My New Chest! Ha Ha Ha!!!!

I am the proud new owner of a totally amazing, authentic, antique chest.  It belonged to my great-grandma Anna Moser & it contained all of her worldly possessions when she set out across the Atlantic from Switzerland to make her new home in America.  It has been in my parent’s home for as long as I can remember & I always loved it.  But, my mom says she doesn’t have room for it anymore & she wanted one of her kids to keep it, so somehow I ended up with it and I couldn’t be more excited!

Isn’t it cute?  Its always been this awful green color which I totally love, and its bright (I mean BRIGHT) red inside.  It has this fabulous keyhole on the front that looks like once upon a time one of those huge old skeleton keys fit inside.  The lock & latches have long since broken off, so opening & closing the beast can be challenging, and I have already had to warn my kids not to hide inside there because they might never get found.  (Yes, I did this as a child- it didn’t go well for me :)

Anyway, I don’t know as much about my Grandma Moser as I would like to, but the part of her story that I know is pretty incredible.  She came from a poor family in Switzerland, so she was sent to live with a wealthy family as a teenager to be their housekeeper.  The man of the house had his eye on her, though, and at some point she became pregnant and was going to be thrown out by the lady of the house, even though her jerk husband had most likely taken advantage of the poor girl. Anyhow- somehow during this period she found the missionaries and was baptized.  One of the missionaries was from the states & told her that he knew of a man back home who had recently lost his wife & had 8 kids with no mother to care for them, oh, & who by the way, also happened to be Swiss. The missionaries arranged for my grandma Moser to take her now young child & sail to America to meet the man (my great-grandfather, Gotleib Schwartz).  How scary that must have been for her!  She was in her early twenties, traveling alone with her daughter (my grandma’s older sister), going to meet a man with EIGHT kids of his own who wanted to marry her & have her mother all those kids!  Anyway- they did marry & had 2 more children together, one of which was my grandma. My grandmother today still speaks swiss & german & talks on the phone to all of her cousins who still live in Switzerland.  I love that part of my heritage.  Grandma always made us Swiss food & treats at Christmastime & she spoke often of her family back in Switzerland.

I love that I now have this little piece of my family’s history!  I hope it stays with my children & their children for generations to come!