THE TREASURE CHEST By Inez Kay Broach Suber, [email protected]

I grew up with being told stories all about my father's people. My father, Cecil Atkins Broach, was the oldest son of seven children -- six sons and one daughter. My father was born in 1901 and died two years ago at the age of 93 1/2 years. He was able to give me information back into the 1700s on his Broach line. He always had a gift for memory. He reminded me of the Indians who tell their ancestry by word of mouth from generation to generation. He grew up with many relatives nearby who influenced him. My father had a love of his ancestors. When he reached age 90, having a sense of humor, he told me that he was now worshipping his ancestors as they had given him the genes of long life.

My father and I would spend hours at the dining room table going over names and pedigree charts. He would tell me stories about all the people on the charts and what they looked like. He had even supplied me with some beloved photos of several of the people. He would tell me stories of his father who was a telegrapher for the railroad. He would talk about the many moves that they made because of his father's work. The children were born in Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana. He also told me about life on the farm as a teenage boy.

As the years went by, I discovered from my father that one of his favorite aunts had also done genealogy on the Broach family. His aunt, Dr. Elizabeth Lightfoot Broach, his father's sister, had never married and spent much of her time doing genealogy.

She and her father were osteopathic doctors in Atlanta, Georgia. She was born in 1868 and died in 1952 in Atlanta. My father had known her well when he was a child. She was actively searching the Broach name as he was growing up and taught him much about his Broach family. Daddy listened and learned.

I started wondering about all her genealogical research and who had it. I grilled my father about where her papers could possibly be. Finally he told me about two cousins living in Arkansas. They were unmarried sisters who lived together. The youngest was about 85 and the oldest was 90. He told me that they had grown up with Aunt Doc (as she was called) and they might know what happened to her research papers and the painting that I was looking for. Aunt Doc was also an artist and I was looking for one of her paintings too. In her papers she had a letter to an attorney to insure its value. It was called "Christ the Victor" and it depicted Christ with a scarlet belt around his white robe, sitting on a white horse coming through the clouds with a sword in his hand. It was donated to a church in Atlanta but has not been located at this date. Some relatives believed it to be in a church in Fordyce, Arkansas.

Daddy told me to call the cousins, so I did. After about 15 minutes of telling them who I was, I asked if they knew where Aunt Doc's papers were or the "Christ the Victor" painting. They had to talk a little bit to each other before they told me they didn't. They had seen the painting while she was painting it but didn't know what had happened to it. But then they said, "But we have cousin's trunk here."

Aunt Doc sent it from Atlanta by Greyhound bus one year. I asked "How long have you had it?" They responded that Aunt Doc sent it to them a few years before her death.

"Have you ever looked inside?"

They said they had not. That was 1989, Aunt Doc had died in 1952, and they had had the trunk a few years before her death.

"You've had the trunk for at least 39 years and you've never opened it? Weren't you the least bit curious about what was inside?" I asked. They replied they "had no reason to look inside." Aunt Doc had just asked them to take it for safe keeping.

That is when I started crying tears of joy. I asked them if they would please open the trunk and send me any genealogy research papers they might find and they said they would. I couldn't stand the suspense so I called them back in an hour and asked if they found anything. They said they had found an envelope full of letters with family tree written on the cover.

I called my dad and told him what his cousins had told me about the trunk. He said, "Oh yes, I've seen that old trunk hundreds of times out in their hallway by the front door. In fact, I tripped over the thing on one occasion." He was surprised when I told him that it had belonged to Aunt Doc, his aunt Dr. Elizabeth Lightfoot Broach.

I received the envelope that week. It was full of old letters and information that helped me on my Broach search. I called dad's cousins and thanked them and also asked "Who will inherit the trunk after you two are gone?" One of them replied, "Well, I guess you will if you want it" and I replied that I would be grateful to have it. The trunk was an antique carriage trunk that was made for Aunt Doc's great-grandfather, Harry Lightfoot of Virginia, who was born about 1791.

About two months after my father's death two years ago, the oldest of the cousins with the trunk died. My sister took my father's ashes to be buried in the family plot in Hollysprings, Arkansas. While she was there, my sister went to see dad's cousin to see how she was doing after the death of her sister. During that visit, she told my sister to take the trunk and give it to me when she got back. After struggling to get it into the trunk of the car, my sister took it home with her. She had to unpack the trunk and mail its contents in boxes to me. Then her husband made a crate for the trunk in which he mailed it to me.

When I received the trunk and its contents, I wept again I was so joyful to receive it. And then came the "real" discovery of what this "Treasure Chest" really was. It contained artifacts from five to six generations back on my family lines.

There were old books belonging to my great-great-grandparents, a full suit of my great-grandfather's, and baby shoes of a great- uncle who had died at age 4. There were water colors that my aunt had painted of her parents and other drawings and paintings. There were two tin boxes full of old letters dating back to 1850s and 1860s. One was from my great-great-grandmother, written during the Civil War. There was a letter that had words to a song written by a relative while he was in the Civil War. There were lace-tatted collars and other hand-pieced work, my great- grandparents' coffee cups with saucers, my great-grandfather's "puncture kit" (hypodermic needle) from his practice, an 1879 "Godey's Lady Book" (magazine) and an earlier children's magazine. There was an album full of photos of many of my relatives and envelopes full of tintypes of early relatives. Many photos were framed in little wooden boxes. There was a shuttle from my great-grandmother's loom, old coins from the 1800s, and eyeglasses from a great-great-grandmother. There were dried roses picked the day my great-grandfather asked my great-grandmother to marry him (1866). There was a cherished letter written about the first time Aunt Elizabeth saw my father at the age of one year, describing what he looked like, and a letter written by my grandfather to his children around Christmastime. There were even some original William and Mary College Quarterly magazines. The list goes on and on, but the most surprising thing I found was in the bottom of the trunk.

There were two notebooks at the bottom of the trunk full of Aunt Doc's genealogy notes and charts. I thought I had been given all of it earlier in 1989. I really wept then. I couldn't believe it. There in front of my eyes was her "life's search." It was all there. Letters from relatives that she had saved and birth certificates of herself and her sister. Even their wills were included. And there was a letter explaining to her descendants what the "Treasure Chest" was and meant to her and to whom it had belonged. She was showing her love for all those who had gone before her by keeping this beloved "Treasure Chest." She didn't want to be forgotten nor the people who had gone before her. This was now mine. The responsibility seemed heavy. I must now keep the trunk for safe-keeping and then pass it on to someone after I am gone, never to be divided but kept together. After all, this trunk is like a time capsule of the Broach family. When one opens the trunk lid, one is back into the 1800s.

Note: In two additional genealogy research books found in the trunk there was information on many lines including Montgomery, Reynolds, Goodgame, Heads, Nason, Burch, and Lightfoot.