Cross in the fold

As I went through my mother's belonging after her death 2001, I found boxes of old family pictures and letters wasting away in an old leaky and smelly outbuilding .  Many of the pictures were without full name or names at all. The letters had names of which I was somewhat familiar and others not! So, it was slow going trying to figure out who was who and how they connected to me or me them.  In one envelope, a letter from my great aunt Adelaide Herrick Roberts of Florida to my mother who lived in NE Minnesota.  There was no date on the letter itself, but the envelope was post marked in the 1960's.

In the folds of the letter was a cross.  A cross my great grandmother Mary Clement Kennedy Herrick wore and carried in her purse for many a year.  I have no idea how old the cross might be, but I am going to guess near a hundred years.  The cross was send as a keepsake but was to be returned if not wanted.  My aunt Adelaide has since passed on too and I have no current with any of her children, so the cross and the letter stays with me for now.

Mary Clement Kennedy, daughter of Michael and Margaret Walsh Kennedy, Freeport Illinois.  Mary was born in 1869 Freeport Illinois and was laid to rest in Tampa Florida 1947.