Back in the early part of March 2016, Mary , Emilee and I had went on a random road trip just for fun. We had decided to go to Mt Airy NC to visit the home of Andy Griffith . Of course along the drive, we were antsy and wanted to find some yard sales or flea markets and what do ya know , in a little country town called Fancy Gap was a road side flea market. Mary Dale zoomed the car right in . As we began scanning the tables, we saw a tupper ware box full of old old letters. We had to explain to Emilee this was email, FB and google back in the day . Knowing how letter writing is almost extinct anymore, Mary Dale and I wanted to purchase the letters. This is one of those things that we both liked so we decided to buy the "lot" of letters and split them. We actually had no idea what we were going to do with the letters , perhaps make some type of collage or something , but Im sure we would have figured it out .
The next day , I started looking at my batch of the old letters and I saw a trend, all the letters were written by one set or two sets of families that seemed to be related.hmmmmm, so I started to google the one name Clewell Howell.. come to find out he was a Presbyterian Minister in NC back in the 1800 's and actually moved to Baltimore Maryland in the 1920's and was Marylands first Pediatric dentist ( and the office is still standing to this day in his honor) through his obituary I was able to find he had a son , Clewell Howell the 11 and he was one of Marylands leading attorneys for the state in the 1950's and through his obituary , I was able to deem he had a son Clewell Howell 111 and by all reading it appears this son is still living .
I called Mary Dale and asked her to look at her letters and when she did she also saw that her batch of letters were the same families as my batch . I explained to her what I had found and we both agreed these letters were so old and so full of information , pictures , old news adds that yes , these letters need to be returned to their rightful owner.
I was able to find Mr. Clewell Howell the 3rd by the white pages on Google and made "the call" I explained the whole story and he was speechless. He explained that yes he is part of the Howell family that I am explaining and yes the letters would indeed been letters that his grandparents and great grandparents had written so many years ago and yes, he would dearly love to have them. Mary and I felt these letters were so delicate we didn't want to chance them getting lost and ruined in the mail so we made this our first Finder and Seekers road trip .
We left on a snowy Thursday evening and arrived at our hotel in Columbia Maryland around 8 pm , the next day , on Friday we spent touring Maryland going to Annapolis with my daughter Brittany and having lunch by the bay with an old dear friend Karen Beall and my niece Lexi, we visited the Amish Market and later we met up and had a nice dinner with my sister in Law Lynn.
The next day Saturday , we had planned to me Mr. Howell at his home in Towson Md. My sister in law Lynn was the best she was our tour guide and ensured we made it safely through Maryland and we are so happy she was able to witness the hand over of the letters , it truly was special .
When we arrived at Mr. Howells home, he was still speech less and stated he told his brother "only two sweet Southern women would have done this" We made him a beautiful basket and he shared old pictures with us about his family and to keep history alive, he wanted to take us all out to lunch at the restaurant his father use to take him too.
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