Rooted in Memories — the Susan Wood Estate Sale — is a place where the daughter & granddaughter of avid antiques collector Susan Wood share stories about her treasures and post details of upcoming sale events.

Here’s how it came to be:

Susan Wood never passed up a yard sale, estate auction or antique shop. For years, she bought — and sold — whatever caught her fancy at the moment: crystal goblets, vintage aprons, figurines, costume jewelry, tablecloths. She displayed her finds in her home, stocked her antique-mall booths & tiny open-by-appointment antique shop and stockpiled everything else.

When she died in 2020 at age 84, she left a house overflowing with treasures.
While her death was not COVID-related, it came at the beginning of the pandemic crisis. This meant that our plans for clearing the house with an estate sale were delayed for months. However, as soon as we tentatively started the process this year, we realized our focus had shifted.
Previously, we’d thought we’d each (three children, five grandchildren & three great-grandchildren) pick out our favorite things, quickly turn everything else over to an estate auctioneer and walk away satisfied with a job well done. But now we wanted something different. Something more. As many others have discovered, quarantine forced us to reassess what’s important and to reevaluate the way we do things. All of us family members had time to reflect & remember. And as protocols eased & life became a sort of normal again, we realized we wanted to honor & celebrate our mother & grandmother. We weren’t content with auctioning off the items she’d spent a lifetime collecting without knowing more about that life & the things that had given her so much joy.

So, we — her granddaughter Carolyn Myers and her daughter, Cathy Wood — came up with a plan. We’d go through the house room by room, discovering the stories behind the objects: Is that dented English silver teapot really 300 years old? How did our young Victorian ancestor ever sit still long enough to create such intricate embroidery? Why does that painted china vase sit in a place of honor? We’ll research & share the stories, and we hope you’ll share stories of your family treasures. As we explore, we’ll also host sales throughout the coming months for you to visit & add these much-loved objects to your own collections. This page is where we’ll post sale details, so check back often.