The Heirlooms

Although I don't have any ancestors who traveled the Oregon Trail, in this season of my life I'm feeling a great deal of sympathy for, and identification with, those pioneer women who tossed treasured possessions out of the covered wagons, in order to lighten their load.  After living in the same house for almost 33 years, and collecting heirlooms and keepsakes from parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, we are downsizing and moving to a much smaller place.  Over the last several months I have been struggling with the Great Question - what to keep?  What to give away?  What should I hand down to my children?  

We've already been giving away or selling treasured family heirlooms, because they did not fit or could not be used.  I've been mentally apologizing to my great-grandchildren for disposing of antiques, Including the drop-leaf table that probably belonged to my grandmother Bessie Randall; I can remember seeing it on the screened-in porch of my Grandma & Grandpa Stoelt's home in Detroit.  The reason I know it was Bessie's is because it had a special tablecloth - cream colored linen with dark blue cross-stitch, made by her before she died in 1931 - which I still have. 

There are the various chairs we've gotten rid of, for the same reason - no place to put them, and no one to give them to.  Along with the drop-leaf table, I put them on Freecycle, and they went to a local woman who loves antiques and promised to give them a good home.

Perhaps the largest, most meaningful, and the hardest-to-part-with item was my mother's Steinway upright piano, which was made in Detroit in 1902.  My mother left it to me in her will, and when she died in 1997 and the house had to be emptied and sold, I brought the piano home. The problem was that several of the keys stuck, no one in our house played, and it became a surface for piles and piles of other stuff - homework, the mail, pictures, toys, and whatever I was picking up off the floor so I could vacuum.  After several years I made the decision to sell it - to a piano refurbishing place, which repaired and refinished it.  I had the privilege of meeting the family who bought it, and listening to their teenage daughters playing the jazz music they had composed themselves.

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There are many items that I'm determined to keep.  Such as the crazy quilt (made in 1890) that was given to me by Grandma Stoelt.  My mother's wedding china, and the set of doll dishes she played with as a little girl in 1940.  My husband's collection of antique clocks, now wrapped and packed in boxes, ready to move.  Things, yes - but things that have anchored our lives in the present with those who have gone before us.

And thinking along these lines leads quite naturally, to thinking of the things we own that aren't heirlooms now, but will be someday. Our dining room table, which is now scratched and marred by generations of toddlers, the battered metal trunk where we keep our Christmas ornaments, and the bookcase my mother bought and refinished for my 13th birthday.  There is the framed cross-stitch that was my first Christmas gift to my husband, over 35 years ago, and the "Home Sweet Home" cross-stitch that has been hanging in our hallway since we moved into this house. And there is the "Love and Joy Come to You" crochet wall hanging I completed while I was pregnant with our daughter.  All of these, I hope, will be treasured by generations to come.

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Sometimes, when I'm going through the family papers that I was handed in 1974, I am reminded of heirlooms that existed years ago, that are now lost to history.  Consider these items:

• " [John Reade] had practically nothing of his own except his Bible, with marginal references and notes written in his own hand on nearly every page. (This bible is now in the possession of Mrs. Carry Dusenberry, Pentwater, R.F.D. Mich., who is half-sister to J.L. Reed, John Reed's son and my grandfather." (written by Maurice Leonard Reed, about 1925)
  
• "[John Reade] kept an account book "John Reads Booke and Propperty, Derry Township, Westmoreland County,  Pennsylvania State of September 20, 1839 John Read"  This book is now in my possession, over a century old, contains inside the date 1838, even earlier than the one on the fly leaf.  50¢ per day was the wage he got most of the time." (source: "Notes on the Benjamin Curtis tree," unpublished MSS,
• "The Beem table service was of good steel knives, with horn handles, two-tined steel forks, also horn-handled and thin silver teaspoons marked with "B.W." and "N.S." and by the toothprints of the generations of Webb and Beem babies.  These spoons are now scattered among grand and great-grandchildren." (Source: Ada Fitzsimmons Bishop, "Incidents in the Life of John and Betsy Beem," Reading (MI) Hustler, series of articles published November 1940.)

Now, whenever I long for the treasures that have been discarded by my ancestors or lost to the past, I will remember my own process of letting go of what I couldn't keep, and feel a little more understanding for the women on the Oregon Trail.