Great Grandfather's Things

 

I hope you indulge me in posting about these old things that I am uncovering. It brings me great pleasure to sit at leisure and to inspect and hold something belonging to an ancestor and ponder on it's meaning to them and the greater world in general. Above is a keepsake box belonging to my great grandfather full of things one might expect from that era. In front of it is a pocket watch on a stand belonging to him that still works. I gave it a slight twist and it is not ticking as I type this post. 

The pocket watch is still somewhat of a mystery to me. According to the name and serial number, it is a Waltham Broadway model 1877 pocket watch made between January and March of 1873. It has seven jewels which after googling, means seven synthetic ruby bearings in the movement to reduce friction which is crème de la crème at the time. Modern watches now come with upwards of 21 jewels. I can find lots of pictures of this model online but few are gold, few are working and none that I can find have as ornate of a face. I still need to do some more research I guess.

Above were some of the many trinkets inside the box behind the pocket watch. I don't know much about the bullets but since my great grandfather fought in World War I, I'm assuming they are from that time period. The one on the left is brass and the one on the right most likely lead now oxidized. The two on the far right are the equivalent Native American bullets. 

The hickory nut on the middle left was supposedly carried by my great grandfather in his pocket for the duration of his time in World War I. (On a side note, I have two great grandfathers who fought in World War I and I have not done a records request for either. I need to do that in the near future.) I guess the nut was for luck and it worked as he came home, worked as a machinist for the railroad (pictured here in a blog post not long ago) and had one child. I'm not sure why only one child unless it was due to the ongoing Great Depression. 

Which brings me to the items on the middle right which are sales tax tokens. I had never heard of them until I googled them. Evidently during the Great Depression, they were "minted" by states to allow people to pay state sales tax equivalent of fractions of a cent instead of rounding up to the nearest whole penny. Funny that now we consider the penny nearly worthless and may someday be rounding up to the nearest nickel. 

Finally, across the bottom of the picture are a series of World War I military pins that most likely belonged to him. They are US Army Enlisted, US National Army, Signal Corps, US Regular Army, and Medical Department lapel/hat pins. Definitely pretty neat and something I need to dig into more.

Finally a picture of my great grandfather during World War I.