Sunday, October 19, 2014

Sentimental Sunday: Identifying Heirloom Jewelry

Silver Ancestral Jewelry
 inherited from my maternal grandmother, 1992, photo 12 Oct 2014

Source Citation: Year: 1950; Arrival: New York, New York;
Microfilm Serial: 
T715, 1897-1957;
Microfilm Roll: 
Roll 7816; Line: 18; Page Number: 100. (Ancestry.com) 12 Oct 2014
As I have inherited all of my mother's and grandmother's jewelry, it is hard for me to clearly mark when and who the pieces belonged to. My mother only lived 10 years after her mother. 

My grandmother's jewelry was in the same house as my mother and my mother merged the collections together. However, these two pieces my mother told me were my grandmother's "from a trip". Further evidence is her wearing them in a few photos.

As I have begun to work with the passenger lists of my grandparent's trips provided by Ancestry.com, I discovered that these two silver pieces are clearly from Guatemala since the one on the left is stamped with Guatemala on the back and the one on the right says, "libertad 15 de septiembre de 1821". That emblem and date are the liberation of Guatemala from Spain in 1821.

The passenger list for the ship, Jamaica shows my Stewart grandparents and their traveling friends, the Youngs, leaving Puerto Barrios, Guatemala on 6 Apr 1950 and arriving in New York on 10 Apr 1950. I am feeling more sentimental about them now that I know they were bought in my lifetime.

I wish I could figure out which of the many Kodachrome slides matches this trip. Slides of Mexico, Guatemala and Bermuda all look the same to me.

1 comment:

Sara E. Campbell said...

I used to love going through my mother's jewelry box. I have a coral necklace of hers and a few other older pieces. I remember my aunt (and godmother) had a charm bracelet with a one-armed bandit that actually spun up a row of fruit.