Treasure Chest Thursday - All That's Left of the Family Fortune

Recently, I was sorting through some old letters and photos when I ran across a letter to my mother from her grandmother on the occassion of Mom's college graduation many years ago.  It reads, in part:

These antique napkins rings are the remnant of your Great Grandfather and Great grandmother’s fortune. The silver in the rings were part of a silver brick given to them by a friend and my father had six napkin rings made out of same and when their three daughters were married they gave each of us two napkin rings. They are over Seventy-five years old.

The great grandparents she writes of are Daniel Robinson and Nancy Ballenger Robinson (I wrote about Nancy in my February 8 Madness Monday and February 10 Wordless Wednesday posts).  The three daughters are Frances Lowe (author of the letter), Julia Eckwortzel, and Georgie Williams.  The silver brick would have been given to them in Boulder, Colorado.

Of course, I immediately asked Mom if she still had the rings and if she knows where they are.  She remembered them and described the box they were in to me and the fact that they were tied together with a ribbon.  Unfortunately, they were not in the location Mom thought they were, so we will have to keep looking.  I am confident they will turn up and will keep you, my readers posted.....

I wonder if the descendants of the Eckwortzel and Williams families still have theirs?

Copyright 2010, Michelle Goodrum

Madness Monday - A photograph Helps Solve the Question of When Nancy Died

Nancy Ballenger Robinson is my gg grandmother and one of the oldest children of William and Lucinda Ballenger, who I wrote about last week for Madness Monday. She married one of Boulder, Colorado's early pioneers and later in their lives they moved to Montana probably either with their children or to be near them. After Nancy's husband Daniel died, she stayed on in Montana, living off and on with her various children.

My goal was to obtain Nancy's date of death and place of burial. The latest record I had for her was a 1925 homestead file in Stillwater County, Montana. She was not listed in the 1930 Federal Census. It seemed logical that she might have died in Montana, so I sent off to the Montana State Vital Records Office for her death certificate (this was before the index was available online). They were able to search well before 1925 and well after 1930 but she was not in their index. Frustrated, I set her file aside.

At a later point, while looking through some of the family snapshots taken at Alki Beach in Seattle, I notice a woman who looked suspiciously similar to a photo I had of Nancy. Was she visiting her children who had moved on to Seattle? Or had she possibly moved there herself? I was able to check the Washington Death Index and there was a Nancy Robinson with a death date of 7 September 1927. I obtained her death certificate and discovered Nancy had followed 3 of her children when they moved to Seattle and had been living with her daughter Georgie Williams.

I was able to visit the cemetery where she, my great grandparents and my grandparents are buried in Seattle. Sadly, she is buried in an unmarked grave.

So now I have an end to that story and as a result of the research I did trying to find Nancy's death date, I now have names for several more faces that keep showing up in some of the family snapshots.

Copyright 2010, Michelle Goodrum