Welcome to the Mississippi Antique Showcase where our expert appraisers take a closer look at your rare finds, family heirlooms and quirky collectibles.

We'll uncover the stories behind these unique treasures and of course find out what they might be worth.

We're here today with Mary Hagaman from over in Leeland, MS And Mary, you've really brought us a fantastic piece of needlework.

Where did you come by this piece?

- A childhood friend of mine that I've known since she was six years old.

Call me one day and said, "I'd like for you to have this piece of embroidery "because you're the only person I've ever known "whose name was given name was Mary Cornelia."

And the little students name - Really?

- Is Mary Conelia.

- So you had the same name?

- Yes.

- Well I tell you what, you were lucky with your name there.

- I know it.

- How many years ago did she give it to you?

- This was probably maybe about eight years ago.

She knew nothing about it except that it was a piece that was given to her mother by her second husband, Mr.

John Aldrich, who a lot of people around this area knew that family.

And we don't know where he got it.

It's not something you see every day.

And I can tell there's some fading to the thread.

It's a sampler.

And do you know anything about the history of samples or really what their purpose was?

Not a whole lot.

Accept that young women, young girls, started learning to do hand work at an early age.

It seems to be about the age.

It's mostly ones I see are early, 19th century up until and before the Civil War.

And some like the Civil War kind of ended that.

And then the story on the bottom, where it tells she had a governess who taught her how to do this.

And she did it December the 19th, 1845, which might lead you to believe, especially with the red, and the green, it was a Christmas present for somebody.

That's a thought.

I think this one, and the right kind of environment, and a well-advertised auction, I think you could see your sampler probably in the 9 to $12,000 territory.

Good gracious.

I think it should be that when they're this big, especially the southern one, they're just they're not out there.

And we really appreciate you bringing this one in.

Oh, thank you for looking at it.

appreciate that too.

We're here with Carol Barton and Elaine Flemming.

Flemming and they're going to be explaining to us about a pretty unique fork here.

And so we're going to let them kind of explain the story about the fork.

Thank you so much.

Yes, actually we are seventh generation direct descendants of Davy Crocket.

And we have had this fork in our family for years.

And we brought it here today because we wondered what value might be put on this fork.

There were two forks from my mother and the Alamo in San Antonio Texas called and they asked if we could donate the forks to the Alamo.

She said, "Well, we will donate one and we'll keep the other one, you know, to have them the family.

The other fork that matches this one is in the alamo at this time with our own display and with our names on it.

It's from our grandmother that was in Atkins and it shows all the way down to Davy Crocket you know, and being our grandfather.

- And you guys are from where?

- We're from Ebenezer, Mississippi.

- Ebenezer?

- Yes.

- The only thing we can find on David Crocket that sold online is some letters.

We found letters for David Crocket and those letters sold, I think there's a couple letters that sold and we found it at $30 to $50,000 with the letters sold for.

trying to put a figure on this fork is almost impossible, right?

We know it's in the thousands and that's kind of where we're guessing somewhere in the thousand dollar.

It could be five, three, ten.

It's hard to know.

It's hard to know when to figure.

It is a fork.

Something very simple has a fork, but it's still, it's Davy Crocket's.

That's right.

And how many more are there out there?

And so, in your saying it is worth ten thousand dollars.

It could be worth ten thousand dollars.

- Could we work more?

- I agree.

You know, it's just one of those things.

You can't put a price on.

That's right.

- Yeah.

- And I'm sure you guys, you were very generous in giving the other one to the museum, and you held onto this one.

And that's a great thing to do.

And I wish more people were like you, and would give things to the museum to other people to share.

And it's a great meeting you here today.

- Absolutely.

- And we made Davy Crocket's family today.

This is pretty awesome.

- Yeah, it is.

- You went out and you get to do that.

- Not very often, that's really so exciting.

- Thank you, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

We really appreciate everything.

- Germaine, who do you have with you now?

- We are out and about here in downtown Greenville.

Right behind me right now is the 1927 flood museum of the Delta and in with us right now who has graciously opened up the doors of Greenville, Mississippi is the executive director of the Greenville, Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau, Wesley Smith.

Wesley, thank you so much for having us.

Welcome to downtown Greenville.

You're about three blocks from Mississippi River and the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

It's 2026, we're one year away from the 100th anniversary.

Biggest natural disaster in our country's history prior to Hurricane Katrina.

And of course a lot of that story originates right here in Greenville, the levee broke just north of us.

So this museum commemorates that.

It was a big part of our history and a big part of our nation's history.

And we like to showcase that.

We've got people coming in from all over the world that either know the history or just want to learn things about the Delta and of course, this was a big part of it.

I often tell people this is we mark time by emergencies or events.

You know, COVID-9/11, sometimes it's tragedies.

Here people talk about the flood of 27 as if it happened three weeks ago.

I want to know too, I mean just the magnitude of it, when you think about my height or your height.

- Right.

- Was it over our height?

- It was about 10 feet in downtown at its highest.

When it broke north of town at Mount Landing, twice the volume of Niagara Falls, and within an hour opened a crevice over a mile wide.

So the delta filled up like a bathtub, it put water over the tops of homes in Yazoo City, which is maybe 67, 68 miles south.

Eventually the water went down in downtown Greenville.

It took about six months for it to get out.

Within seven or eight weeks, downtown Greenville looked a little bit like Venice.

People adapt, they raise merchandise counters.

People would pull their boats right on end.

And of course we had, you know, it was terrible, horrible conditions.

You can imagine people up on the levy and the Red Cross here.

Horrible time in our history, but at a time when people pull together and it sure made an impact.

Right, right.

When people want to come out to visit this, where can they go from more to get about that?

Sure.

They can go to our website, visitgreenville.org.

We love for people to see it and of course we want people to visit our town and our state.

Right, Wesley, thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Germaine.

Now, let's get back to the showcase.

I'm here with Selena from Greenwood, Mississippi.

Selena, this painting is pretty awesome.

Everybody's been checking it out from across the room today here.

Can you tell us about what you brought in?

My mother bought it at an estate sale about 25 years ago for $75.

Okay, where was your estate sale?

Grenada, Mississippi.

-In Grenada.

Well, have you ever looked into it?

Or do you know anything about it?

Well, it is signed.

And when we got at home, I thought, Mama, this is a really nice little landscape, but she liked the frame.

She bought it because of the frame and so we looked up H. Walton on the internet and we thought maybe it was a Henry Walton, but I don't but there's a lot of Henry Walton.

There are a lot of Waltons, yeah, okay.

Well good.

I'm glad you brought it here First off, I would say $75 even for the frame would be a steal, you know But what we're looking at is I didn't get a chance to measure it but it does look like an off-size canvas.

And what I mean by that is that a European canvas.

So we believe it's the European Henry Walton, probably not the American one.

The American one has results in 200,000 to 300,000 range at auction, but it's a different genre.

So it's portraits, it's not pastoral scenes.

In the industry, this is something that is fairly common.

You know, and it's a pastoral scene, it was very well done.

It was rural life, and it's something that people remembered when they moved to the cities and started hanging these things in their Parisian flats and when they were in London and stuff.

Now this is a great scene right here.

We've got cows in the back there.

Somebody gathering wood, a couple of people gathering wood in the foreground.

It must be a little cold because we've got smoke coming out of the chimney of the house there in the back.

And so this is again the genre everything else would leave me to believe that it's hands down European.

Other than that, I think the time period is 19th century.

and we're right on probably mid to late 19th century.

Which Henry Walton this is is not a hundred percent set in stone, but we think we've got it down to two European ones who bring within the same price range.

What do you think or what do you know about the value of this piece?

Gosh, I have no idea.

If I were to buy a landscape today from a popular Mississippi artist, I would pay several thousand dollars.

Right, right, and that's true.

So this artist brings at auction for something that's size roughly in the $1,000 to $2,000 range.

If you were to buy this retail, you'd be looking probably to pay about $3,000.

If you were to buy this somewhere like Royal Street in New Orleans in a high-end gallery, it'd probably be $5,000 to $6,000.

It's just a lovely genre scene, very well done, perfect condition because it's been cleaned and well maintained.

The frame is pretty fantastic in and of itself and there's a little what we call land-yap and you said there's a little bit of dust still up up here too so that comes with a piece and just builds character so thank you so much for bringing it in it's been pretty awesome to see it today and thanks for coming down to Antique Showcase.

(upbeat music) - Hey, we're here with Jane Elliott, and we're gonna talk about a Bible that she brought today.

And so, Jane Elliott, tell us about yourself, and then we'll talk about the Bible we have here.

- I live in Leeland, lived here for like 50 years, originally from Cleveland.

And this Bible came via Cleveland.

Niece and I own who owns the fire-sized shop in Cleveland, goes on buying trips to England and other places every year.

And she bought this Bible at an estate sale in England.

And it's actually my daughter's Bible.

She collects them.

Yeah, yeah.

As far as the Bible, you know, the one thing about England is they have tons of Bibles, which is a very unique thing, is in England.

And this Bible is a unique Bible, 'cause it's not one of those Bibles that has all the baptisms and all the marriages and all those things.

This is like what I would call a personal Bible, they would have took to church.

You know, like, hey, this is my personal Bible, I'll take the church and read it.

- And as it was inscribed, was given to a sister.

- That's right, so yeah, when you open it up, and it says, what, 18 is it?

- 1880.

- 1880.

So in 1880 this was giving to a sister to another sister we believe and so it was a very, very unique Bible.

Hey, didn't you say this song?

Just when the light hit it and we've never noticed it before.

And it looks like... And you can feel it.

It looks amazing.

It's just S. Drayton & Sons Booksellers and stationaries.

Is that what it says right there?

So it looks like.

So that's kind of like, that would be like the Barnes and Noble of their days.

You know, that would have been like the booksellers and no telling any books they saw, but that's where it came from.

- This way it came from.

- Very pretty, very pretty Bible.

You know, what I like about it is that it's a compact Bible.

So what I would call, it was a modern day compact Bible.

I would say that Bible, if it was given, and I was doing some thoughts on this, If it was given in 1880, I'd imagine it probably was around 1880, or maybe a little older, but I would think that the sister would have bought it new for her sister to give to maybe a gift is what I would have been thinking.

But we know, we know it's at least 1880 if not before.

I think this Bible is somewhere probably in the ballpark of, you know, ranging between 50 and about 150 to $150 Bible.

So that's kind of where I would value that.

And I know you said your daughter collects Bible.

- She does.

- How many Bibles does she have?

- She has a five or six.

- Five or six?

- Some in German.

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, like so, there are awesome bibles to collect, especially with the way they're made, the leather binding on them, with the gold, the little brass.

And we're glad you're here.

- Well, thank you.

You're just been a great experience.

- Well, thank you.

Thank you for being here.

(gentle music) - All right, have Margaret Middleton today from Eupora.

And you wanna tell us what she brought us?

- The gentleman in the picture was my husband's grandfather who was in the military, actually, in both world wars.

And he brought back a bunch of stuff from the Mediterranean area, which is where he served in during World War II from the North African invasion until the end of the war.

It's mostly money, but this one box has some insignia things that I don't know anything about.

We've got military script, we've got Italian money and military script.

This is North African coins.

Some of these metals and such were they his?

Yes.

I think the two right in the middle were actually my brother-in-laws because it says ROTC.

And I also don't remember ever seeing a picture of Daddy D wearing a cap such as this insignia would go with.

But this bar of ribbons, I believe, is what's on the uniform there that he's wearing in the photograph.

You know as far as me appraising this it's insane because to you, to your family, you know, it's invaluable.

Yes.

But we had a coin auction last weekend as a matter of fact and we sold coins, some of the, there's several Roman coins in here.

I mean, really ancient coins and they are real.

I'd say that the whole collection here would have to worth saying outside that it had to be worth from two to twenty five hundred dollars.

Wow.

Yeah, because you have a collection of them all over the world actually and a lot of the currency and with everything that you brought here today, even two to twenty five hundred.

And I know you're never going to sell them.

- No, they got a place on the wall in one of the bedrooms, along with pictures of Colonel Hitt.

- That's great.

Just have to keep these and keep telling the grandkids about them.

And they'll actually have something that they can see and touch and along with the photograph.

- Oh, I'm glad to find out that, the oldest one's really our genuine.

- Right, they are.

- Cool.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Germaine, who do you have with you now?

I'm here with Kenner Patton Building Services Manager for the DREC here at Mississippi State University in Stoneville, Mississippi.

There is some photos that I need to know more about, Kenner.

What picture are we standing in front of right now?

This is photographs probably from the 40s or 50s that we're guessing the audience out here.

These are farmers or what we call stakeholders.

People in the industry, they're either bankers or they're selling seed or chemicals or some kind of equipment.

And these are the researchers over here.

So back in this, when this photograph is taken, they were taking all this research information and sharing it with all these shareholders and stakeholders and farmers.

That's the exact same thing we do today.

We do the research and we push it out now.

We're in 2026, not in the '40s anymore.

So our technology has changed a good bit, but the theory and the concept is exactly the same.

So we're here to make a farmer's profitable and sustainable, do all this research and we push it out.

And the crazy thing to me about it is, when we give out all this research and give it away for free, It's purely here to benefit the farmers at the Delta.

Let's keep walking, Kenner, because I've got to know more about this place, the DREC, because there's so much history.

This is probably in the 50s if I was guessing, and this is a crop duster, an old bywing crop duster.

And what they're doing is they're doing a demonstration on an aerial application of a pesticide.

And if I was guessing they're probably spraying for bullweables.

We take a lot of pride in our history, and this is a good example.

When the Delta was first established, everything was a big forest or wooded swamp.

So the first industry that came here was timber.

That's what this is, it's an old-timey sawmill.

There's a big virgin timber tree trunk right there, those in the saw blades, and it's going through the saw.

there's a big slab of a lumber right there.

So it's kind of a point of reference.

You know this is kind of where the delta started.

Cattle was a big thing here for years and then row crop farming came along and row crop became more profitable than cattle farming.

So you don't see any cows in the delta anymore.

It's all a row crop.

So this was kind of the first big step timber than we move into cattle, we moved in a row crops.

So that's where we aren't.

Now, Kenner, you just taught me something because when you drive to the Delta, you think the Delta was made kind of like this with trees that are off from the roads.

That's right.

But you're telling me the lumber business was the first one who kind of cleared that.

First or major industry.

And all of this was like I said it was a woodish swamp and there's a big national forest down here, 50,000,000 acres.

You want to see what the delta looked like before farming, that's a good place to go look.

But all of this was clear specifically for agriculture.

We have an archive of roughly 40,000 images that were in the process of organizing now and what we want to end up doing is categorizing those by mule power or crop dusters or whatever.

Then we want to start tagging it with metadata so that archive will be searchable.

We'd like to open it up to the general public so they can access these 40,000 images.

Again, just thank you so much for hosting us here.

Thank you so much for teaching us about the history of the DRDC and the Delta.

- We're at the Agricultural Center today in Stoneville, Mississippi, and we had a fantastic time meeting with people and getting to check out their items.

What were some of the best items you guys saw today?

- The big diamond ring.

- The diamond ring.

- That was a big diamond ring, a lady, and here's we praise 60,000 and she said she wears it everywhere to the grocery store.

Everywhere that was one of my praises.

So she showed up, it was passed down from her mom and she showed up, it must have been three and a half carrots, mine cut and it was just, I mean it was a honker and she said I never wore it since my mom gave it to me and now in the last three months I decided I'm going to wear it every day and she did.

- Oh, well, is it ever.

As long as it's insured, right?

- I guess so.

Mark, what'd you say today?

- I had a sampler today from Alabama.

And most samplers are from Pennsylvania, New York, or Virginia or someplace.

I think all the ones in Alabama, if they didn't get burned up in the Civil War, the humidity or the bugs or something in the South, I ate them up 'cause you just don't see them.

And this wasn't just a little sampler, it was a huge sampler.

And it had flowers all stitched around it.

It was quite a deal and it was 1845.

- Wow, and it survived this whole time.

- Yeah, and had the girls name, had the governess that taught her, had her name, and the name of the school in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama.

- So what was the school girl sampler?

What did you end up appracing it?

- Nine to 12,000.

Oh wow, wow, it makes me pretty rare of Lance anything.

Man, David Crocket fork.

Tell us about that.

That's kind of been, there's been a lot of buzz around that.

I have a pre-show and now post-show.

I mean, I haven't even heard of this.

I was actually afraid to even, you know, appraise it because I thinking how in the world, am I going to come with a name?

And also, you know, the story.

Where's the story?

Well, the story is it was a seventh generation granddaughters of David Crocket.

There's actually two of them, and one of them is sitting in the Alamo, in their museum, and then they kept one, 'cause the mom didn't want to give them both of them, she wanted to keep one of them from the family.

And so I told them I said, I know it's worth thousands, 10,000, I don't know.

I mean, it could work 10,000 plus.

- We had to have Leslie Hebert front with us today from Brandon.

And what did you bring today, Leslie?

- I brought some pottery pieces.

I went to a village in Morocco on a humanitarian mission to dig for a water well.

I was brought along as an extra.

And we stayed in this beautiful village on the top of the reef mountains.

At a lady's house named Aisha, it was her and her son and two daughters.

And we stayed with Aisha and Aisha is a potter there in North Africa and Morocco.

And she makes this beautiful pottery.

And I had said, you know, how beautiful I thought it was.

and she sent me home with some pieces.

And so I was curious, this is what you thought about them.

- About what year was that?

- Well, I've been three times, and each time was somewhere between, I started in 1999, and my final trip was in 2014.

- About what year did you get these pieces?

- Probably close to 2005, 2007, sometime in there.

- Did you say you're working the pottery for-- - Yes, sir.

- You did?

- Yes, sir.

She was very, very neat.

She's a little old lady.

She's got to be in her 70s or 80s, and she sits crisscross applesauce on the ground, and she actually goes to the riverbed and collects the clay herself as well.

- Oh really?

- Yeah.

- What kind of kiln did she have?

- No kiln.

She would layer, and it was funny, because she would go early in the mornings to go collect dung and she would dig it up and put it in her willbarrow and she would take it and then she would layer the dung and hay with her pottery pieces and continue the layers and they were probably as tallers as you were are and then she would light it on fire and it would burn for several days and she would keep adding to it the dung and the hay until it got to the temperature that she desired.

The Dung and the hay.

well, well.

And this is her pattern, according to the people in the area.

Every artist in Morocco has their own distinct sign.

And this is her more distinct sign with the darker on the top and then the stripes and these little archways.

It's an earthenware pottery.

And do you know what kind of paint they used on the pieces?

I know it's natural 'cause I watched her actually use her pestle and mortar and actually grind up to get the colors.

So I guess this is a creamer.

And this is a sugar probably.

This is a little vase and maybe this might be a candle holder.

maybe so, maybe so, I'm not 100% certain.

- Well they're really neat.

You know, it's hard to say what the market is.

- Right.

(laughing) - It's not something you say every day of the week.

And you get on a computer and you start researching it and you won't find any just like these.

- No you won't.

- 'Cause I've been there.

- Yeah.

- If you could show up at an auction and you could tell your story and tell about the maker and the dung and all of that.

I mean, it sounds like they ought to be $200, $300 a piece.

But, you know, I don't believe they would probably bring that kind of money, but still, you know, I think in the well-avertaged auction with some international buyers on the internet.

I can see these pieces bringing maybe $50 to $100 a piece.

I think that's possible.

It's not something you say every day, but you probably wouldn't sell them for $500 a day.

- No, I would not.

Now you could offer me several thousand for all of these and I would not take.

- Yeah.

- Well thank you, Mark.

- And we appreciate you bringing it in.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) Join us next time on Mississippi Antique Showcase.

Find out if you've got a hidden treasure tucked away in your closet.

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