The interesting thing about old houses like ours is that they've had entire lives that the current owners know nothing about.
Our house, which was built in 1870, feels like
my home. The walls and roof shelter everything that is near and dear to
me. We're growing love and our family in
our home. It feels like it's
ours.
Yet, these same walls have housed entire generations of families. Those families also lived and loved here. When I think of it that way, I feel as if I'm taking an extended stay in a hotel.
The house doesn't really belong to me even though our name is on the title. It belongs to itself. The house has outlasted the lives it's sheltered, and it will probably outlast my life too.
Since moving in last summer, Eric and I have often wondered about the people who came before us. Who were they? What did they look like? Did they have happy lives here? What did our house look like then without electricity or running water?
Last weekend, we got a tiny sliver of a glimpse into life before us.
Eric has recently started using our old field stone basement (that I've only set foot in five times because it's creepy) as a practice room. The last time he went down there to practice, he came back upstairs with a small, wooden drawer in his hands.
He thought I might like to use it as a decorative tray around the house since I have an antique, wooden jewelry drawer on our bathroom vanity.
I glanced at the old keyhole and metal initial plate on the front of the drawer and asked where it had come from. He explained that it was the only drawer remaining in a rickety bureau left behind in the corner of our basement. We have a dresser in our basement? Who knew?!
I set it aside without looking at it very closely, but a few hours later, when I went to go clean it, I noticed a paper tag glued to the outer backside of the drawer.
Written in pencil, in shaky, childlike penmanship, it reads:
"(Name omitted) is a nice girl. He said she wasn't."
It's a pretty mysterious statement, and I'm really hoping it doesn't mean that the girl on the tag was locked down in the dark basement for bad behavior. That would convince me our house was haunted.
After reading it, I was obviously curious about the girl on the tag and whether or not she had lived here, and if so, when.
In my time of need, I relied on good ole Google to see if I could scrounge up anything about the mysterious name on the drawer. I typed in the girl's name along with the name of our town, and to my surprise, information came up right away.
She was born in my neighborhood in 1897. She was the youngest of four siblings, all of whom were born in the neighborhood. In fact, her entire family is buried less than five miles from here.
There was a lot more information about the father of the family than the girl on the tag. There were photographs of him and his wife, several letters he had written relatives, newspaper articles about him, and even an invitation to his other daughter's wedding at the church down the street.
The letters were pretty awesome because he talks about working for the mill that this neighborhood was built for in the first place. It helped us understand the way the industry and housing around here operated.
I don't know if this family actually lived in our house or not. It's possible that they were the neighbors of the people who lived here. The postmarks on the envelope only give the family name and town....no address. We also have a name plaque on the outside of our house that is not the same family. There's nothing on Google about that name though...boo.
Yet, I am happy to report that the girl on the tag grew up, married a farmer from a few towns over, and raised four children of her own. So if she was, in fact, locked in our basement, at least she was eventually let out.
P.S. I just noticed that the g has a pitchforked tail, which ups the creepiness factor a lot.
