What is the one family item you wish you had? - just for a bit of fun

[frostyknight]

I'd love to have my great uncle Paddy's WWI medals. I remember playing with them as a child, they always intrigued me. Sadly sold many years ago as they weren't important to my parents.
I remember seeing a photo of my mother's grandfather I don't know who has it now, but I would love to have it (or even a scan of it.)

[Churchie]

Well, there was a sampler, embroidered in Carmarthenshire by my GGG grandmother Mary Isaac as a small child. She was born in 1811. It would be close to 200 years old now...

My mother remembered it hanging on the wall in a frame, and knew the verse off by heart:
"When greedy worms my body eat then you may read my name complete"

Unfortunately, my grandmother took a notion to clean it, removed it from the frame and gave it a good wash. She ended up with sludgey scraps of faded wool.

[chinakay]

Now, that's a real tragedy 

[Churchie]

It was indeed. Along with the family bible, which "disappeared" from grandma's clutches.

Oh, and when my GG grandmother Eliza Mary died suddenly in 1895, she was in the process of hand stitching a cape. My mother had it, still with the needle stuck into the fabric, but gave it to my sister, who placed no value on it and "can't remember where it went"

To be able to turn back time eh?

[chinakay]

Not wanting to rub salt into your wound, but this is my great-great grandmother's sampler from the exact same time period as yours...and perhaps what yours might look like now. I can see it needing a "wash", though...

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=211742.0

Cheers,
China

[Churchie]

Oh go on, give it a good scrub. It's harbouring dust!

Caroline.

[BevL]

I would dearly love to get my hands on the lovely 4 legged stand where you could put 2 lots of flowers on (the bottom just before the legs and the top) and an ashtray stand made by my father!
The Ashtray had a penny in the middle and I remember it was the year of my sister's birthday.  I could polish them up again and make them look lovely as they were rosewood.
Bev

[GillyJ]

We are all likely to throw things out or give away things that we or family members may become nostalgic aboout in the future.
My Nain had a glass fronted cabinet full of her treasures and I would love to know, as would all my cousins, what happened to the yellow/green chunk of glass that was supposedly off Royal Charter and what happened to the painting of a little green parrot pulling a small cart.
When I was a child I cherished a toy that I had been given, but in a moment of benevolence I gave all my favourite toys away to a children's home nearby including a lovely book about a carthorse that had doors opening on to the next page all the way through.
Fifty years later I spotted the same cherished toy in an auction and was brave enough to bid on it and win at a pretty high price. This may not be my original toy but it is sufficiently like it, and still in working order, that it gives me as much pleasure now as it did then.
Burnt and destroyed items can never be restored but perhaps we can make sure that we keep records for our future generations to enjoy.

[Hackstaple]

My maternal grandfather was arrested in Leicester in 1912 - don't know why he was there - for playing a street organ. He was apparently busking. I would love to have that instrument.