The Estate Sale of a Judge

by Joyce A. Fleming Kelley

My e-mail address is djkelley@niia.net
and I live in Kouts, IN.

I work in a mental health facility and quite a few people who work there know that I love family history and have worked on it +19 years.

A fellow worker also collects and sells antiques. She and her husband go to a lot of estate sales. Her husband had been to a sale the Sunday before, bought a box of books and there was a family history book included in the box. He asked his wife if I would want to look at it and she said she would ask me. Of course, the person that I am, I told her yes.

She brought it the next day and it was titled "The Baker Genealogy". I informed her that my husband and I both had Baker families in our lines, but none from Ohio where this family appeared to be from.

As I was eating lunch, I was reading through the first 3-4 pages and found nothing to tie into our line, but it was very interesting reading. On the 6th page, I almost fell out of my chair. Listed as the 1st generation of this family were my husband's gr-gr-gr- gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr grandparents!

The whole book is about the descendants of a son Daniel - my husband descends from his sister, Elizabeth. The book takes the family through 1909 and it was in the estate sale of a Judge of Porter County, Indiana, who had just died.

And guess what!! She also gave me the pictures that were in another box they bought. How could this book have ended up in our hands? I know it had to be by the Holy Spirit and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

Submitted:  Mon Apr 26 09:06:16 1999

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