Fearless Females: Time Travel with a Pocket Watch Treasure

The watch was passed on to me one day when my mother was going through her jew­elry box. “It belonged to your great-grandmother,” she said, “who gave it to your grand­mother, who gave it to me.” And now it was mine.

One of mil­lions made dur­ing the 100-year his­tory of the Elgin National Watch Com­pany, its ser­ial num­ber con­firms a man­u­fac­ture year of 1889. The case, pro­duced by the Cres­cent Watch Com­pany, is guar­an­teed to be made of two plates of 14k gold with a life of 20 years. Pretty and col­lectible, but not valuable.

The rest of it’s story I can only imag­ine. My great-grandmother, Mary Alice Beld­ing, turned 20 in 1889, so per­haps it was a birth­day gift from her par­ents or maybe an acknowl­edge­ment of the teach­ing career she began about the same. It might have been a wed­ding gift from her new hus­band when they mar­ried in 1892. How­ever she came by it, in the begin­ning she most likely wore it on a chain around her neck. After immi­grat­ing to Canada, when the daily work of farm life made such things imprac­ti­cal it was prob­a­bly tucked away for safe-keeping — no longer use­ful but impor­tant enough to have made the journey.

It still runs as well as the day it was made and when I hold it to my ear, its gen­tle tick­ing trans­ports me to another time. When I cra­dle it in my hand, I feel the ghost of my great-grandmother’s hand, my grandmother’s hand, and my mother’s. I get goose­bumps every time I touch it.

No, it’s not valu­able ~ it’s priceless.

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Photo Note: Seated from left to right are my mother, great-grandmother & grand­mother. The child is my eldest brother — I wouldn’t come along for nearly another 20 years.

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Fear­less Females: 31 Days of Blog­ging Prompts
All March posts are in cel­e­bra­tion of Women’s His­tory Month and inspired by Lisa Alzo’s 31 inspi­ra­tional writ­ing prompts. Visit her blog at The Acci­den­tal Geneal­o­gist.