Stranger Than Fiction: Antique Book Collection

This is part of a series of posts I am doing on my personal collections.  I don't think that I actually even mentioned books in the Lists of My Personal Favorites (click here to see that blog).  I guess I assume that everyone collects some type of books.

This set "Great Men and Famous Women"

 and my other great leather bound sets all came to me when an old

middle school library was torn down.  It had started life a century

ago as the town library and had gotten continually downgraded until

only one little corner room held any books.

They took sealed bids on the contents of the building.

I "won" all the books for a ridiculously low

amount of money.  I also "won" the bookcase they were being stored in.

(The books and bookcase were cheap,

 but the dining room remodel that it sparked was not cheap.) I think some people are afraid of the whole sealed bid process.

 

My boys were about 8 years old at the time.

They still remember making a million trips

out to the car with all of the books.

I forget where these came from --

really old text books from 1860s-70s.

 

Of course I pick up the ones with the decorative spines

whenever I can find them.

They are like a work of art on the bookshelf.

And what about these books?

Well, it is stranger than fiction:

I went to an estate sale in a different town, about 25 minutes from my house.

I was thumbing through the books when a signature caught my attention.

The man who had built our house in 1895 and lived in it until he died!

I also found books that had been owned by his wife, daughter,

in-laws and niece!  I purchased all of them, and they are now

safe back "at home".  If we ever sell this house, the books

 will stay in it where they belong.

What are the odds?