I went to school to be an archaeologist and realized digging in dirt wasn't as fun as it was when I was a kid. Now I dig in archives instead.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Family storage surprises

On a recent visit back home, I decided to investigate a couple of old boxes of photos that had been sitting around the old family home ever since they had been brought from my grandparents' old house in East Texas.  The boxes were full of old pictures, old Christmas cards, postcards, newspaper clippings, obituaries... things that are as good as gold to a genealogist.

Buried way down in the bottom of one box was a small baggie, filled with Canadian currency and some other unusual coins.  I'll probably never know the story of how they got there, since to my knowledge no one in the family had ever been to Canada, but I was certainly intrigued by some of the other items that were with them.  These coins were not legal tender, but were either souvenir or promotional coins that provide a small glimpse into the history of American advertising.