My object for Tenement museum project is a handwritten letter found in our old barn in Poland. My great grandfather wrote it in September 12, 1928. When we started renovation of the barn we’ve found a glass bottle with a strange paper inside. We didn’t know what it could be, so my grandma smashed the bottle in half. There was an information about our barn - when it was built, who’s the owner and who built it. My great grandfather wrote it, put it in a green glass bottle and hide it in a wall while building a barn for his animals. It’s written on an old piece of paper from a notebook folded in half and with a smudge on the back, with black ink and a fountain pen. It’s whole written in Polish, our native language because we are from Poland. It is important to our family, because it has some important information about our barn and has my great grandfather’s handwriting. Our plans are to write something similar to this paper, put them both in a glass bottle and put it in the wall like my great grandfather did. If I could ask one question to my great grandfather, it would be why he decided to build our house and a barn in the middle of the forest, because it had to be really hard to do it.

– Barbara

Relationship:  Grandchild of im/migrant Grandchild of im/migrant