It is Tuesday again and for now that means it is treasures time.
This was the first "Tuesday Treasure" that I posted back in 2010. It started this feature I called--Tuesday Treasures. I decided to show some of those things that I had at my house that had been passed down to me. Partly because I am not totally sure what to do with them. Since I didn't buy them, I don't feel exactly right selling them. But they aren't things I need. Tuesday Treasures are an occasional feature on this blog. If you have a treasure you would like to show us, leave a comment with a link.
I found this little St Joseph carrying the child Jesus that fits inside that little case in with some Barbie shoes and little toys from my mom's basement. They were the things that the grandchildren had played with for years. That shoebox of toys had had things from my grandmother's house thrown in with them. I am assuming that this little thing was one of those.
I guessed that it had been my grandma's or something from her family because those people were very Catholic and Catholics are fond of statues and such. But, the World Wide Web led me in another direction. When I found a statue like this one it was said to be something that Civil War soldiers from the North carried with them in their bedrolls. Mostly those men who carried these were Protestants. My great grandfather and his father had been Civil War soldiers from the North and were Protestants. That could be where this little thing came from. The little statues had been produced through the beginning of the twentieth century. They were carried by various people, but especially soldiers.
My uncle D is the last living sibling of my dad and he confirmed that the St. Joseph was something he had seen in a drawer in the house when he was growing up. He never played with it, but did open the case up to reveal the little saint inside. He had quickly put it away, thinking he would be in trouble. He thought that perhaps the little St. Josephs had belonged to his older siblings.
The thing I discovered was, I had two of them, these little St. Josephs. The other one was there with the Barbie shoes. So, last summer when I was out east, I gave my uncle one of them back. They were perhaps just tokens that my dad and his sister had, or maybe they were older, there is no way of knowing. The little St. Joseph I have is a family heirloom. I was glad that I had an extra one to share.