She Normally Returns Heirlooms She Finds To Their Rightful Families, But A Diary She Found From The 1930s Was So Heartbreaking That She Couldn’t Bring Herself To Do It
If you were to receive an unexpected package from a stranger containing an old family artifact that revealed something terrible about one of your relatives, how would you react? How does one even go about sending that kind of package?
That is something that TikTok user Chelsey Brown (@chelseyibrown) recently had to ask herself after finding a diary that could completely destroy the reputation of a family and deciding not to send it to the last living descendant.
Chelsey has a fascinating hobby where she goes to flea markets to find old artifacts and heirlooms, eventually sending them to their rightful families so that they can hold onto a delightfully surprising piece of family history.
For example, Chelsey once found a Valentine’s Day letter from a woman addressed to her husband during the 1940s.
Using the address on the card, Chelsey did some extensive research and ended up finding the granddaughter of the woman who wrote the card.
Most of the time, Chelsey will neatly package the little treasures she finds and send them off to the family they once belonged to.
But recently, Chelsey had to abstain from her original system after the heirloom she found contained awful information.
Chelsey made a video about the diary, her captions reading, “This thrifted diary from 1930 was the saddest and most painful thing I’ve read. I will not be returning this one to the descendants. There are some things best left unknown.”
TikTok; pictured above is Chelsey in one of her videos
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Most viewers in Chelsey’s comments agreed with her, believing that since the descendant did not ask Chelsey to seek out this diary and most likely doesn’t even know she has it.
Some users disagreed, commenting that now Chelsey has an obligation to send it to the family and that they have a right to know what is in the diary.
“That’s not really your decision,” commented one user. “It’s not your family. How do you know what they can handle and what they can’t?”
Chelsey made a few additional videos on TikTok to give her viewers more context as to why she would not be sending the diary.
Chelsey revealed that the only living descendant is an 86-year-old man who is dying. He has no family and will most likely pass away very soon.
“If I think an artifact will cause modern-day controversy amongst living relatives, upend a family, or will just ruin someone’s life, I will not return that specific item,” says Chelsey in one of her videos.
Chelsey mentions that the diary included dreadful things written about the 86-year-old man’s father and that if he were to read it, it could break his heart.
“When it comes to genealogy and ancestry, there are some things best left unknown,” says Chelsey in a video.
“My job is not to enter someone’s life unexpectedly and cause them pain.”
To view some of Chelsey’s TikTok videos, visit the link here.
@chelseyibrown Reply to @maddog724 #genealogy #ancestry #myheritage #historytime #historytok #storytime
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