Ancestry Magazine

For years, my parents displayed a shiny mound of glass in their living room—three glass whiskey bottles, melted together, to be exact.

The bottles weren’t always a single entity—they fused one hundred years ago as a result of the fires that followed the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

The morning of the earthquake, my great-grandmother awakened to rumbling and ran downstairs to join her parents cowering in a doorway. Those three bottles, plus a few panoramic photos of the city on fire and in ruins, and my memories of my great-grandmother recounting the event have always helped me connect her to the earthquake.

That is until I called my parents to ask where those bottles were.

“We sold them on eBay,” my mother replied.

In a mode of life simplification, my parents sold these items for eight bucks. I can’t blame my parents. I hate clutter and love getting rid of extra stuff. But I would have taken those bottles off their hands—and I would have given them ten dollars at least.
One person’s clutter is another person’s treasure—a fortunate fact that, whe n coupled with auctions, swap meets, and a few well-meaning online resources, allows those of us without attics full of family history to still get our hands on family artifacts.

While you may not find something that actually belonged to your ancestors, using your imagination, you can find items in almost any of these locations that will enrich your family history and become a family treasure.

Online Auctions
Online auctions, such as eBay, Yahoo! Auctions, AuctionFire, or Amazon auctions are easy places to begin your out-of-home search for family artifacts. What will you find? Just about anything you can imagine: toys, vacation memorabilia, journals, diaries, photos and photo albums, tools, clothes, magazines, books, and art. Search by a surname. Too many results? Add a key word unique to your family. Look for an object specific to your ancestor’s hometown or time period. I searched on “Sutherland” (my maiden name) and “tartan” (Sutherland is a clan in Scotland) and found kilts, postcards, and paintings.

Local Auctions
Whether at home or traveling, you may want to check out local off-line auctions. People auction off antique furniture, dolls, serving sets, art, as well as other items. To find a local auction, enter the city and keywords like “antique auction” in a Web search engine.

Antique Malls and Swap Meets
Walking though the aisles of an antique mall can be a journey down memory lane. There’s more than just old furniture to be found. My own jaunts through antique malls or swap meets jog too many memories to count. Perhaps you’ll find pink glass dishes identical to your grandmother’s or the old-time juicer that your great-grandmother used to make that perfect lemonade. Visit a sw ap meet near your ancestor’s hometown and you may find school memorabilia, old newspapers, even class photos. Toys, clothing, quilts, paintings, books, plates, coins, stamps, and many more treasures are just waiting to be discovered.

Online Databases
You can find family artifacts in online databases as well. At Ancestry.com you can download scans of panoramic photos, postcards, baseball cards, Civil War photos, ships photographs, yearbooks, and family histories. The Library of Congress American Memory project features maps, documents, advertisements, and images from America’s history. You may even want to try to find lost family photos in a database like Dead Fred that specializes in reuniting photos and families.

You may never find exactly what you’re looking for, but you could come pretty close. And the next time you’re tempted to simplify (yes, Mom, you), remember that the junk in your own attic might be the treasure someone like me is hunting.