Originally Posted by badgeguy
It's a shame that you ladies on here are desperate to believe anything your told if it goes against someone you don't like....
The problem with the sellers information is that his information is a far stretch from the facts as can be found on the internet....
The ONLY person in either of those two sisters who lived anywhere near NJ, was MH Taylor Jr, who in 1958 was attending or teaching at Columbia University in NY.
All of the records found online locates everyone else being from, living in, and dying in Kansas.
As for the Havens family of a NJ town connection....thats sort of true, but you'd have to go back a dozen generations.....BUT, Ernst Frey Havens was born in Leavenworth Kansas, and died there as well....from what I can find from census records, Gertrude was divorced from Ernst sometime prior to 1920, as she is listed in the census' of 1920, 1930, and 1940 as not being married with no children......she died in 1948.
Alice Taylor and her husband Melvin Hall Taylor also lived in Lawrence Kansas as late as 1958. I don't know if the had any other kids besides MH Jr.
So, the FACTs are this, my friend whose Grandmother was a Kappa had been given pins from her relatives who were related to the Spauldings. I do not know what year all this happened, as I never got the exact details from my friend. But two pins (exactly like the ones that sold) had been in his family for years as they were handed down to his mother and then to him because she didn't have any sisters. Then in the late 1990s he and his wife's home was burglarized and a ton of stuff was stolen, including a box of jewelery which contained all of their Fraternity and sorority jewelery. Where those items ended up no one knows, but when this auction popped up....it have them hope because those pins they feel are the pins that were lost and they have hope that maybe with these their other badges might be still existing....hoping to get all these items back.
The sellers "last minute" posting to "cover his arse" seems a little bit funny. I not saying anything to point to this seller being the one who had anything to do with a theft, not do I believe he had any knowledge that these pins "may" have been stolen. But I do doubt where he got these, and think he is trying to connect the dots using an internet search but the dots just don't really connect to any reason for these pins to end up in NJ...when all the ties to these pins all point to Kansas.
I am willing to admit that there is a chance that the Spaulding sister did indeed have two sets of pins made, I guess that may have been a practice...
For those of you who kept asking....this should be a lesson to us all...the police report that was filed from that theft was not detailed and only listed the largest items stolen, TV, stereo, and computer....jewelry and other smaller items were not. As for insurance, unknowingly, they did not have any of their F&S jewelry insured, as it was seen as a necessity, so there was no Ins re-imbursement.
As for the police report, the official copy which is not readily available and has to be ordered to make a photocopy takes several days. The copy as given to the family can have pages added detailing all items lost, but that's not official according to the police. Also, the info they were told was that after so many years the police purge old files and only keep on record (eventually to be digitalization) are the basic info sheet, not any attached sheets.
The same goes for insurance claims as after so many years they also purge older documents.
So, the basic case is this....I was trying to help out a friend who firmly believes that these pins came from their box of pins that was stolen, and now it's purely a game of he said/she said......
I know that I have now learned a huge lesson about making sure everything into home is well documented and that if I or anyone ever finds themselves in a similar situation....Make sure you have all the proper documentation!!
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