I had a cousin call me today needing some help and I visited his place today to assist him. We are very close and always have been. He lives on the estate of his late grandfather - my great uncle.
We had an occasion to visit a storage building looking for a tool. Of course leading me into a storage building with tools is like taking a kid to the arcade. He gladly started digging into box after box after box of tools - as it turns out tools of our family's. It seems the majority of all three brothers tools have congregated and are now in a few storage buildings at my cousin's place.
Those boys were born in the early 1900s. The tools were a snapshot of that timeline in history. There was a little sample of nearly everything from (wooden) block planes, wood shaves, plumb wrenches, hand crank grinders, proto punches, gasoline powered table saw, flat-belt driven saw of some sort, saw mill in the woods, several plows.........so many tools it got to the point I felt overwhelmed, and asked if I might schedule some time to come back with my camera and notepad so I could be more organized.
I'd heard horror stories of tools from this side of the family having been stolen and long gone. Apparently that is not true, and I've found another stockpile of family tools - this time on my mother's side. I'm excited to learn more about them.
PS: My great uncle was, among many other things, a Lockmaster by trade - a "river rat" - but also had an automotive shop (as did both his brothers). He was responsible for the lock & dam on the river locally. He was also, I learned today, a pretty darn good blacksmith as well. I saw a couple of hammers that my cousin was able to say positively say he'd forged (from stories from his late dad). I've not yet learned where he might have gained his teachings. I'm told today there was a forge there at the house place at one time. I have to think there may be a connection between his being a Lockmaster and a hobby blacksmith, and the only blacksmith around these parts of late having lived in a cabin ON THE RIVER. The lock & dam was less than 3 miles up river from where I'm told "Duke Mason", the local blacksmith, lived.
