What is this?

I love old paper. I’m not an expert in collecting old paper, but I dabble. I buy postcards and books at antique stores, and I keep old maps, brochures, and travel guides. I don’t care if it’s faded or torn, yellowed or written upon. If it tells a story, I’m interested.

I’ve recently acquired a collection of old family papers, left behind in cupboards, filing cabinets, drawers, and closets following the death of my grandfather, John P. Henry Jr.  He’s the “Jack” in “Jack’s Papers.” My grandfather died on December 3, 2013, following complications from a car crash, at age 88–a good old age, to be sure, but not old enough. A year later, I began looking through and sharing some of the papers he left behind.

There are books, letters, envelopes, receipts, contracts, and deeds stretching back nearly two hundred years. I’ve found blank receipts from a store he ran in the 1950s and 60s, and I’ve found a letter sent from Ohio in 1834. I have correspondence from my fifth-great grandfather, a state legislator, to his son, in 1827. I have geography textbooks that show California in Mexican hands, and I have a catalogue from a seminary that’s been closed since the 1800s.

My grandfather wasn’t an active collector of these materials. He didn’t store it carefully or catalog it meticulously. And since I never spoke to him about these items, I don’t know if he collected it intentionally or accidentally. It landed all in one place because there were relatively few moves over generations and because some of these generations had few heirs. My grandfather was an only child, moving at the age of 25 into a family home with his grandmother. And when he moved this stuff in 1994, it only went a few yards, to a home for retirement build in the back yard. Fewer moves and fewer heirs means less paper dumped or burned–and more paper for me to read.

I’m still figuring out just what I’ve inherited. And as I figure out what I have–as I unfold scraps of paper that reveal surprising and delightful stories, as I turn pages of textbooks to find notes that probably haven’t seen the light of day in over a century–I’ll share it on this site. Check back. I have material to last years.