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Share your Treasured Heirlooms

This page is provided for W.I.S.E. members to offer pictures and text illustrative of their genealogy. If you have something – an heirloom, an artifact, an image, a page from a family bible, a snapshot of your ancestral source, or something you consider of other genealogical interest – please feel free to submit it for display and after it has been approved for content, we'll post it on this page.

Please provide a printed narrative of the genealogical significance and/or history of your proposed display item(s), including an estimate of its age, so that other members will understand what it is and its relevance to your family. Since this is W.I.S.E. (Wales, Ireland, Scotland, England), please try to restrict yourselves to the first generation of immigrants and prior ancestors.

New postings will be positioned at the top of the list and will move downward as newer items come in.  We expect to keep your display items on the page for several months, so that all members have ample opportunity to see them.

If you don't have an image of your item in digital format, you can bring your item to a W.I.S.E meeting and we will take a digital photograph of it.  Note: Please notify the W.I.S.E. webmaster by email prior to the meeting that you will be bringing the item(s), to ensure that a camera is available. If you already have a digital image, please forward your image and its supporting narrative to the W.I.S.E. FHS - Webmaster by email. Thank you.

Strangers in the Box Author: Pamela A. Harazim Come, look with me inside this drawer, In this box I've often seen, At the pictures black and white, Faces proud, still, serene. I wish I knew the people, These strangers in the box, Their names and all their memories, Are lost among my socks. I wonder what their lives were like, How did they spend their days? What about their special times? I'll never know their ways. If only someone had taken time To tell who, what, where, when, These faces of my heritage, Would come to life again. Could this become the fate Of the pictures we take today? The faces and the memories Someday to be passed away? Make time to save your stories, Seize the opportunity when it knocks, Or someday you and yours could be The strangers in the box. © 1997

Heirlooms or Artifacts? Perhaps you have an image of a place in the British Isles that you travelled to as part of your genealogy research. Tell us what you liked about it, what it meant to you, what others in that area should be sure to see, and (perhaps) what to avoid. Tell us what the people were like, and whether you met cousins or other relatives. Tell us if you met local genealogists there. Or, perhaps you have some artifact, inherited from your ancestors, or specific to your cultural ancestry, such as a claymore sword, a sporran, a harp, etc.

Member Memories

1862 Army model Colt Revolver

Richard Savage (Posted: 01/16/12)

The attached image of a 1862 Army model Colt revolver, .44 caliber, that belonged my great-grand-uncle, Patrick Savage, who immigrated to Chillicothe, OH in 1856. Patrick died at the Battle of Stones River (aka Murfreesboro, TN) on 31 December, 1862. Patrick was a member of the 18th U.S. Infantry Regiment (i.e., a Federal Regiment, not a state regiment) of the Army of the Cumberland, commanded by General Rosecrans.

The Army of the Cumberland was one of three major Federal armies. The Army of the Potomac had just been badly beaten at Fredricksburg; the Army of the Mississippi, under Grant, was mired in the swamps around Vicksburg. Abraham Lincoln needed a victory to accompany the Emancipation Proclamation. Accordingly, Rosecrans was ordered to attack the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Gen Braxton Bragg. The Confederates attacked first, catching the Federals off-guard and pushing the Federal right wing all the way back to the Nashville Pike and the River. Casualties in Patrick's brigade were near 40%, one of the highest in the War.

I'm proud of Patrick, of course, and he's also the main source of my knowledge of my Northern Irish (Scots-Irish) ancestors. As a member of a Federal unit, his widow, Mary, was entitled to a pension. The records of her application, stating the date and place of their marriage, is in the National Archives. Military records can be a valuable source.

The History of the Church of Scotland, by Archbishop John Spotswood

Ken McIntosh - (Posted: 01/16/12)

Picture of a Welsh Dwelling

Lura Williams (Posted: 02/04/12)

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