Letters from the Past

This has been a pretty amazing and surreal week in our house.  We’ve had a blizzard, a visit from Better Homes and Gardens during that blizzard and we’re doing some work in the basement.  I’m super tired right now and I’m bursting to tell you all the details about the photo shoot, but I can’t yet.  As soon as I can share some behind the scenes photos and juicy gossip I will.

While tidying up the basement we discovered something pretty amazing – no, we didn’t find a safe behind the mirror as one reader hoped!  Wouldn’t that have been nice!

But sitting on top of a metal cabinet hanging on the chimney we found this:

A letter from the past!  But this one is special, because this one, has the name of the original owner of our home.  We are the 4th owners and since we moved in we’ve been wondering a lot about the person who built this home in 1927.  We only knew that he had the beautiful woodwork milled in Maine.

Now we have a key to the past.  The original owner and builder of this home was Murray Trefry .  It is mis-spelled on the letter.  We’ve poured over the census from 1940 and 1930.  It appears that Murray Trefry (ooooh, how I love his name), was born in 1892, his wife, Rose, was born 1891 – a year apart – just like Luke and I.  He was a contractor in the building industry which leads us to believe that he built the home himself.  They were married in 1928, perhaps, they built the house to move into after their wedding.

We are still trying to figure out where Mr. and Mrs. Trefry were born.  Their place of birth is different on each census, but it looks like Murray served in World War I and came to the United States the following year and lived up in Gloucester, MA when he first arrived.

We believe he may be from Cornwall, where Luke is from, as Trefry is a very Cornish name, but have yet to confirm this.  Luke’s dad is doing some investigations on the other side of the pond for us.

Rose Trefry was from Canada, funnily where my grandmother was born.  In 1930 she was a homemaker and in 1940 she was a substitute teacher.  We can’t seem to find if they had any children.  There isn’t a record of any on the census.

In the envelop sent from China there were two calendars from a Catholic missionary.  So we’re not sure who sent them or what the link was there.  There was no letter inside just to the two calendars which are nearly in perfect condition.  China at the time was also under occupation by the Japanese.

As you can imagine, we’re eager to learn more about Murray and Rose and their life here in this beautiful home. What were their hopes?  Their dreams?

Murray died in 1966 – at the age of 74.  How I hope his was a happy life!

We’re looking forward to sharing more of the stories of this home with you.

As well as the stories we are making now: