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Finding Treasure
In An Old Trunk
By Jodean McGuffin Martin
Aunt Jessie Dolby Narramore died in Webb City, Missouri, leaving her estate to twenty-eight nieces and nephews. She was the last surviving child of Abe and Lydia Brown Dolby. Her lawyer notified the twenty-eight heirs of the impending sale of Aunt Jessie's belongings to settle the estate. Every one of those twenty-eight heirs knew she was dirt poor and whatever was in the estate would barely pay the lawyers fees.
Kenneth isn't very fond of my junk, much less Missouri junk, so he acted like he didn't hear me when I said "You can't just let them sell her household to perfect strangers, that's your family heirlooms. She had all your grandparent’s things. At least go and look at it."
We had been to visit Aunt Jessie in the 1960's and I came away in disbelief. She lived in a typical white square house of the 1900's which had a large wrap around front porch and porch swing. Just smacked of nostalgic evenings when Aunt Jessie and Uncle Harry sat on the front porch and visited with the friends and neighbors and drank lemonade. At the back door was a red brick walk. The bricks were laid so that each four bricks made a cob web pattern. I had never seen a brick walk like that.
As we turned the knob on the front door you felt the deep embossed Victorian doorknob and you gasped as you
looked down to see if it was real. We entered the living room, and traveled back in time to the early 1900's. For fifty years, when she purchased anything new, she just scooted the furniture closer together and fitted the new piece in among the old. Never discarding or throwing out anything in her lifetime. She had all her husband’s furniture from his first marriage and 50 years of her own personal accumulation. After her parents died, she was the
youngest girl at home and she took their leftovers. Her old maid sister Orah and baby brother Harry died and she took their belongings. All this treasured junk was packed, stacked and crammed into six rooms and a basement. The walls were bulging. I would describe her house as "Wall to wall and ceiling to floor" furniture. Most of it bought before 1920.
I knew the treasures that were in Aunt Jessie’s house. After several days of my nagging, begging and laying on the guilt about selling the poor old Aunt’s possessions to strangers, Ken said, "OK, if Charley and Nell will go with us----we'll just look at it." Six hours later we were in Webb City, Missouri looking for her lawyer. He instructed us as to what we could do. He gave us the key to the house and gave us four hours to take anything that was personal like family letters, pictures and Bibles.
Well, that was simple enough. While the boys talked to the lawyer we girls headed for Aunt Jessie's house in the extra car. Their explicit orders were to gather all personal letters and pictures and put them in a box, no reading the letters until later that night. Just gather things we wanted. We'd get a motel and go through things, throwing away the unwanted junk. They had no qualms about calling it junk.
We opened the house, Oooood and awddddd at all the accumulation and then thought that the logical place for her to keep letters and pictures would probably be in the desk. We opened the top drawer and it was crammed, jammed full of everything, letters, advertisements, church bulletins, every piece of mail that she had gotten for years.
We couldn't find a large box so we dragged a fifty gallon barrel in from the garage when we saw the pile out grew a grocery sack. There were newspaper clippings, family pictures, Insurance letters, bills, Birthday, Christmas and holiday cards as far back as the 1890's. Birth and graduation announcements, shower and marriage invitations, and family letters from friends, grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews. When the desk filled
up with the accumulation she began to fill the dresser drawers and when they ran over she opened a steamer trunk and began to drop them in it. By this time we were on the second fifty-gallon barrel of “junk”.
About this time the boys arrived and when we said, "We're on the second 50 gallon barrel of letters," their first words were, " Oh No! we are not taking a hundred gallons of junk mail back to Oklahoma."
Before the afternoon was over we had found the family Bible with four generations of ancestors in it. The family pictures from the home in Pennsylvania. Found Grandparents pictures in Centre County, Pennsylavnia,
Grandparents pictures from Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, reunion pictures from 1910 in Pennsylvania and Civil War soldiers.
We finally had stayed our four hours and decided to get a motel and look at what was in the two barrels. At the motel we began to sort. The boys didn't even read the letters just discarded them. I sat next to the waste pile, snatching things out and pleading, begging, threatening until they consented to put the letters in our car trunk instead of the trash. We had a trunk full of letters and they threw most of the rest away. Bringing home the Bible and the family pictures. It's true, I took what they did not want and were going to destroy.
We stayed up most of the night sorting through all the things we had gotten. After a few hours sleep we started back home, nothing settled about what to do with Aunt Jessie’s estate.
At home I sorted the letters according to the postmarks, beginning with the oldest, I began to read. For three hours every night for six weeks I'd read those old letters. Ken would get tired of me reading and say “Throw that junk out and don't mess with it."
"No--I'm finding good stuff"
Grandmother Lydia Dolby's steamer trunk contained every letter from all her children and her Brown relatives that had ever written to her. Each bundle would contain a year or two of letters and then she had tied them with a string or ribbon and laid them aside. Each bundle was in chronological order as Mother Dolby had placed them there. You could follow the family from week to week and year after year until she died. Her letters started in 1896 and had the stamp of Columbus kneeling before Queen Victoria.
Over the years she wrote, "Papa went after Dr. Trimble, Georgia has a big boy born Monday." "Papa thinks his pension will start soon. Eddie's gone to Okla. Apples are blooming. Old hen has hatched her chickens. Emma got married. Bring me a black ribbon for a belt for my new dress the next trip home. Went to Northview to Sunday School. Went down to see Aunt Margaret last Sunday. Harry got a pair of long bib overalls. Papa planting oats. Mrs.Smith teaching at North View. Flies are about to eat us up. Belle picking berries. Was at a carpet tacking at Mrs. Chaffins last week. Going to Literary meeting tomorrow. Sent you a pound of butter on the train. Clyde and Lillie sent some of their wedding cake.
Persimmons are ripe. Mr. Rarrick went to Springfield and got married but he hasn't brought her home. I guess he's afraid Lillie will kill her. Children vaccinated for the small pox all have sore arms. Eddie traded Barney for a gray mare to match Deck. Planted sweet corn. Papa told the girls he was going to get heavier shoes to wear to school, that didn't set to well with them. Papa's having our sistern arched. Lillie is making Dave a watch chain out
of Allie's hair for Christmas. Papa's sick. Papa dies. Farm sells, Mother dies.
In Aunt Ora's trunk we found her diaries that told of working for Dr. Farnsworth as a trusted employee, he became sick and when he asked for Orah instead of his wife, the wife asked her to leave. Much later in the
correspondence the lady who took Aunt Orah's place wrote and asked if she knew the wife was a dope addict. Wonder how Aunt Orah answered that? Aunt Orah went on to nurses training and spent her life as a special nurse
Uncle Harry's letters told of his army experience, romance and marriage with a German girl, Gertrude, who lived on a wheat farm in Kansas. He didn't like to work and the farm was hard labor. He didn't stay long in Kansas until he came back to Missouri to Aunt Orah. She spoiled and babied him to keep him around. Letters came for years from his wife. They always told how much she loved him and wanted him to come back. He never did answer the letters and she finally got a divorce. Without those letters we never would have known that she tried for years to
get him to come back.
Jesse May Dolby (Narramore) was born 5 October 1885 in Webster Co MO. She died in Webb City Missouri on 7 September 1971. Jesse was the youngest child of Abraham Dolby & Lydia Brown. Kenneth Vincent Martin (1919-1997) was a grandson of Abraham and Lydia. Jodean (McGuffin) Martin is his widow. Without these very special "Trunks of Treasures" that Aunt Jessie stood guardian over, we might never have known of the daily lives of our ancestors. Each trunk that was opened - each letter that was read, gave us a very special tour of our ancestors lives and gave us a few small secrets of our family history.
  
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