The Hebronian December 2008 Page 1 Volume 7, Issue 3 ... - Gulemo

This is one of those personal stories that’s simply too good not to share.
My closest friends know that I HATE EBAY! That’s because over the
past couple of years I’ve been trying to “buy back” Hebron artifacts
on EBay and donate them to the Hebron Historical Society. I’ve
shed many tears over losing some real treasures, but the corker was
earlier this year – April 2 to be exact – when, at $200, I finally had
to stop bidding on a wonderful Benjamin Trumbull love letter. The
letter ultimately sold for $472, and all I could do was kick myself for
pursuing a history degree 40 years ago, turning my nose up at those
Wichita State University students who knew business and accounting
would give them a far more lucrative future – and the financial means
to buy a single letter for $472. Ah, but those were the 60’s and all the
ideals we had back then… love, peace, and history degrees….
Former Connecticut resident Linda Pingel (right) now enjoys bright
sunny days on Texas beaches with her daughter Amy and granddaughter
Brianna. Linda recently repurchased 87 letters to the Hebron Board of
Selectmen, all of which are over 150 years old, and turned them over to
Hebron Historical Society.
Back to EBay. After the Trumbull letter episode,
I swore I’d never do that to myself again. I felt
the letter “L” permanently tattooed on my forehead.
I was convinced that everyone in town
knew I was bidding on that letter… and had
lost it. I felt I had let the Historical Society and
Hebron down. No doubt that precious letter is
now stuffed in some drawer in Dubai.
In late September, I got an email from Bryan
Bentz of Stonington, someone I didn’t know,
letting me know there was a collection of early
19 th century letters addressed to the Hebron
Board of Selectmen located under the “Stamps”
category on (where else) EBay. I checked it
out, and he was right; they were amazing letters.
I have no clue how they had ended up in
Florida (the seller’s location).
So, taking a deep breath, I once again jumped
on that fast-moving EBay train. And once
again, I stopped when the bidding exceeded my
$200 limit, heartbroken one more time.
The Hebronian December 2008 Page 10
Hebron History Comes Home Through EBay
By Donna McCalla
That same night, I got a call from Texas! “That’s odd,” I thought as I
saw the area code on Caller ID, “who do I know in Texas anymore”
It was a woman named Linda Pingel, and she too had received an
email from Bentz about the letters. She was determined to “win” the
letters and return them to Hebron.
As it turns out, Pingel, a native Nutmegger from Rockville, is the
Hebron genealogy webmaster for an internet project called USGen-
Web. USGenWeb is a network of volunteers consisting of webmasters
who design and maintain the web content, contributors who submit
material to the webmasters, and transcribers who turn the data into a
usable format. The project is dedicated to free genealogy for all researchers.
You can learn more about the Connecticut aspects of the project
at www.ctgenweb.org. Hebron-specific genealogy can be found at
Linda’s site, www.rockvillemama.com/hebronct.htm, which contains
a wealth of information.
The final bidding day was on Saturday, September 27. I was online
watching all the activity and the usual last minute bids. Linda was in
there frantically bidding to the bitter end. Suddenly a bid for $481
came in at the final second from a brand new bidder, and the letters
were lost.
Or so I thought. I obviously didn’t know my new friend from Texas
very well!
Not willing to give up, Linda contacted the winning bidder, Jim
Bedigian of Massachusetts, a few days later. “After you look at the
collection, would you be willing to sell back any of the letters you don’t
want” she asked. “We’d like to see Hebron history come home.”
Once he received the collection, Bedigian found that he was only interested
in 20 of the letters, 16 of which related to Hebron, and agreed
to sell the remaining 87 letters to Linda for an undisclosed amount.
He also agreed to scan those letters he kept, and email them to the
Historical Society for its archives, which he has since done.
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