52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025 – Week 50: Family Heirloom

NOTE: I accepted the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge headed by fellow genealogy blogger Amy Johnson Crow. The idea behind this challenge is that you will receive email prompts, a word or phrase, every week, and you find something about your research or family history to write about.  Click HERE to read my first 52 Ancestors blog post in 2019.

Throughout my life there is one piece of furniture that is a familiar sight. It isn’t ornate or expensive, but it has been a quiet anchor of the living area or foyer in three homes of women in my family. It’s a table with a marble top and a wood stand.

It first belonged to my grandmother, Ernestine Wright Hatchett. In the 1970s it sat near her front door, proudly holding framed photos, tiny nick knacks collected over the years. The table moved in with my mother, Patricia Hatchett Mays, in the 1990s after my grandmother passed away and stayed in the living room of that house until 2008. My mother gave it to me when my husband and I purchased our first house.

You know the saying, ‘if these walls could talk’. That’s how I feel about this table. If this table could talk and tell the stories of four generations of my family, oh how those stories would be great to hear. This table has been around for births and deaths, graduations and marriages, and everyday life for my family. This table is more than a piece of furniture now. It is a steady presence in my family for over 70 years.