood that was turned into a high school. My family all went to the rival school, and in fact my great-grandmother's uncle posed for the statue of Abraham Lincoln out front. When I moved to the "wrong" neighborhood I found a 1920s postcard of my family's high school on eBay and now it's framed on my wall.
 

benbenberi

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Back when I was a working historian, I was doing research in boxes of 17c documents at the Archives Nationales in Paris and discovered one evening, going through my day's stack of note cards (this was a long time ago!) that a paper seal had fallen out of one of the royal edicts I had been looking at that day and now sat before me. Very small, about 1/2 in, with a paper tab that had been threaded into the doc. I had looked at three or four boxes full of papers that day, no clue which one had been the source, no way to return it. So, reader, I kept it. It's safe in a little box in my desk drawer now, where I can touch it if I want. (Though I don't. Finger oils are bad for paper!)

In a different box in a different drawer I have a dozen or so little stone cubes, about 3/4 in. each, that my dad brought me as a souvenir of Roman Caesarea from a visit he made there around 1970. He had just picked up from the ground underfoot and put them in his pocket; nobody bothered about tourists pilfering minor bits of antiquity in those days.

A legit treasure is a print I had made by the Chalcographie du Louvre of the Grand Condé, a primary subject of my PhD research, in fancy dress as a Turk at a court festival in 1662.

And from a great aunt I inherited a 6-inch stack of postcards, inc a couple of personal snaps, that her husband had brought home with him from his military service in France in 1918-19. I mean to scan these, one of these days when I have a working scanner again.

ETA: from the same great-aunt my brother inherited her late husband's WWI gas mask! Alas, it was in the condition a gas mask will get into after 60 years in the back of a closet. And my brother was 11. So it didn't survive very much longer.
 
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waylander

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inherited down my family, I have an original page from the edition of The Times that reports the Battle of Trafalgar
 

angeliz2k

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I love reading all these posts! What amazing stories and objects.

Taylor Harbin, you reminded me that we used to have a Civil War-era saber in the corner behind the door in our living room. It's my dad's, and I'm sure he still has it, but I haven't seen it in years and I don't know the exact story. I think perhaps it belonged to a great-great-great uncle who was at Shiloh and whose journal we have (the journal is from after Shiloh). I'll have to ask my dad next time we talk.

It's not a treasure I own, but it's a treasured memory I have: last spring, I went out to Kansas, where my grandmother grew up. Her family came to Kansas as Jayhawkers in the 1850s, and I was able to visit the plot of land where my 3xgreat-grandfather lived, which was, incidentally, right on the Santa Fe Trail and about a mile from the site of the "Battle" of Blackjack, a skirmish between pro- and anti-slavery men during Bleeding Kansas. John Brown led the antislavery men.