Artifacts

I read with some excitement recently that very soon scientists will be able to affordably retrieve the DNA of our late ancestors off of family artifacts and test it for us.  This is very exciting!  Genetic genealogy has been a gift to my research, and it is easy to imagine what is on the other side of the horizon, in example identifying nameless faces in photographs of our ancestors.

I have always enjoyed that existential connection to my ancestors.  It feels special to walk where they walked; to visit a building they lived in, and to handle something they touched and owned a hundred years ago.  They were real people with lives, and artifacts make them more real to me.

About a year ago I set about locating the same regimental flags that my gg-uncle served under and my gg-grandfather died under in the Civil War.  It took a couple months, but I finally tracked them down, there are two sets, one is stored away in the McClean County (IL) History Museum, the other is stored in the State Armory at the state (IL) capital Springfield.  

The bug that bit me next was trying to track down my gg-uncle Capt. Harvey J. Dutton's (1836-1928) officer's sword from the Civil War.  I talked about the prospects with my cousins.  First I would need to research all his descendants, then try to locate and make contact with them, all without knowing if the search was going to be fruitless and all my time wasted.  With most family artifacts it only takes a few generations of separation before families forget what made it special in the first place?  Who did it belong to?  Why did we keep it?  So I asked in my mind, did the sword become a toy that people played with?  Did it get sold in a garage sale?  

No.  I decided no, unless I had direction, I was not going to go down that road.  And then this happened.  I discovered a newspaper story, from The Springfield News-Leader (Springfield, Missouri), 25 Jan 1928, Wednesday, Page 3 --

DUTTON PROPERTY LEFT TO SEVERAL CHILDREN

    Each of the five children of the late H. J. Dutton, Civil War veteran and for many years a resident of Springfield, is to share in the estate, according to the terms of the will filed yesterday.  A property on East Harrison street is left to Florence E. Mack, property in Florida goes to Clarence A. Dutton, a son; Norma E. Mack receives a property on Lyon avenue, Bertha I. Dunlap will have the property on West Chestnut street, while a property on West Locust street goes to another daughter Gertrude L. Coover, and her husband Guy Coover. 

    A sword carried by the veteran in the war between the states is bequeathed to a grandson, Harvey R. Mack.     

    R. E. M. Mack and A. O. Mack are appointed executors of the will. 

Uhh, yeah, where I am from?  That counts as "direction."  Besides, when that bug bites you, sometimes you have to wonder if it is an agent of providence?

Harvey Rowan Mack died in 1969, in Springfield, Missouri. He had two daughters.  And so it begins.

Copyright © 2021 by Kevin W. Walker