Tuesday’s Child’s Family Heirlooms: Cardinal Feeding Little Ones

After I graduated from high school in 1976 I went to live with my paternal grandmother, Myrtle Hazel ROOP, widow of Fred Rothwell DEMPSEY, while attending West Virginia Tech. My cousins called her Grandma Dempsey but, to me, she was just plain Grandma as my other grandmother was Bomi.

In her living room Grandma had an alcove with shelves on the right side of the closed off fireplace where she kept her knick-knacks, souvenirs, pictures, and books. I believe the recessed bookshelves hid the door to the adjacent bedroom but that is a story for a later post. The shelves can be seen in this photo of my parents and me when we were visiting my grandparents in 1959.

Getting back to the time I lived with my Grandma, when I left to go home she took this figurine of a cardinal feeding two little ones off a shelf in her alcove and gave it to me as a gift to remember her and West Virginia by.

The Northern Cardinal is the state bird of West Virginia. This is not a valuable piece. On the underside of the figurine is a little gold-colored sticker which reads “Original Artmark” and “Made in Taiwan.”

Grandma may have bought it at a local souvenir shop or received it as a gift. She did not say it had belonged to anyone else before it came into her possession. I would have remembered this as she also gave me two heirlooms which had belonged to her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother Laura Belle INGRAM, which I will share in future posts.

© 2015 Cathy Meder-Dempsey

Jeanne Bryan Insalaco of Everyone Has A Story suggested doing posts on heirlooms in a discussion in the Genealogy Bloggers Facebook group and wrote Now Where Did I Put That? Several bloggers have taken her up on the challenge to write about their heirlooms and we hope more will follow our lead.

Other bloggers doing Family Heirloom stories:

• Vera Marie Badertscher at Ancestors in Aprons
• Karen Biesfeld at Vorfahrensucher
• Schalene Jennings Dagutis at Tangled Roots and Trees
• Jeanne Bryan Insalaco at Everyone Has a Story
• Jacqui Kirkman at Leaves on my Family Tree
• True Lewis at Notes to Myself
• Kendra Schmidt at Trek Thru Time
• Linda Stufflebean at Empty Branches on the Family Tree

Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks theme for 2015 Week 24 was Heirlooms. Visit her 52 Ancestors Challenge 2015: Week 24 Recap for the links to more posts in the comments.