And Speaking of Treasures...

... because that seems to be my word of the week!

I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but I was born in Buffalo, New York, and lived the first eleven years of my life there.  I still have family that lives there, including a 96 year old great-aunt, who is our family historian.  And by that I mean... she remembers things from 75 years ago as if she lived it yesterday.  Names, places, it's really incredible.

I felt honored, several years ago, when she asked me to put all of her old photos (really old!) in scrapbooks. She had seen my own family scrapbooks, and she trusted me to do whatever I felt was appropriate, confident that she would be happy with the results.  In doing so, I called her several times or spoke with her on visits to Buffalo to get names and details that went along with photos.  So, I've learned a lot of family history along the way.

Family history is my favorite kind.  The rest?  Not so much.  But, I DO love historical "stuff" and tidbits of our lives today that link us to the past somehow.  I never imagined that my new interest in Ball Jars would have a link to my birth place.  But it does!  This is what I found:

"Five brothers founded Ball in 1880, with a loan of $200 from their Uncle George.  At first they made wood-jacketed tin cans for products like paint and kerosene, but soon they expanded their offerings to glass- and tin-jacketed containers.  In 1884, the brothers began making glass home-canning jars, the product that established Ball as a household name.  The brothers -- Edmund, Frank, George, Lucius, and William -- moved the company from Buffalo, New York to Muncie, Indiana, in 1887 to take advantage of abundant natural gas reserves essential to making glass." (source)

I love that.

Stay tuned.  Tomorrow, I'll tell you about one last treasure that I found in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  There's another link to Buffalo!!!