I'm Such a History Geek

Over the weekend, my mom let my niece go through several boxes of old family items for a project on WWII.  At the bottom of one box, she (my niece) found a really old leather wallet (as in hand-stitched) with the following note inside:

"This was hand-made by my grandfather, a Methodist circuit rider."

My mother recognized the handwriting as her grandmother's.

Sure enough, someone had written the name of my great-great-great-grandfather and the date April 1830 in some kind of super ink (to have lasted this long) on the inside of the wallet.

The wallet is almost 200 years old!  How cool is that?!?

This ancestor went on to have several children, one of whom moved to California during the gold rush and another that claimed land in Oklahoma during the Land Rush.  The former was unsuccessful in his attempts to become rich, but the latter was my great-great grandfather and our family still owned some of the original land rush land up until a few years ago.

Talk about having some true American history in your family!

I feel like I could compete with some of the celebrities on that show Who Do You Think You Are? for who has the coolest family history, especially since this is the same branch of the family that can trace its roots back to the American Revolution and to a specific county in Ireland before that.

Someday when I have time (so around 2030 when Evan's out of college?  :)  ), I'd like to do more family research, maybe even travel to Ireland and search their local records.  But for now, I'll have to be satisfied with the awesome work my mom has done and bask in my historical geekiness.