On December 16, 1956, an arsonist set fire to several churches in Trenton, New Jersey, including the 3rd oldest United Methodist Church in North America. When the pastor arrived at the church, he convinced fire fighters to allow him to enter the blazing building and retrieve documents and artifacts that dated back to the 1700’s. I cannot imagine the horror his 22 year-old son must have felt as he witnessed the collapse of the Sunday School building roof just near where his father had entered. The fire fighters who had entered the building with the pastor would protect him by pressing up against the wall as the roof came down mere feet from where they stood. They would escape unscathed, but would later re-enter, saving some of the treasured history that, in an age before the internet, were irreplaceable.
A local sixteen year-old-girl would read the Times the next morning and clip the article from the paper. She knew no one involved, but was impressed by the heroic deeds of the pastor.
It would be many years before that girl, my mom, would meet the pastor’s son who would later become my dad. (Dad was only 17 at the time of the fire; my uncle was the one on the scene that night.) Mom would tell us the story about her clipping out those articles not knowing that within a decade she would be married by that brave pastor to his son and in that very church.
Last week, a woman who had known and loved my grandparents, mailed me a variety of newspaper clippings and other papers. She had tracked me down using the Internet and my birth announcement from one of the church bulletins. I can’t even tell you how it felt to receive these things in the mail, to read the articles, and to hold these pieces of family history. I’d researched the fire online, but how different to hold the fragile, yellow paper in your hand. It’s like the different between swiping your finger across an e-book and curling up with a nice paper book on a Saturday morning. I was touched by the effort she went through to send these to our family.
I must admit. I have numerous boxes stashed in different corners of my home filled with family history in the form of pictures, scrapbooks, old letters, and such. I repeated promise myself (and my husband) that one-day I will go through them all, digitalize them, and reduce all the clutter. Yet there are a few things that I know I won’t be able to part with. These will make the cut.
Are you holding on to bits of your family’s history? If you have something that has been passed on and doesn’t have much meaning to you, consider sending it on to someone who will treasure it. You just might fill them with a little extra joy.
Was the arsonist caught?
This is an excellent question. I hope I find out the answer as I read through family history this summer (mostly in an effort to clean out my house.)