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Woman seeks owner of box containing family history

Posted at 4:51 PM, Dec 26, 2018
and last updated 2018-12-26 16:52:06-05

KALAMAZOO COUNTY, Mich. -- A box full of memories has become quite a mystery for a West Michigan woman. Becky Davis is spending this holiday season looking for the rightful owner.

She reached out to the FOX 17 Problem Solvers for a little help.

Davis has held onto the lock box for more than a decade trying to find the owner. It's filled with photos and important documents. Few clues have lead her nowhere until now.

"I've had this for about 10 years. I lived down in Kalamazoo," she said of the box.

"I'm trying to find the family for these because there's a lot of history there. I know if it was mine I'd want it back," she added.

Davis, who nows lives in Grand Rapids, said she came across the lock box when it was tucked away in a basement in a house at 1105 Lay Boulevard in Kalamazoo.

"Looking through this, I don't just want to toss it out. I want to try to find these people, and I've hit dead end after dead," Davis said.

There are very old black and white photos from the first half of the 20th century, as well school pictures, a birthday and a wedding, and personal documents.

"This one's actually a marriage certificate between the people," Davis unfolded it.

It's one of the most significant clues. Barbara Jean Hamilton married Ronald McCallister in 1979 in Kalamazoo County. A cemetery plot agreement shows Ronald passed away in 1992.

"This [photo] has Hamilton family -- Lewis 35, Barbara 26, Michael 4 1/2, and Michelle 8 1/2 months," she read.

The family photo is dated March 1981.

Davis said she's searched Facebook and Google with no success.

The FOX 17 Problem Solvers searched online and found that Barbara Jean Hamilton now lives in Milano, Texas. Her birthday and one of her former addresses match information found in the box. We plan to reach out to her. In the meantime, anyone in West Michigan with answers is encouraged to come forward.