I discovered an article written by Caroline Bourque and published in the BusinessOfHome.com web site that interested me and that I suspect will also be of interest to many genealogists. It starts with:
“When Chelsey Brown started her design blog City Chic Decor in 2017, her focus was on decorating small rental spaces on a budget—so naturally, she often found herself at flea markets. Having grown up with a genealogist father, the e-designer began wondering about the people who’d originally owned the furniture, art and other objects that were for sale. “I realized these items should be with their rightful families, not sitting in a box,” Brown tells Business of Home.
One day, she decided to take that instinct a step further. After picking up a few letters and postcards at various flea markets, she began hunting online for public family records to match the names on the documents. Within 30 minutes, she located the living descendants of the heirlooms she’d picked up. “I was really happy that first day, [realizing] this is something I can do—it’s feasible,” says Brown.
Flea markets became Brown’s regular haunt, where she went every Saturday and Sunday in search of new items to reconnect with their owners. Her efforts multiplied when she began documenting the process on social media, where her stories of tracing family heirlooms quickly went viral. Since then, she’s tracked down hundreds of original owners, following a research process that involves scouring online genealogy databases like MyHeritage, old obituaries, newspaper articles, Facebook and even the white pages to get in touch with family members about all manner of heirlooms, including jewelry, photo albums, bibles, artwork, diaries, letters, medals, historical artifacts and books.”
You can read the article at: https://bit.ly/3Q1AacP