I’ve been working on the dog quilt today while I listened to my Jimmy Buffett iTunes collection after a bit of errand running and bill paying. I think I began trying to repair/mend/enhance this quilt around August 18, and with luck, it’ll be finished Wednesday morning. It cracks me up that I’m doing this for a quilt the dogs use so they can get on the office sofa. As much time, energy, and even a little blood that I’ve put into it, you’d think it’s a family heirloom and not some cheap quilt I bought many years ago at Garden Ridge Pottery or a similar store.
While I was thinking about that this afternoon, I remembered a post that showed up in my feed on Instagram the other day.
Some of the answers were wonderful. “My grandfather was a carpenter. I have his hammer!” “I have an old prayer book in ancient Aramaic that belonged to my grandfather.” “I have the lantern used by my great GREAT grandmother when she was a slave. It is cherished by my family and protected.” “I have my grandmother’s bread board and sugar spoon I use daily.” At last look, there were 3,890 answers (I didn’t read them all!).
I do have photographs of all my grandparents, possibly some great-grandparents and other ancestors.
I remembered immediately some things I have from my paternal grandparents.
This bell and slate belonged to my father’s father. The ring, which isn’t gold, maybe another metal dipped in brass, was in a trunk that belonged to my father’s mother and held some of her things. That grandmother died when my father was around 19, so we never knew her. But when my grandfather died in the mid-1960s, the trunk was given to my sister. She still has it and some of the things that were in it. Maybe because I didn’t get a trunk, she let me take the ring.
My mother was the youngest of twelve children. Her mother died when my brother was two, and her father died when David was ten, Debby was seven, and I was two. We lived in Colorado then, and she couldn’t afford to go home to her father’s funeral (Debby remembers this broke Mother’s heart). Mother would have been twelfth in line and possibly not even present to get many mementos of things that had belonged to her parents. I think David and Debby may have some dishes, but I can’t be sure of that.
When I took pictures of the above items today, I racked my brain for anything I might have that had belonged to my maternal grandparents. I began writing this post thinking I had nothing. Maybe my mother nudged me, because I finally remembered that I do, in fact, have something that belonged to her mother.
This is my grandmother’s wooden butter mold. Butter molds were used to shape and mark churned butter before it hardened.
This is the stamp, probably hand-carved, that marked the butter. I know it was my grandmother’s, but it’s possible it was even my great-grandmother’s, as these molds began being used in the U.S. in the nineteenth century. I’m so glad I remembered it was in a glass-front cabinet in my dining room.
Do you have anything that belonged to your grandparents or great-grandparents?
By the way, all those items were photographed on that dog quilt. =)