I Almost Used This Antique Album for Junk Journaling — Then I Found Out Who She Was

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01]Most of us when we find an old book that's falling apart in a secondhand store, we buy it, take it home, and then tear it up. Use the pages in collage, making junk journals, art journals, whatever. I almost did that with this book. But something stopped me. There was a name inside on the first page, Miranda Stewart, and the year 1860.

[00:00:29]No story, no idea who she was, just a name in a book that had been sitting in a shop waiting to be thrown out or torn up and used for scraps. So, I asked a genealogy researcher friend of mine to help me find her. In this video, I'll show you the five things we uncovered, including a house that's still standing that you could go visit today if you wanted to. And at the end, I'll show you how you can become a part of Miranda's story, too, just like her friends did in 1860.

[00:01:03]What Jenny found really changed how I see every page in this album. Here are the five things we learned. The first thing we had to find out was simple. Who was this person? Here's the problem. The album says Miranda Stewart, but the other document we could find was a death announcement that said Mrs. JW Huff. Two different names. So before we could learn anything about her life, we had to prove that these were the same person.

[00:01:35]>> How important was that death announcement or announcement of her passing in helping you figure out who she was?

[00:01:45]Um it was just it was one way to start researching and um you know we probably could have found it without it. Uh but that was just a the first step and it was pretty easy once we found that um >> starting that >> what did you find when you started uncovering things about Mrs. JW puff?

[00:02:06]>> Yeah. will uh started finding census records and um things about you know where she lived and where her family lived and you know when you get back a little bit further you start seeing her parents on the census and then you're you know that she's married to John Huff so you start looking up his census records and then you start seeing his parents so it's sort of um you know it just starts with one name and sort of a date range and you can start building off of that. So now we know Miranda Stewart became Miranda Huff when she married JW.

[00:02:42]But solving that opened the next question, where did she actually live?

[00:02:47]And that's where Jenny found something really interesting. Miranda Stewart married into the Huff family. And it turns out there's a house, the Huff House that's still standing in Waterford, Virginia today. So I do have one photo that I want to share.

[00:03:06]of here. And this is from the Instagram account of the Waterford Foundation. It says, "One of the Waterford's few Victorian style buildings is on Main Street. The Isaac Steer Huff Jr. House built in approximately 1886, allegedly incorporating a small earlier dwelling.

[00:03:27]This building is named after the person who built it, Isaac Steer Huff Jr., a Civil War veteran who served in the Luden Independent Rangers. So, who was Isaac Steer Huff Jr.?

[00:03:42]>> Uh, that appears to be John's brother.

[00:03:45]Um, and yeah, I think it's John's brother and they were very prominent in the town, in fact, from the very beginning. So, there's a lot of history there with the Huffs.

[00:03:56]There's a town where she could have lived, where she would have walked once she married into the Huff family. It still exists. And that changes how I see the pages in this book. These aren't just names in an old book. This was a real person who lived in a real town, and that town is still there that you could go drive to this weekend if you really wanted to.

[00:04:22]So now we know who she was, where she lived. Now the question is when? What was the world like around her when these pages were being filled? The entries in this album start in 1860 when Miranda was 17 years old and within that year her entire world changed.

[00:04:42]>> Uh so this was a really big time um really big time of change. uh it was leading up to the war and in fact um only a couple months after that first signature uh Lincoln was elected and that caused a lot of uh talk about secession things like that and then in April the next year the war had actually officially started. So um and then a couple of months after that I think there was a the battle of the first battle of Manasses and it was not very far from where she was living. So, I think she would have probably known uh people who were fighting and she would have known people who were on both sides of the conflict and she would have um seen troop movements and occupations and shortages and people being dispersed and farms uh and homes being destroyed and things like that. So, I think things changed pretty drastically for her and her community. you know, I think it would have been quite a very strange time for her.

[00:05:44]>> So, looking at these pages again, it's interesting to think about that nobody knew what was coming, but people were still writing things down, writing poems and sentiments in this album. They were still signing their name and keeping this kind of tradition alive. you know, during the Civil War, um, this book would have represented this network of friends that might not, uh, be in the same place in a year or two or, uh, might not might not even be alive. There might be friends that don't come back from a war or there might be friends that have to move or um, you know, during that time things were changing so quickly that I think this journal would have been something that you would treasure quite a bit. So, we knew who she was and where she lived and roughly what she could have lived through. But there was still one more question about the album itself that I was looking for an answer for. And that was who were these people that were signing her book?

[00:06:50]>> Well, during this time they were really popular. um and they were mostly young ladies or young women who were getting ready to get married or um you know start a new household and things like that. So their friends would write these messages of you know hopes and dreams and um they would collect all of their friends signatures and um it was just something that they might even take with them on a trip to get other people to sign. they might uh visit people might visit them and they would sign you know they would sign the book. Um so it just became something that um a lot of young girls were doing at the time the girls that could afford such things or had the education uh to do that kind of thing or the leisure time.

[00:07:36]>> They weren't random people. They were people in her world. her cousins, her siblings, her friends, maybe neighbors from Waterford and nearby. Every name is someone who mattered to her. The album is basically a map of her life.

[00:07:55]>> I think it's really significant that these journals um were when they're found, I think they give a different um view of what was happening at that time, a different view of what the social networks were at that time. Because when we're only looking at census records and death certificates and things like that, you don't know who this person's friends were or who they were associating with, you just really know just the bare facts. So that the fact that um this journal is here and we can see who she was friends with is really an amazing thing. It's it's very unique.

[00:08:30]>> And there's one page I want you to see in particular. You pointed out that there was this page with names and where people were from all arranged in these like geometric design. Uh what is that and is that something that was also typical of the time?

[00:08:53]>> So that was typical that was um you know people at that time were artistic and into aesthetics and composition just like we are um today. So they were uh arranging things in a geometric pattern or um adding flourishes and things like that. That was just sort of their design sense um at that time and it was a big uh trend at that time also.

[00:09:18]So this little book is a record from a whole community and that's exactly the tradition that I want to continue but this time across centuries for for me personally this is so exciting because I I really am am interested in the power of things like YouTube like social media how we can use it to or to talk about things that we all have in common to share our interests And this is one way that that we can do that. That's why I think this album is so special is because it's a reminder of of what we can do and how we can reach each other. And so sharing in this common thing of this common interest of this album which is a wonderful time capsule and then also having the ability to add something of ourselves into it is absolutely extraordinary.

[00:10:18]So here's why this matters to me. This album is going home. I'm going to return it to Waterford, Virginia, back to where it came from. But before I send to back, I want to do one thing. In Miranda's album, there's a signature page. All the names of the people who were part of her life during those hard years. And I keep thinking about that geometric page and all the care that went into it. So, here's what I would like to do. What if we continue it? What if people from all over the world add their name and where they're from into Miranda's album?

[00:10:56]That's what I'm inviting you to do. And it's simple. Send me a little paper like this, 2 and 1/2 in by 1 with your name on it and where you're from, exactly like her friends did in 1860.

[00:11:10]What I'm going to do is I'm going to take these little pieces of paper and arrange them on a page just like the signature page. I'll scan it, create new pages, and then slide it into the original album. These new pages will be included in the album when it gets returned to Waterford.

[00:11:31]That's how an album survives because people care enough to keep it going.

[00:11:38]So, I hope you'd like to be a part of this. If so, you can get my address from the link in the description and then send me your name and where you're from and you will be a part of Miranda's story, too.

[00:11:52]If you're part of my membership or part of my community, you will be getting updates on what happens next, what I find out, how I contact somebody at Waterford to find out where this album goes and updates like that. So, in the meanwhile, thank you so much for coming along on this journey with me, and thank you for bringing Miranda's story back to life.