Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

Don and I have been talking about going off the grid in the next year and a half. Big land, tiny-ish house, haven't determined the location yet. We have Googled everything on the planet. When I say tiny-ish, the "ish" is my two hundred square foot extension of tiny. The addition was implemented after a few small panic attacks. Part mermaid, I want a claw foot tub, so the bathroom would have to be bigger than any of the tiny houses we saw. I also need a studio of sorts, outback office, a place where my muse can find me, and Don needs a shed. Oh, and windows, windows everywhere, and skylights. 

The outside is going to be as important as the home. Think camping. You spend all of your time enjoying the surroundings, campfires and lightning bugs and then retire to the tent or camper to relax and sleep. What to keep, what to get rid of? Stuff isn't nearly as important as time and the reduction of performance pressures. I wish we had thought of this years ago. Surely I SHOULD have. You see, I accidentally fell upon a trade that validates the thoughts we are pondering today. It started with a few minutes of spare time and a venture into a Goodwill store 15 years ago.

An object's worth is determined by it's owner, hence the old adage, "One man's trash is another man's treasure."

Let's just say that first visit paid off. Goodwill, Salvation Army, re-sale stores, yard sales and church bazaars yielded caches of treasures and paid many a Brabham bill when sold on E-bay.

A lof of these treasures are my own now. I remember talking to my oldest daughter about the heirlooms in our home. She replied "I never know the difference in what was a true family heirloom and what came from Goodwill." I understand her confusion. I had 18th and 19th century cabinet photos of people I claimed as adopted family. 

The biggest and best sale? I was at a Goodwill in Winston-Salem when a lady came out with a buggy of donated items. She began puttin small gold framed photos on the shelf. As I walked up, she dropped one and it shattered across the floor. While I helped her pick up the shards, I noticed the image was actually IN the glass. What were these?

A trip to Barnes and Noble, a few cups of coffee, a cushy arm chair (which they used to provide) and antique reference books yielded my answers. These gold gilded frames were called ambrotypes. My lot consisted of a little girl, measuring 2 x 2.5 (considered a ninth plate) and two ambros of a man in distressed comparative condition between the time span of two photos. One measured 3.25 x 4.25 (quarter plate) and the other measured 4.25 x 5.5 (half plate.) The gentleman was a confederate soldier. The ambrotypes were colored with an eerie gradient exposure. 

The smaller ambrotype depicted the soldier (when I say this, note that I still don't know what the stars and buttons signified in rank) with an amused confident half grin. He looked healthy and had excellent posture. In the larger ambrotype, the soldier still held himself with confident composure, but was gaunt and had obviously lost, at a glance, 20 lbs. His uniform was impeccable. He didn't appear to have gained anymore ranking than he had on his collar before, but, he had lost an arm. He sat with his knees crossed, and his good hand over the empty sleeve. His eyes still haunt me. Steely light grey. His cheeks in both pictures were high and prominent, but were colored rosy in the picture which belied the condition of the man taken. He looked ill and tired. 

These were the early days of EBay and Google. I believe it was 2001 when I found these. Even though information was available to search, it was much more limited than today. I had no idea what I had, and truthfully, still don't.

At that moment, I knew I had ambrotypes, they were confederate, and I was probably going to triple the twelve bucks I spent on the lot of them. I went all out and started the bid at $100 for the three on EBay around 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon. I popped popcorn and settled in for a movie. As I headed to bed for the night, the phone rang. 

I answered the cordless. The male voice asked me if I would be willing to negotiate an offsite bid for the ambros. I told him I thought I would let the auction run it's course. An hour later, I recieved another call, and I sleepily answered it. 

"Would you consider selling offline?" he asked. "No" I answered and groggily headed to the computer to see what was going on. I jiggled the mouse and went to EBay. The ambrotypes had over 50 bids. It was at $700 and my email inbox was full of requests. How many stars were on his collar!? Can you zoom in on the buttons? I went to bed and took the phone off the hook.

The next morning, I put the phone on the hook and made coffee. It immediately started ringing. I was under the impression that my contact information was not available through EBay and to this day still don't know how they got it. 

After a continuous barrage of requests, I took the phone off the hook again. The bid online was now $1000. Later in the day, I lifted the reciever to make a call when it began beeping. I clicked over thinking it was the person I had just tried to call. A gentleman calmly asked me if I would allow him to make an offer, stating "I will drive down and pay you cash this evening." I asked what his offer was. He replied "$4,400." I accepted. I suggested that he schedule to leave the next morning because of terrible weather conditions that evening. The entire seaboard was getting impaled with torrential rains. He dismissed the idea of a delayed departure and said he was leaving immediately. 4 1/2 hours later he pulled into our drive. 

We cut to the chase quickly and headed over to my kitchen counter. Albeit calm and collected, that first glance told me that he had found a gem. 

I calmly asked "Who is he?"

He wouldn't offer the identity of the man in the ambrotypes, feigning research. He did explain what he thought would suffice to me. 
"The larger the ambrotype, the more affluent the subject was, because of the depravation of war, there wasn't a lot of money for the frivolity of a photograph. So, therein lies the importance of these ambrotypes."

"Are you going to re-sell these?" I asked.

He emphatically stated that he wouldn't. He offered that he was the largest collector of Civil War artifacts on the Easc Coast and one of the 10 in the country. 

$4,400 was doled out on the kitchen counter. After gingerly wrapping the ambrotypes in bubble wrap, he placed them in a case, thanked me, and walked out the door. 

I bought a riding lawnmower and a shed with that money. I was quite happy with the find, and the payoff, but I have a sneaky feeling he was happier. 

Several years passed. I was waiting in an insurance office while the agent was with another client. Bored, I stated browsing his books, Civil War enthusiast he was. 

I flipped the pages and froze cold on a page. There were the steely grey eyes of my photograph. I searched the name below in the caption. Stonewall Jackson. Ok.....understand again. I lived in North Carolina. Although one of the states that succeeded, it was neutrally so. Civil War history was not nearly as prevalent in NC as it is in SC. Not all restaurants had the battle pictures of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall over the booths. I'm being funny here, not sacrilegious, this is my feeble attempt to explain why I haven't recognized Stonewall Jackson.

I went home and told Don that I thought I had found out who the guy in the ambrotype was. I Googled Stonewall Jackson and we both agreed that he looked astoundingly like the guy in the ambrotypes. However, there is this HUGE problem. My picture had depicted a sick, ranked officer, without an arm, even though it apprears the limp sleeve contains one. If this were Jackson, it would have been the only picture of him ever without his arm, which he lost to friendly fire eight days before he died. His arm is buried seperately from his body. 

I have looked at every single photo of Jackson available to date and still shudder at the uncanny similarity of this man in my photograph and Jackson and the ambrotype photo's I sold have never resurfaced. I had a shed and lawnmower and all was well. All I have for testimony is my family who saw the listing and Don who held the ambrotypes with me. I have tried to contact EBay for archives, which apparently weren't available at that time. My floppy disc with photos for listing has long since been discarded. 

This week, I tried once again to search for EBay archives, but there were no records of my since closed account. I started Googling the "what-if's" online. All of the research ended late one evening when Don nudged me on the computer. "It's not our story anymore, it's his."

Things come and things go. It's the stories that remain. 

Let's just say that I learned a lot from the ghost of possessions that I brought home over those five years. I will need to remember the lessons again when I donate, give, and sell my stuff to go "tiny" living. "Our life is fritted away by detail. Simplify, simplify." -Henry David Thoreau. I really enjoyed the time spent treasure hunting, I never knew what I would find, and I found some doozies. Along with valuables, there were many stories and some downright hilarities. 

I will share more over the next few weeks.