Please Keep These Things, Part 3

This is my Grandfather Kirby Moore’s change purse. He was my mother’s father, and he died before I was born. It is the only thing I have that belonged to Grandpa Kirby. I only have three pictures of him. One is the middle picture in the banner at the top of this blog (he is shown with my Grandmother Eula Floyd Moore); a larger version is shown below, and the picture below that shows him with my cousins Ronnie and Jeannie Moore. This change purse was very precious to my mother, who loved her father very much. I do not know a great deal about Grandpa Kirby. I do know that he was quite a fiddle player, liked to make his own home brew, and was proud of his South Carolina family.

At the suggestion of my husband and daughter, the picture includes a ruler for scale.

Please Keep These Things

Part 2 of the series “My Dear Daughters: When I am Dead and Gone, Please Keep These Things”



An old-fashioned hand beater. Why keep it?

Well, for one thing, it’s old. It belonged to my husband’s paternal grandmother, Rose Terrana Koehl. For people of our generation, with our 50+ years of life and perspective, our grandparents’ lives are not exactly ancient history (though it might have seemed that way when we were younger). For our children, however, this is their great-grandparents’ generation, and that does make it something more of a historical artifact as well as a cherished family possession. With the possible exception of photographs, this is probably as far back in history as my husband and I have any hopes of going in terms of passing on actual physical items to our children.

And this beater has a history. You see, it’s not actually a beater. It’s a helicopter. Or at least it was to my husband when he was very young. Perhaps it was the whirring noise it made? So when Grandma Rose died a few years ago, the beater was not disposed of; my husband’s parents wisely passed it on to my husband.

I have not placed the beater in any sort of protective covering or box or put it away in special storage. It is in one of the drawers in which we keep kitchen utensils. And who knows, if the other beater on my hand mixer fails or we do not replace our wheezing KitchenAid, it may still see some use.

By the way, the beater was not my husband’s only helicopter when he was little. The other one was at the home of his maternal grandmother, Julia D’Arco Greenberg. That helicopter was disguised as a sewing machine treadle.

My Dear Daughters: When I Am Dead and Gone, Please Keep These Things

There have been several blog articles recently on ensuring that our genealogy research will live on after we’re gone. This is definitely a concern I share. I do intend to leave instructions on what is to be done with my research, and I also want the most precious family heirlooms to be kept in the family.

To help my daughters identify these items, I am taking pictures of them and adding them to a folder called “Keep These” in iPhoto on my computer. I would like to post some of these pictures here so that I can share the stories behind the items that make them so precious to me and my husband.

You see, most of these things are very ordinary looking. Some are old and worn, some are chipped, some are dull. And, I am embarrassed to admit, we have a lot of junk lying around this house. Add to that thousands of books, records, CDs, photo albums, and what may eventually be many boxes filled with genealogy files, that amounts to a lot of stuff that my two daughters will have to sort through. How will they be able to identify which items should be kept? Will they be able to remember an offhand remark I made about that little brown and blue coffee cup with the chip that my mother gave me one Christmas?

So here is the first item, the above-mentioned coffee cup. My mother gave it to me one Christmas when I was in college. It has a chip on the rim which my husband repaired many years ago. It is my favorite coffee cup for two reasons. The first is that I like the way the rim feels against my lips when I drink coffee from it; even with the chip, it is very, very smooth, and I am very particular about this. The second reason is that my mother had very little money with which to buy presents for people, so the things that she bought for me are especially dear. She bought me several practical items that were quite sturdy and have endured and had a lot of use through the years, including this cup.

My goodness, how did all that grime get between the tiles?