Genealogy isn’t only about names, dates, and family trees. Sometimes the most meaningful connections to our ancestors are the ordinary objects they touched every day.

This cast steel trivet sat in my paternal grandmother Elizabeth (Maynard) Manley’s home throughout my childhood, and I can still picture it in her kitchen. After she passed away in 1998, it became one of the few family heirlooms entrusted to me, the other being a small china teacup and saucer with tiny yellow flowers.

Over the years my grandmother owned the trivet, it had been painted to give it a more decorative look, however, I decided to gently remove those layers with a wire brush, revealing the cast iron beneath.

Today is has a second life in my own kitchen, protecting my countertops just as it once did in hers. Every time I set a hot dish upon it, I’m reminded that family history isn’t only preserved in documents and photographs – it also lives in the simple, everyday things that quietly connected one generation to the next.