It's always a thrill to inherit or find an object that once belonged to an ancestor. I had chills when I found store tokens made by my 9th great-grandfather Henry Noldred of Ramsgate Kent England. Henry was a grocer who had his own tokens created to spend in his store in place of official money.
I was so intrigued by this new-found information that I started researching to see if I could find any of his tokens and I found that one of his existed created circa 1650!. I also learned that Ramsgate was spelled Romansgate back then.
Once I found that one of Henry's tokens had been sold on an auction site a few months before, I became determined to find another and purchase it. I'm excited to say I succeeded! I managed to find two in England, and I bought them both. I plan on having a small plaque made with Henry's birth, death and location. Then I'll have the tokens and the plaque framed and it will have a place of honour on my wall.
This is the description of the tokens: (rosette)HEN.NOLDRED.IN.ROMANS , around beaded inner circle, three tobacco rolls / logs of wood.
Rev: (rosette)GET.IN.YE.ISLE.OF.TENNET , around beaded inner circle, HIS HALF PENY in three lines. M. Dickinson 454. Neither obverse or reverse dies represented in Norweb.
What is the oldest ancestral item you own?
I wonder what could be purchased with a half penny in your ancestor's stock? Or how long it would take to earn that amount. Might be interesting to have that context added to the plaque's labelling.
ReplyDeleteProbably a pair of brown leather baby boots worn by my grandmother in 1896.
ReplyDeleteA journal of My Great Grandmother's which she started on January 5, 1899 and continued until her death in October of 1940 .
ReplyDelete