Discovery of Family Treasure in a Safe Deposit Box Part One



NAUPA LogoUsing the Internet has opened all kinds of new sources of information for my genealogy hobby. One day in 1999, on one of the national morning television shows there was a segment on locating forgotten refunds, deposits, bank saving accounts, etc. through individual state databases on the Internet. The site was NAUPA (National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators) in which you select the state (a family residence) where you believed there might be some forgotten funds, then you would type in an individual’s name and search. Each state has its own database in which to investigate. In most cases the states list all names and addresses that matched your inquiry.

I began probing various names in Florida, Maryland and Pennsylvania of relatives who had lived in those states over the last 10 years or so. I had even put in my name to search, thinking maybe I had forgotten about an old account somewhere. What was located included some bank account monies owned my brother and a couple rent refunds for a cousin. I continued my search a couple different times over a week’s period.

While in the Maryland site I thought I would put in my grandparents’ name, only because I was running out of relatives. No way did I expect to see anything since my grandmother had died in 1940 and my grandfather in 1944. I was in total shock to see their names, David and Eva Everhart of Frederick, Maryland, appear on the monitor screen. Staring at the screen didn’t change what I was seeing, their names and hometown and the fact that the State of Maryland was presently holding something of value that once belonged to my ancestors was just amazing.

My grandparents had two children, a daughter (my mother) and a son, both of whom had passed away years earlier. I was the oldest grandchild (born after my grandparents’ deaths in the 1940’s) and had no knowledge of anything left behind by them. My mother and her brother had long ago taken care of all their parents’ personal bank accounts, jewelry and property. My mother had given to me many of the photos, letters, papers and jewelry left to her by her father. So to think there was still something out there, being held by a state treasury was just unbelievable. The database did not give any indication of what was being held, only that I would need to telephone the Maryland State Treasury to put in a request for this unclaimed property.

< Return To Blog That's a wonderful story thank you for sharing it I do the same thing and my kids think iam crazy until I found money for my mother. Best of luck from California.
christine 29/01/11




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