I have all sorts of stuff up in the attic – everything from my aunt’s 1932 magazine article about the dearth of health care during the Depression to my son’s fourth grade school papers and my daughter’s poems, to the samovar that I brought from Russia in 1968 (which I’m trying to sell in the classified ads). And anyone who has read my book about my mother, Josephine, knows about me finding her diaries and letters from 1910 through the 1930s.

But just in time for Thanksgiving, more family history appeared by magic, but not from the attic.