- [Narrator] Coming up, Matt and the gang are in West Texas to help downsize a real home on the range.

- [Matt] You feel the love of this land.

- [Narrator] The ranch house has been owned by the same family for over 100 years.

It's not only filled with antiques and family heirlooms.

- Yeah it is Mildred look.

- [Narrator] But priceless memories that need to be preserved.

- This is her life story.

- This is a treasure.

- I'm Matt Paxton.

Let's do it man.

My team of specialists, Jamie, Mike, and Avi help me help people downsize their homes and settle estates.

As the largest population of baby boomers in American history transition towards retirement they and their families face the overwhelming task of emptying their homes to move.

We help them sift through a lifetime of possessions.

- Bingo.

- [Matt] Heirlooms, and collectibles.

Look what we found have, a piece of history.

To help them find the missing family treasures that mean the most to them.

- My goodness!

- Jackie Robinson.

And along the way they'll discover that the most important museum in the world may be in their family's basement.

- I've never seen that, that is cool looking.

- From attics to cellars, closets to cupboards, we uncover the memories they want to preserve.

This is living history, this is what we're here to find.

Let's go.

And discover the compelling, personal, and often historical stories spanning generations that are their family's legacy.

(upbeat music) - [Woman] Funding for legacy list is provided by Bekins van lines.

At Bekins our goal is to provide a smooth and simple moving experience.

No matter the size or distance of your moves, Bekins is ready to help you get there.

You can find us at bekins.com.

Bekins, this is moving.

FirstLight Home Care, committed to providing safe and compassionate home services for you and your family.

Firstlight believes personal relationships and engagement are as important as mobility, bathing and personal hygiene.

Details at FirstLightHomeCare.com.

The Mavins Group, a downsizing real estate sales and move management company.

Committed to easing the emotional and physical demands of beginning a new stage of life.

The Mavins Group so much more than a move.

Insure Long Term Care, where we believe that aging at home, near friends and family is ever more possible for more people.

Learn more at insureltc.com.

And by the Ruth Camp Campbell Foundation.

(upbeat country music) - Today I'm in Fredericksburg, Texas.

About an hour outside of Austin in the hill country.

I'm here to meet Norma Favaro and help her clean out a farmhouse that's been in her family since the 1800s.

This is gonna be an emotional one because her mom recently passed away and this property is filled with memories.

(upbeat country music) - Hey, welcome.

- Hey Matt I'm Norma.

- I'm Matt good to meet you.

- Hey I'm Colleen.

- Colleen, good to meet you.

- Pleasure and very nice to meet you.

- You find the place okay?

- It's gorgeous, it's absolutely gorgeous.

- Thank you so much.

- How much space do you all have here?

- We have 120 acres.

- Wow.

- It's been in my family since the late 1800s.

- Okay, this door is stunning, tell me about that door.

- This door is original to the home and we've talked about how families fight over things.

That was actually the only bone of contention between my mom, her sister and brother, was that door.

- Everybody wanted it?

- Everybody wanted that door and my mom said, I got the house I get the door.

- So that's the original glass?

- It's the original glass yes.

- Wow it's just beautiful.

- When I was growing up, we weren't allowed to use the door.

It always stayed locked, and we had to get through the other doors.

- I feel special.

- You're very special.

- This like the family china, except its the door.

- It's like, the door.

(Norma giggles) - All right, I wanna see this house.

Give me a tour, I'm gonna follow y'all.

- This is the living area and we are in the process of upgrading some things.

- Who's that in the colorization?

- On the left that's my mom, her sister Norma, my namesake and the baby sister Annie.

- So is this the actual house?

- That is the house.

- Wow.

That porch is amazing.

- This is my great-grandfather's family.

And one of those little boys is my grandfather, but I'm not exactly sure which one.

(Norma and Colleen giggle) - That is so cool.

The woodwork on the porch is still the same.

- It's still there.

- I love it.

All right, so you guys live at different places, right?

- Correct.

- And what's the goal?

- The goal is to fix this up right now for all of our family get togethers to come here and then in the next few years I would love to move back here.

- This place is incredible I mean, just think that six generations of this family have lived here on this beautiful property.

You can really feel all the history around you.

So tell me about this saddle.

- This was my saddle when I was in high school.

It's been here for many years.

- That was one of my favorite things.

So even though this is just the saddle, the old barn house, there was a tack room and you would walk in there and there was a hundred plus year old tack, bits, rings, saddles I mean.

This is a nice break for my kids to sort of see a little glimpse of what we both got to experience.

- So this is an escape?

- Yes.

- Absolutely.

- And that's kind of the goal?

- Yes.

And then the goal is to get all our family, grandkids, everybody back here and have the same memories we have of this area.

- And all the memories of people that aren't here anymore.

I█m still at home in the kitchen and - Yeah, they're here with us.

They're with us right now.

- Everything I've seen so far, is really clean.

And you're like, usually people call me 'cause they have a mess.

Is there somewhere that is, that you really need more help?

- Yes, we have a few spaces here in the house that really, I need your help on.

and we also have some out buildings.

- Yeah, I passed a lot of little buildings.

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Follow me (giggles) This is a little embarrassing.

- Wow.

So it's storage?

- It is storage for now.

- Yes.

- Okay.

I don't normally get invited into-- (Norma laughs) - Bathrooms so we will need to clean this out a little bit.

All right, let's keep looking at it.

This is what the bathroom looks like who knows what the rest of the house is gonna look like, alright.

- It is a real place.

(Norma laughs) To the attic.

- This is the magic.

- This is the attic.

- Wow, look at this.

- It's here.

- This is like a cool place to hang out.

- Yeah, we'd spend a lot of time up here.

- I bet, man.

Okay, here we go.

Yes.

An attic, it's full.

- [Norma] Whole lot of things.

- [Matt] A lot of stuff.

- I have never seen that wall (giggles).

- You've never seen-- - I've never seen, I have no idea what is in there.

- I see some old beds.

I see a lot of stuff back there.

So this is pretty standard for an old farm house we just got a bunch of stuff from generations past.

Some is really important some of it it's not, but it all has memories.

- And I say this with love my mother is very sentimental and struggles with each piece to get rid of and it becomes an emotional attachment so we need the help.

- Okay, we're gonna organize everything on what we think would be trash, keep or get rid of.

- Okay.

- And then you will come in and make decisions based on that.

- That's wonderful.

- Is that cool?

- That'll be fabulous, thank you.

- What other spaces do I have to worry about cleaning?

- Okay, outside we have the tank house and a garage and smokehouse.

- All right we got a lot of work to do.

Well let's go outside find a space.

I'm going to go over the entire legacy list.

- Okay, all right.

- All right, let's go.

I appreciate you guys showing this house is amazing.

And now that I've spent a little time in the attic with Norma, it's obvious that she really does need her help.

She just can't let go of anything from this property.

(country music) Alright here we are.

I really love this property.

It's incredible.

I can see why you love spending so much time here.

- Well, my mom was born here.

She had a sister who passed away and so my mom ended up dropping out of school to take care of the family.

So that's what she did from age 13, until 17 or 18, then she was ready to not have to run everything as a farmer.

(Norma laughs) - I cannot get my 15 year old to load the dishwasher.

(all laugh) - And your 13 year old mom raised a family.

- Yes she did.

- When she passed away at 96, I didn't shed a tear.

And I was surprised that I didn't, but I was like why would I, she lived the best fullest life and paid it forward to all of us so.

She was wonderful.

- Your mom shed them all, I think.

- Yes-- - She still does.

- Yeah.

- [Matt] That's okay.

- Yeah.

- My favorite time, legacy list time.

So just as a reminder, a legacy list is really just a list of items that help you tell your family history.

I mean they would stand alone and they'll tell the story that'll last forever.

Sometimes we need to locate sometimes we just need to help you find out more information about.

- One thing that's important to me is to find out the wall phone, the original phone-- - The old wall phone?

- The old wall phone, the original phone for the home.

That was something that was a big pride to my opa when he was the first to get a phone here, it was important that that helped him, that helped the neighbors, the family, that they had communication.

- So people would come to use the phone?

- Yes.

- That's super cool community I love it.

- There is a butter churn that it has a strange little story behind it.

My grandmother, my oma when I was a child, I was playing in the attic with this butter churn and I found a little bottle of whiskey in it.

And I took it to oma look what I found and she's like, that's your grandfather's put that back.

Don't tell a soul.

I never thought too terribly much of it.

Well later my oma passed on and then I find out my opa never drank anything in his life so that had to be my oma's whiskey that she was hiding from him.

So if we could find that butter churn and you'll know, it has my name written on it underneath.

- Snitches get stitches.

(all laugh) - And you got rewarded I love it.

- Some things that are special to me, I would say the first one is, it's actually my mom's old barbie dream house.

My sister, and I would pull that out and play with it for hours and hours and hours.

I'd love to pay that forward to my children and give them the opportunity to bring their dolls and have that experience that I had.

So that would be wonderful.

My grandfather and my sister and myself we would always walk the property, go down to the river and look for arrowheads and there was never a time that we didn't bring back a beautiful geode rock or an arrowhead.

And we kept our most prized ones together and I'm just not sure where those ended up and it's just really sentimental.

- So it's an arrowhead collection?

- It's an arrowhead collection.

- From this property?

- Correct.

- My oma, her mother was very adamant about any arrowheads or artifacts we found on the property had to stay on the property they couldn't be removed.

- So there was a respect from early on, leave it here.

All right what else do you guys have?

- I have heard rumors.

My grandmother, my oma kept journals.

Back in the sixties all my cousins remember her writing in these journals.

If there's any way we could find those and I'm hoping maybe up in the attic area, since that's an area that hasn't been gone through in my lifetime that I know of.

(upbeat music) - Do you have anything else for me to find?

- I have one more thing.

- Okay.

- It's gonna sound silly, but I'll tell you why it's important to me.

- I like it.

- I haven't seen this in years, but upstairs we used to have that big oxen yoke from plowing fields back in the 1800s, every single summer, my grandfather, my opa would still plow the fields, plant the oats.

We'd bale the hay together and there wasn't one second.

I wasn't sitting on one side of the tire wheel and my sister on the other and he would drive and we would just sing songs for hours and hours and help him work the fields and pull the hay in and put it on tractor beds and it just made me have so much care and respect for taking care of the land and the farmers that lived before him.

And so that's just a small piece of, I got to see that 1972 Ford tractor and a sentiment of what happened many years before that.

- I love it.

- I mentioned that my mom had to leave school, but she was very proud of her education.

My mother was brilliant by the way, she was brilliant, but she kept her little workbooks from school from when she was in school and that was very important to her.

And if I could find those I would like to keep them and preserve them.

(upbeat music) - How would your mom feel about all these new generations being here?

- She would be so happy.

I mean, she is happy.

She loved her family and she told us every day, how much she appreciated learning things through our eyes.

She didn't have a lot of a childhood because of having to grow up so fast and she would say it's just such a blessing that I have been able to relive that life.

- One things is great as we travel further out west, the legacy list changes a little bit and this legacy list is really cool.

I mean it's all really centered around this property and all the great times that all the girls, the granddaughters, the daughter, and oma's have had.

This is a farm legacy list.

And I really enjoyed meeting you guys and talking to you.

I mean, you feel the pride and you feel the love of this land, the love of your mom.

All right, well thank you guys for having us.

It's just a beautiful property.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

I'm gonna go get some barbecue and then I will come back tomorrow.

- Okay.

- And we will get started.

- All right.

- All right thank you guys.

- Thank you so much.

(country music) - When you're dealing with properties that have been in families for this long it's usually the childhood memories that make them want to hold onto this property later in life.

So I wanna sit down with the granddaughters and really get to know them and learn about their memories here on this land.

All right girls were hanging upstairs in the attic.

I wanna know a few things about this house.

How old do you think this farm is?

- It's been here for a while.

- Like what's a long time you think?

- I think I've been here since, 1992.

- 1992, you think it's longer than that Elise?

- I think it's a little bit shorter, but not that long.

- Okay, so like 2000.

Okay, so 20 years.

Do you guys like coming here?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- What do you like, what's fun about it?

- There's a cow head in the tree that I've been trying to get out for a long time.

- All right, talk to me about this.

How do you get a cow hit out of a tree?

What do you do?

- I don't know, but it's going to close up when I'm 30 I think and I've been trying to get it out.

- That's a cool memory you guys, what other cool memories you have?

- They have no wifi here so we have to have like a different adventure every day and it's a lot of fun.

- We don't have to have all of those calls and messages and nothing is bothering us.

- So it feels like a little mini vacation?

- Yeah.

- That's super cool.

The girls were super excited to show me the cow head in the tree and I gotta tell ya, it lived up to the hype.

This is super cool.

I can hang out with everyone in this family for the whole day, but unfortunately I gotta get to work.

(country music) (Matt laughs) Howdy y'all?

- [All] Howdy.

- I was gonna welcome you to Texas, but I feel like-- - We've welcomed ourselves.

- That's right.

You gotta do it big in Texas.

(all laugh) - Matt you know I do have one thing now that we got here.

Here you go.

- A sheriff's badge.

- New sheriff in town.

- New sheriff in town.

All right guys I'm in.

Let's get this rodeo started.

- That's right.

- No matter how hard the job can get, my team knows how to have fun.

They are ready to be in Texas.

So although the scenery has changed the job is the same.

Awesome family, but they've got about five generations of stuff.

Norma it was her mom's place and her mom passed away about two years ago, but the main thing that they want this to be a family vacation spot, because this house was made to make memories.

- So what are we looking for?

- All right legacy list.

There's an old phone, the old phone that you would pull the thing up put up to your ear and you're talking to wall-- - No way.

- Yeah.

You've got a butter churn.

You've got a barbie like doll house.

There is her grandma's diaries.

And then her mom's like little school workbook.

- Okay.

- Her mom actually dropped out of middle school to take care of her family.

- [All] Wow.

- And then ran this place for forever.

We also have a collection of native American tools and arrowheads.

And then the last thing is a big old oxen yoke.

- These legacy list items, I mean connected with this property, they tell me that this family was about hard work and sacrifice.

- Matt, what are me and my guys facing this week?

- So we're gonna clean out a few different areas in the house.

- Okay.

- And then we've got a, they call it the garage, but it's a barn.

- Okay.

- The loss of their mom and matriarch of this family is really fresh.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- There's a lot of emotion behind these items.

- Yeah.

- [Avi] Yeah.

- We'll make sure we go through everything with her and give her the chance to see it before it leaves.

- All right, so who's going where?

- I'm glad you asked.

I'm gonna split us up just right away by height.

So you and I will stick together.

(laughs) And then I'm gonna let Jamie call this.

Heads, you guys go inside.

- Okay.

- Tails, you go out to the barn.

- Okay.

Heads.

- It was tails.

Okay, you're going to the barn.

(all laugh) - Actually it was heads where do you want?

- I want the house.

- Okay.

- It's air conditioned.

- All right good luck guys.

Yeah good luck have fun, it'll be easy.

- You think the attic is really air conditioned?

- Probably not.

- Nice space here.

- This is cozy.

- Yeah.

- This is cute.

Yeah, there it is.

- Okay, now we found the attic.

We need to make some space here.

- Yeah, it's real tight.

- This attic, it was crowded, it was dusty and obviously it hadn't been touched in about 50 years and Matt, it was not air conditioned.

- You wanna stack them.

- Yeah.

- What is that?

- 1960s board games.

- I mean 1960 you probably got a lot of time on your hands, right.

- Back in the barn where it all started.

(Mike laughs) - Have you spent a lot of time in barns?

- Not in about 10 years.

This is like a lot of the barns that we work in and it's just filled.

So we had to clear some space before we get started just so we could do our work.

- One two three.

- The tip you always told me.

- Bang on the wall.

- Bang on the walls.

- And it'll get all the critters out.

- The barn was great.

Let's be real, it was old.

It was kind of rickety and it was full of bees, but I loved it.

(upbeat music) - I wonder if these were like, if they're not paint by numbers if they were free hand, if they were dogs that the family owned.

- This was probably in the kitchen.

- Yeah (Jamie laughs) - This attic was like geology.

I mean, every layer revealed something that had come before.

- That's from the 70s.

Look at that.

- Pro hairdryer.

- Did you have one of these?

- Very funny.

(indistinct) - I used to have hair.

- Used to have long hair (giggles) A little lantern.

Shovel out of there.

There you go yap, there it is.

- My goodness.

This looks yokeish.

- And then this would have attached to it right?

- Yeah.

The yoke would allow the farmers to harness the animals and then pull and implement like a plow.

- This was pre-tractor.

- Yeah.

And even when the tractor came around if you couldn't afford one, this was how you were plowing your fields.

- Norma's grandfather he really did the work here.

It's just amazing.

I mean, holding this oxen yoke, like it's pretty crazy to imagine how much work this family did on this land to think that they used this piece of wood and steel to put food on their tables.

- I mean, you look at this, like a black smith had to make each of these little pieces.

It's like so unbelievable what an amount of work went into making these.

- It's really cool.

That is a legacy list item.

I think we've gotten away from understanding how difficult farm life really was.

I mean every one of these items was used by this family on a daily basis.

And it's just, it's amazing how hard farm life really was.

- [Narrator] America grew up on a farm.

Farmers were the backbone of our young nation.

None other than Thomas Jefferson, praised them as the chosen people of God.

Although he didn't say that about the laborers tending his crops.

As America grew so did the need for people to work the land.

Abraham Lincoln helped solve that problem.

In 1862 he signed the Homestead Act.

The new law gave over a million Americans, 160 acre plots of free land from the government.

The only requirement you had to stay on that plot for five years and farm, and you had to be white.

Life on the farm wasn't easy.

Chores would begin well before the sun came up, animals had to be fed, water fetched, butter churned, wood chopped and cows milked.

Farmers endured suffering of biblical proportions, droughts, blizzards, rattlesnakes, even locusts.

In the 1870s swarms of locusts destroyed farms from Minnesota all the way to Texas.

As one farmer put it they ate everything, but the mortgage.

It wasn't just the plowing and pruning and picking that made farm life such a struggle.

Sharecropping trapped tenant farmers in poverty.

Many others ended up indebted to railroad companies, but farmers didn't go quietly, especially in Texas.

In the 1870s Texas farmers started the first Farmers Alliance to form cooperatives and fight exploitation.

Shut out from the Farmers Alliance, black Texas farmers launched their own organizations.

There was a time when the majority of Americans lived on a farm, today it's a mere 1% of the population, but a rural revolution is taking place.

A whole new generation of farmers are going back to the land, growing organic food and enjoying life at a simpler pace.

Farm life, I guess you can say it grows on you.

(hen crows) (upbeat music) - Look what this is.

- Is that what I think it is?

- I think it is.

It says barbie dream house on it.

- What.

- Look at that the original box.

Man I really wanted one of these growing up.

(Jamie and Avi chuckle) Finding the barbie dream house was really special.

This thing was original.

It was made out of cardboard.

This is like old school.

And when we opened it up I saw that all of the pieces had to be assembled and it just made me think who did this with Norma?

Norma was a kid living on a farm, playing with the barbie dream house and she was dreaming herself.

- Look at the TV set.

- And I think it's gonna be really special for Norma to watch her grandkids play with this.

- Yes, awesome find.

- Yes, legacy list item found.

- Old blankets.

- My goodness look at that.

We think of a barn find this is it.

This cooler was awesome.

It was in great condition.

Had some great patina, it's still functional and it's super collectable.

- Look at that.

- Wow, it is like brand new man.

- There's a market for this.

- Absolutely.

- How much could you sell that for?

- Easily 300 bucks.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- In the condition it's in?

- As it sits.

- What's going on here?

An old iron.

- That is heavy.

Feel that.

I mean, I bet they used that.

- I mean, these things, you would either heat them up on a top of a wood burning stove or heat up in a boiling pot of water.

- I mean that's life on a farm.

- We're looking for legacy list items.

There's a lot to do the clock is ticking.

It's certainly heavy.

- What do you got over there?

- The butter churn.

- Look at that.

- Yeah.

- There's a name underneath.

- My goodness.

- I see why Nora and Colleen have such, just pride in their ancestors.

I don't think I'd be cut out for this life, this is hard work.

The other day I didn't put butter on my toast 'cause I didn't want to walk across the kitchen.

(Mike laughs) - To get it out of the fridge right.

- So you just say plain-- - So I just ate plain toast.

And these people had to make it.

- Yeah.

- Multiple fans.

- Got it.

- This is like some old school stuff.

Come take a look at these.

- What you think.

- Look her spelling book.

Yeah it is Mildred look.

This is like all of her mom's school stuff.

- This is amazing.

You know, I had a spelling book kind of like this.

- Did you?

- Yeah (indistinct) (Jamie laughs) - Norma had a really deep relationship with her mom and finding these books I know are gonna mean so much to her.

It's just another piece of her mom that she gets to hold on to.

I mean what a story.

You know, to be forced to forego your education and obviously family is family, right?

You got to always take care of him, but to put herself in a situation where hey, this has to be done.

- Yeah.

- You know, even at the cost of my own education, that's significant.

- Man I just found something.

- My goodness.

- Look at that man.

Operator.

- Apparently Norma's grandfather was the first one out here to have a phone and then it took a while for anyone because of world war II they couldn't get them.

So people would come over here and use the phone.

- I'm sure he became really popular.

- Very popular.

This actually hung on the wall until Norma was a teenager-- - In here?

- In there.

I think how excited I get now when I get a text it's like, somebody cares about me.

Think how much this would matter like when the phone rang twice a week, that's another legacy list item.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] The telephone, these days it seems like everyone is glued to one, but it's been a long journey from Alexander Graham Bell's workshop to your back pocket.

Before the telephone the main technology for speedy communication across long distances was the telegraph.

Messages were sent through a wire using Morse code, which let's face it isn't very conversational.

In the 1870s Bell begins tinkering with the telegraph to investigate whether the human voice can be transmitted electrically.

He succeeds and in 1876 files for a patent for the first the first telephone just hours before another inventor, Elijah Gray tries to register a similar device.

Bell's invention takes the world by storm.

People can now pick up a telephone and talk to someone on the other side of the country.

Rural areas become less isolated, the world becomes a little bit smaller.

As the telephone grows in popularity so does the technology.

In the early 70s Motorola develops the first cell phone.

The prototype weighs over two pounds and after 10 hours of charging, you can talk for a whole 30 minutes.

Who makes the first cell phone call?

It's a Motorola executive who calls a rival inventor to brag.

Can you hear me now he asks (chuckles) Currently almost 3000 satellites orbit the globe, bringing us critical cell phone service.

Without them we'd still be stopping at gas stations to ask for directions.

Today you can use your phone to do almost anything from ordering dinner and paying your bills to watching your favorite TV shows like this one.

(upbeat music) - There are a lot of places to look.

Where would native American tools be hiding?

But I'm determined to find these artifacts.

No sir.

Not today.

That's the third scorpion I've seen today.

My lucky day.

This has got to be it.

Now that I found the jar of arrowheads and stone tools I had a chance to talk to Norma's daughter, Connie, about living life on the farm and some of these artifacts.

So Connie what was life like out here for you growing up?

- It was wonderful.

We would always come up with our oma and opa and they would take us down into the creek to go look at arrowheads and go swimming and we had a lot of times just fishing and hanging out and just really enjoying life here.

- To me it sounds like the goal is to be here another 175 years?

- Absolutely that is the goal and hopefully even farther.

All of our family has been here they have worked this soil.

So keeping that in the family and being able to pass it on to my nieces and sending it down the family line and preserving that for them so they can share with their kids the memories that we had here.

- And so this will be a place of refuge for the family.

- Yes.

- How to come together to fellowship, to celebrate each other and be reminded of where it all started.

We know that there've been a lot of native American tools found on the property.

- So we can find them all in the river bed where the cliff comes down, there's a native shelter.

- I'd love to see more if that's possible.

- Absolutely, we can go check out the rest of the property if you like.

- That sounds great.

Time to ride.

120 acres is something else.

I mean, you have plenty to do out here.

It was a lot of work, but there was a lot of play too.

- Yes, absolutely.

- All of the native American tools and arrowheads, a lot of that was found?

- Yeah all in through here.

So if you see how we have all of this fallout right here This (indistinct) edge.

So it's really neat because every time it floods, it gets turned over so new stuff will come up.

- Connie's tour was pretty eyeopening for me.

I mean, I got a real chance to see how the family lived and how they supported themselves, but also how the native Americans lived on that property.

And these artifacts are just a good reminder that this world is bigger than our own selves and our own stories.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Indigenous people have lived in the area we now call Texas for thousands of years, long before European colonization.

Proof of their existence can be found in the artifacts they left behind.

Arrowheads were usually made from flints or obsidian rock and formed into sharp deadly weapons used for hunting and battle.

Spear points can still be found in dried up riverbeds where early settlements were once located.

The oldest weapon ever discovered in North America dates back over 15,000 years.

It was a spear point tip found in Texas.

Several native nations have called Texas home, but none amassed as much power as the Comanche.

What made them so dominant?

The very animal brought to the continent to conquer them the horse.

Spanish colonizers came to the region with horses, but it was the Comanche who became expert riders.

Some say that mounted Comanche could shoot 20 arrows in the time it took to reload a gun.

The Comanche weren't only warriors, they developed an extensive trade network, which by the mid 19th century included German settlers in Fredericksburg, Texas.

But it was the buffalo the Comanche relied on to survive.

Great herds of Buffalo once roamed the country and the Comanche used every part of the animal.

Their meat became food, their hides shelter and their bones tools.

When the US army and hunters slaughter nearly 30 million buffalo by the end of the 19th century, it effectively defeated the nomadic tribes.

But Native American culture is more than just tools and arrowheads left behind on the great plains.

Today there are 17,000 enrolled members of the Comanche nation ,who continue to practice the traditions of their ancestors.

- We wanted to learn more about really the settlers of this area.

So Jamie and I went to the Pioneer Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas.

(upbeat music) - Hello.

- Hey there.

- Nice to meet you I'm Matt.

- And I'm Evelyn.

- Evelyn nice to meet you.

- I'm Lacey.

- Lacey this is Jamie.

- Jamie.

- So we're at a farm about 30 miles west of here.

It's the family that they've been here for over 150 years.

I think they're one of the originals.

It's a lot of German influence.

Tell me why so many Germans settled in this part of Texas.

- When our ancestors left Germany at the invitation of the Republic of Texas, they did not have good living conditions.

There was not enough land.

And the Republic of Texas told them that they would get 320 acres for a family, 160 for an individual.

- So they were recruited.

- Basically yes.

- Really just trying to get an understanding of what life was like for these settlers.

- They were basically farmers.

They had to make everything basically themselves.

- Let's go check out the barn.

- Okay.

- We're gonna follow y'all over there.

- We're in the barn what are we looking at?

- Right now we're looking at a dough bowl in which the housewife would make and mix the bread.

I'm sure that was why this bowl is so big.

The families were big 10 to 12 children and those who were out in the field had to prepare the soil with the plows that we see here in the barn, corn shellers, scythe, pitchforks, back behind us over there.

- These weren't incredibly wealthy families.

I mean it sounds like they did pay for some land and then like what was included in that?

- So they purchased land and passage over from the Adelsverein which was the nobility society who worked with the Republic of Texas.

By the time they made it to Texas the Adelsverein had run out of money and they were taking loans to try to support the people who had already moved here.

And so they were pretty much just on their own in the middle of the wilderness, in a place they'd never been with languages they didn't speak.

- This was a hard living community.

I mean, hardworking.

I'm guessing that many kids they were working sun up to sundown.

- [Lacey] Basically.

- Being at the museum really made me appreciate all of the creature comforts that we have today.

I mean, we have it pretty easy.

- You can see how the Germans really settled, work hard and then expanded.

All right, well thank you both for your time.

We really appreciate it.

And we have got to get back to the ranch and keep working.

- Yeah we do.

- Thank you.

- Of course, thanks for coming.

- Now that we found all the legacy list items, we've got to focus on the clean-out, which is the attic and the barn.

I'm gonna to let Mike and his team do all of it.

(indistinct) - At a surface level we're doing a lot of physical work, but beyond that, we're lifting a lot of emotions and lifting some roadblocks that are keeping people from getting where they need to be.

- Mike and his team have done a great job, cleaning out all the clutter.

So I'm excited to show Colleen and Norma all the work we've done.

What do you think?

- Wow.

- I love it, I've never seen this space.

- The floor, I'm speechless.

- Here is your attic.

- My God.

Wow.

- Look at the Space.

- What do you think mom?

- It's fantastic.

It's beautiful.

- This table is amazing.

- That was the kitchen table from my oma.

- It's absolutely awesome.

There was a lot of stuff stacked back here and that's what happens.

Plans and memories get stacked on top of each other and then we don't know that we have real treasures.

So a lot of people get so overwhelmed with the guilt of what's missing that they're not able to enjoy the space that's here.

Are you heavier on the enjoyment than the guilt or where are you at?

- Right now I'm on the enjoyment I believe I'm on the enjoyment side.

Now I may wake up in the middle of the night with some guilt here and there.

- I'll get an email tomorrow, where's this?

Where's that?

where's this?

And that's normal.

- I've been given the card that I am able to reimagine the space up here through renovation, I'm excited.

- Cleaned up the two spaces in the attic we also cleaned out the barn and now we're gonna go outside and go over the legacy list.

- Okay I'm excited.

(Norma laughs) - All right, let's go.

- Awesome.

- Thank you guys for having us.

- Thank you.

- This is probably one of the prettiest places I have ever been.

One thing I noticed this week, you do find a lot of comfort in your ancestors stuff.

- I guess it's just all a part of me and that's my memories, they tweak my memories and it's hard to let go.

I think that if I let go of the stuff that maybe the memory will fade too.

- Yeah totally.

Were you feeling like overwhelmed of this stuff?

- Before y'all came?

- Yeah.

- Absolutely, and I knew it wasn't fair to my children and their children for me to burden them with it.

It was too much.

- There are six generations that have lived on here or hang out here now and that's a pretty amazing number.

This place is set up for really generational joy if it's enough to say.

Now we've got the space to do it inside which I'm kind of excited about.

- I'm very excited.

- All right let's get into legacy list because this is, we did find some things along the way.

All right.

First few items are interesting.

First item is the phone.

- [Norma] You found my phone.

- [Matt] All right, I remember my grandparents having a phone like this.

- My grandfather put it in this rural part of the area right before world war II and that has been on the wall in this house for all, most of my life.

- You remember using it?

- Yes, I used that in high school.

- It's been upgraded a little bit so it still was clearly functional.

I mean there's some people watching this right now thinking that's a phone.

- That's a phone.

- I know.

- Talk right into there.

- Your grandpa was ahead at the time.

- My oma was not real happy about money going towards that.

She did not see that vision of the future, but he did.

- The next item you asked us to find was the butter churn, which we did.

This is really nice.

One thing has really impressed me with your family is whatever they used, they took really good care of it.

Did you ever have any butter made in this?

- Yes.

My oma made better and put it in a little mold (giggles) and it was from their cows their cream.

- There's something to that.

You raise the cows, you plant the grass, you make the butter, you enjoy the food.

- When I was younger just thinking, I had asked my oma why didn't women work back a long time ago.

- And she had said what do you mean?

She said by the time you got up before everybody else had a wood-burning stove made breakfast, once everybody ate you started making lunch and after everybody ate you started making dinner and making lye soap.

And it's just, I mean it was a more of a full-time job than I think I ever had appreciated and her sharing that and talking me through it made me very proud to come from a long line of really strong women.

- First few items we found really talked about hard work.

The next item actually Colleen asked for.

This is the ox yoke.

- You found it.

- We found it.

It's really a spectacular piece when you just take a minute to kinda step back and think, man, your relatives use this.

When I found it it was kind of like, gosh, it worked these fields.

- [Norma] This fields right here.

- [Matt] The ones right in front of us.

- [Norma] Yes right there.

- It really symbolizes the incredibly hard work that I know that both of you really just admire.

- [Colleen] Very much so.

- [Matt] It wasn't all hard work.

These are going to symbolize.

- That's my barbie.

- You kept a lot of furniture.

Some of it is barbie furniture.

Still in great shape actually.

Honestly this is the part that always gets thrown away.

- [Norma] This was my dream house.

I got my first barbie on my sixth birthday.

This was my world, this was my life.

Every day I played with this.

- You played with it?

- Yes, every single time we were up here, we'd packed barbies and play with it.

And I was telling my daughter about it and she asked when we were on our way here if you find it I wanna play with it.

- A theme that keeps coming up, work hard, play hard.

- That makes me happy.

- The next item was the arrowheads.

Lots to talk about here.

Very impressive collection, not something you see every day.

I'm gonna be honest, when I heard arrowhead collection, I thought was like a little thing that I would get, at the front desk at the grand canyon.

(Norma laughs) I did not realize that you guys were stressing like the magnitude of these rocks that you're finding on this property.

But one thing I really am impressed with and we were told you can not take them off the property.

- Yeah, if it's here it will remain here out of respect.

- There's a respect for this land, for people that were here before your family even was here and I really appreciate that.

I've seen that in different cultures and different families as I've traveled around the world.

I mean would you all just find these as kids running around?

- We'd always look for arrowheads or different tools and there wasn't one second that they weren't thrown into our pockets and brought back up.

- I really just appreciate that positive vibe was passed down from generation and I know that you...

Your daughters actually told me that as well.

- Wonderful.

- So I was told.

- Yes.

- By a six year old.

(Norma laughs) - These arrowheads.

- Yes they know.

- They know, I mean to think that that went from your grandma to them.

I love it.

Okay, these are beautiful in their own right, I wanna be really careful with that.

The next item you asked was your mom's notebooks and these I think are pretty spectacular.

- I see mama.

My mom was a very smart lady that she didn't have the opportunity to continue on in organized school for very long.

I had heard that there were some of her books somewhere here some of her workbooks and I had never seen them so they they really exist.

- So this is one of your mom's essays, read the first sentence or two that's really cool.

- My flower garden is very pretty.

When the flowers plume the butterflies come.

Sometimes when I pick flowers I try to catch the butterflies, October 9th, 1931.

- Super, you know just sweet.

Would this house and this land exist if your mom had not done what she did.

- No, they would have had to probably sell and go move into town or something for somebody to take care of everyone.

This makes me like feel guilty like how much I've taken for granted, having a graduate degree, like she got to have an eighth grade education.

- She did that so you could get a graduate degree.

- Exactly she did And she always prided education.

- Your mom's education was really a seed for you guys to blossom.

- Thank you so much for finding those.

- All right we found one other item.

Is it Lily Mozel.

- That's my oma.

- Your oma, okay.

Again oma is a very proud thing in this family.

And we're able to find this.

This is her life story that she wrote out.

- God, how could this have been, history of my life.

- The history of your life.

Now this is what I love the most, read that part.

- She wrote it to me.

Norma, this is written by your grandmother, Lily Mozel the history of my life.

I was born in a little cottage, consisted of one large room and a small back room, which was our kitchen and a porch and a small attic.

Our house was very cold in the winter.

- But the best part is she wrote it to you.

- This to me.

I've heard of it, but I never seen this.

- You've never read it?

- I have never read I've never seen it.

- It was in the attic.

- Wow, this is a treasure.

- This is why we do this, okay.

I don't know if it was fate or divine intervention or what, but at the very last moment, Jamie found Norma's grandma's like personal history.

Her oma had written this for her.

It was really special and just an amazing thing to experience with this family.

I wanna see you really embrace this oma position.

(Norma laughs) - You talk about all these incredible omas.

You're the oma.

- Yeah, it's hard to believe that, but I am it's me.

- And you, your family has done an incredible job of making a space for that.

The space is gonna happen and I just don't want you to spend the next 30 years preserving the old memories 'cause you've already you've done that, you can check that off the list.

Let's go make some memories for the younger girls.

- I've never thought of it that way ever.

- What have you learned from your mom?

- My gosh everything, like that is-- - It's a wide question, yeah.

- It's impossible to answer, I've learned to love hard.

I've learned to have fun.

She's one of the funnest people I've ever met (indistinct) (Colleen laughs) To work really hard.

I got to watch someone that just worked super hard and expected the same from me.

There were no free lunches in my family.

So I just, yeah, she's everything I aspire to be.

Love you baby.

(Colleen and Norma laugh) - I just appreciate you guys.

We appreciate letting us in your home.

Letting us in your life.

We learned a lot.

- [Colleen] I learned a lot through this.

- I learned a lot.

Yes, and there's things that don't represent all of the emotions it's a lot of things that we could let go, but the important things are.

- I'm looking at that and I just want to thank your grandma for writing that.

I can't tell you how many families say to me I wish I had done that, but I really hope people will see this and see the joy in both of your faces and be like I ought to put that story down on paper because someday we aren't here but our story lives on forever.

That's why I do this show and I love this.

So thanks to your grandma and your mom, and to all you guys.

- Thank you so much for all this.

- This week has been like a vacation for me.

I mean, I've really gotten to hang out with some amazing people and really explore this land and this entire family has reminded me you gotta unplug.

I don't care how busy you are you gotta unplug and you gotta come out to the country and you just gotta sit and enjoy.

- [Woman] Funding for legacy list is provided by Wheaton World Wide Moving.

Wheaton's number one goal is to help you, your loved ones and your belongings get to your new home quickly and safely.

You can find us at wheatonworldwide.com.

Wheaton World Wide Moving we move your life.

FirstLight Home Care committed to providing safe and compassionate home services for you and your family.

Firstlight believes personal relationships and engagement are as important as mobility, bathing and personal hygiene, details at firstlighthomecare.com.

The Mavins Group, a downsizing real estate sales and move management company committed to easing the emotional and physical demands of beginning a new stage of life.

The Mavins Group ,so much more than a move.

Insure Long Term Care, where we believe that aging at home, near friends and family is ever more possible for more people.

Learn more at insureltc.com.

And by the Ruth Camp Campbell Foundation.

(bright upbeat music) - [Man] Visit mylegacylist.com to learn more about the tips, tools, and professionals to help make your own big life move easier.

Learn more about this episode or submit your story to be featured on the show at mylegacylist.com