Much has been made of the ongoing “transfer of wealth” from the World War II generation, but the old soldiers and their wives are leaving behind a lot of stuff along with their stocks and bonds.
Puzzled middle-age children, some ready to downsize their own households, are left to decide what to keep, what to sell, what to donate to charity and what to haul to the dump.
Along with the Target dishes and Wal-Mart throw pillows bought for Mama’s retirement apartment, there may be things with monetary value, things with historic value and things with sentimental value. Some have all three.
Californian Ann Perry had always suspected that a painting in her parents’ living room might be worth some money. Her grandfather had bought it in England sometime in the 1920s or ’30s.
After her parents died, she had it appraised. It was worth $8,000. Not that she was going to sell it, she says, but she needed to know for insurance purposes.
Perry, heiress to the “Go Fish” card game her grandmother designed, has written a book, “The Wi$e Inheritor,” that helps people make informed choices about money and property that come down through the family.
Determining value
The first step toward deciding what to do with inherited stuff is to figure out what it is, why it might be important, and what it’s worth. In the case of collections or novelties, eBay may be the place to start, she says.
Look for similar items and see what the sales price is.
“Sometimes only the person who collected the items may know they have value,” she says.
She knows two sisters who almost threw out their father’s baseball cards until the family accountant suggested they have them appraised. They were worth $80,000.
If the family plans to have an estate sale, professionals are available to appraise the goods and hold the sale.
Local historical societies and archives can help determine which family letters and papers might have historic value for the larger community.
David Carmicheal, director of the Georgia Department of Archives and History, says people come in offering to donate Civil War letters who say they’ve thrown away letters from World War II or Vietnam. Just because something is newer doesn’t mean it’s not historically important, he says.
People often undervalue their own family’s importance, says Michael Rose, director of the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.
“It’s absolutely amazing to me how little people think of their own things as having historical value,” he says. “I thought `Antiques Road Show’ had shown people there’s a value to almost anything.”
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Recently, the history center received some letters from a soldier stationed in Alaska. Many of them described his boredom.
“He didn’t have much to do,” Rose says. “That was kind of an interesting spin on those letters. They still had a story to tell.” The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta is full of old family items that help tell the history of Jews in Georgia. Archivist Sandy Berman has mined boxes and bins to give a picture of what life was like for Jews during different times of the state’s history.
“We’re after business records, family histories, newsletters, congregational records, memory books, scrapbooks, records from organizations,” Berman says.
She was invited by heirs into the attic of a home for sale. She found a half-century of records and memorabilia from one woman’s activities in many of the Jewish organizations in Atlanta.
Another family recently donated a family scrapbook and papers that included letters from Alexander Stephenson, vice president of the Confederacy. The donor was a descendant of David Mayer, who is credited with saving Atlanta’s cotton crop during Reconstruction.
Records don’t have to be from a prominent family to be worthwhile, Berman says.
“Historians come to repositories such as ours and look at a letter written in 1930, and all it’s talking about is day-to-day activities,” she says. “But it’s a glimpse into what people were doing in the 1930s.”
Objects, she says, are judged by the same criteria as letters and papers — do they show anything about the history of the community? A store calendar, an old hat block, a circumcision gown — all might show something of the enterprise and culture of their time, she says.
Perry, Rose and Berman say that while professionals may help determine monetary and historical value, only families can decide sentimental value.can trim from here to end
Lee Kinnamon of Americus, Ga., has plenty of experience with the tug of the past.
He serves on the boards of several archival and historical organizations, including chairing the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Board. He lives in a house built for his grandmother that is packed with five generations of family heirlooms — furniture, books, china, silver, paintings, photographs, business records, doodads of all sorts.
Emotions at play
“It’s hard to be objective when you have an emotional attachment,” Kinnamon says.
Kinnamon doesn’t just keep his ancestors’ belongings. He shares the stories behind them. A rolltop desk, one of three in his study, belonged to Charles L. Ansley, who ran a department store in Americus that closed in the 1920s.
A sideboard in the dining room goes back further, to his great-great-grandfather, Maj. Moses Speer, who defended Atlanta against the Yankees. His silver cutlery is inside, where it has been since he ate with it.
A bookcase in the living room is filled with the books the major’s daughter, May Speer Ansley, put there as she read them with the Woman’s Literary Club she founded in 1897. They are shelved in the same order she left them — and the club still meets.