Well, in this case, it's a piece of furniture, but the same principle applies.
I lost my mom last winter, so some of her things have now been passed to me. This is the story of one of them, a dresser. No one told me its story - anyone who knew where it came from is long gone, so I had to do some research.
There is a clue: The two little diamonds on either side of the top drawers are silver, and they have monogram initials in them, M.P. There’s not many P’s in my family tree, so I was able to pin it down. They stand for the married name of a girl called Magdalena born in Germany in 1833. Her father, a blacksmith and foundryman, died the next year, leaving a widow with several children.
The widow remarried, had three more children, after which that second husband deserted her. In 1851, when Magdalena was 17, the widow boarded a ship for America with the rest of her children. They joined her oldest son in Philadelphia, where he and a partner had started a successful business.
Magdalena's sister, Christina, was six years older. She married her brother's business partner, 11 years her senior, very shortly after arrival, giving birth to a son in 1852. The baby lived but a few months, and Christina died in 1854, at the age of 27. Sixteen months after that, Magdalena married her older sister's widower, still her brother's business partner. This all happened in Philadelphia, where the dresser was presumably built, a custom order.
My best guess is that this dresser was a wedding gift to Magdalena from her brother, from her new husband's business partner. Magdalena was 22, her husband was 39. Magdalena likely didn't have much of her very own, I'm guessing, so this was a cherished object. Magdalena's marriage lasted 22 years, until her husband died. The business partnership was dissolved, and Magdalena received her husband's share.
Magdalena bore him six children, three of whom died very young. The oldest was a daughter, Christina, after the lost older sister/first wife. She married the year before her father died. Married respectably - her husband was a physician.
I have a second cousin who has researched these people pretty thoroughly. She says family lore is that Magdalena died of a broken heart, mourning for her husband, that it was a marriage of love. Whether or not that's true, she only lived two more years, dying at the age of 46.
Christina and her husband, were her heirs, and guardian to Christina's two younger brothers. So, of course, Magdalena's wedding dresser went to her daughter.
Christina and the physician had seven children, six sons and a daughter. The physician died fairly young, too, a few years before his daughter (my grandmother) married. Christina, from all accounts, was a formidable woman, serving as widowed family matriarch for some years.
But eventually, Christina began to fail, and came to live with her daughter, bringing that dresser with her. (From what my uncle told me, she likely had Alzheimer's.) My grandmother had only sons; when she died the dresser came into our house. Most of the things from my father's side of the family were given to us when he died (my parents were divorced), but this one stayed with my mother.
And now it's mine, mostly passed down the female line, save the one generation with no daughters. I am my grandmother's only granddaughter. That piece of furniture, now part of my own household, means so much more to me than just some pieces of wood crafted together. It carries the stories of all those women who owned it before, their belongings were stored in it.