Your Family's "Crown Jewels"

I couldn’t help but watch the Royal Wedding this morning like the rest of the world. I was enamored with the two young people in love. A wedding just makes everyone happy doesn’t it? Even if we can’t relate too well with being royalty, we can relate to two people falling in love, and watching them make that commitment to each other was magical!

One thing they talked a lot about was the fashion and jewelry. They kept speaking of the jewelry that belonged to the crown and how the queen could not give those jewels as a permanent gift to someone, because they belonged to the royal family as a whole. I thought that was interesting. It made me think that every family has their own “crown jewels” of sorts.

Maybe those “crown jewels” aren’t jewels at all, but most families have some sort of inheritance that is passed down. Maybe you have a special piece of furniture, or piece of art that has been passed down from one generation to another. Or, maybe you are lucky enough to have had a piece of actual jewelry passed down through your family. Either way, it would be a nice touch to any heritage album to create a scrapbook page about the item or times you may have inherited from your ancestors.

Perhaps you did not inherit the item, but a relative did. It is still important to your family history. So, documenting what was inherited by the next generation would still be a great way to preserve a little bit of what was important to the previous one.

In my family, I was lucky enough to inherit a piece of jewelry on my husband’s side of the family. I wear it daily with pride, and it is something I hope to pass on to one of my children one day. It has an interesting story too. It was given to my husband’s great-grandmother by one of her close friends when she passed away. She saved it and gave it to my husband’s Great Aunt. That aunt passed it down to my mother-in-law who eventually passed it down to my husband when we were married.

Documenting the story of any inheritance is a great idea. Even if it is not worth any monetary value, it will give future generations the “story” behind that grand piano they may inherit one day, or the china that their grandparents picked out together. If it is important enough to pass down, then it is important enough to scrapbook and add to your heritage album.