What DO You Get When You Cross a Genealogist with an Antique Dealer?

What you get is JustAJoy, a web site (and sometime genealogy conference vendor) that combines three quests in one: genealogists' quest for information, antique dealers' quest for sales, and everybody's quest to locate and identify lost heirlooms. It's a marketplace, a lost-and-found, and a research aid: what's not to like?

Anyone can visit and search the site; the $20 annual membership fee allows you to view additional information, receive notification emails when they acquire an item pertaining to any of your 20 closest family surnames, and to post items of your own. The information stays on line even after the piece is sold, so the site succeeds in appealing to those of us who cannot or would not pay thousands of dollars for an original Civil War muster roll.

And the artifacts on offer are not your typical antiquer or genealogist fare. As Kimberly Powell recently noted over at about.com, JustAJoy recently acquired a gaggle of century-old wanted posters. Not only are the pictures amazing, the information about the individuals pictured (and sometimes what they heisted) is absolutely fascinating. It may be wrong to say so, but for sheer curb appeal they beat a family Bible any day.



Kimberly Powell, "Wanted: Family History in Wanted Posters," About.com Genealogy, posted 4 September 2012 (http://genealogy.about.com/b/2012/09/04/wanted-family-history-in-wanted-posters.htm : accessed 5 September 2012).


Harold Henderson, "What DO You Get When You Cross a Genealogist with an Antique Dealer?," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 7 September 2012 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : accessed [access date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]