Genealogy Chat

I collect (and use) antique lace bobbins, mainly inscribed with names I have found on my family tree, so I make lace with my ancestors.

I have just bought one off eBay inscribed AMOS GOSS. I found him in the 1881 census, living in Biddenham with his wife Harriet, shown as Lace Maker !

I wonder if she had the bobbin made to remind her of her sweetheart, or if he gave it to her so she'd think of him everytime her fingers touched that bobbin. In those days an inscribed bone bobbin would have been expensive, so very special.

I found her again in the 1871, aged 14, also shown as Lace Maker.

Now I have another family to research.

But how lovely to own an antique bobbin where I have made contact with its original owner.

I don't see why, if they had typed Amos Voss into eBay it would have come up for them to bid on :)

how lovely

what an interesting way of of collecting

i have my nans embrdery hoop and tools and her button hook wich she used as she was born in 1873

sally w :-D

I remember my grandmother's button hooks - one had a bone handle, the other was all metal, and folded in half. So pleased you still have yours.

I collect button hooks, mine are made of all sorts of things from silver (you can find gold too if you are lucky.... and rich), bone, steel, wood, one is trench art, some plain, some engraved, some 12inches long, some tiny. I always wonder about the people who owned them, none of them, sadly, are from my family.

That's why I was so pleased to find Harriet Goss listed as lacemaker - I feel I now know who originally owned this bobbin, probably commissioned for her between 1875 and 1885. What are the chances of that?

One of my favorites from my family tree is inscribed ELIZABETH, but the maker miscalculated, so it reads ELIZABET, with the H underneath the T.