Awesome story. I remember when I was just a child I used to go do small tasks for my grandmother who was first generation here in the U.S. I was only like 10 years old but I could sit there for an hour and listen to some of her stroies about the way things were when she was my age. And she was in her early 70's at the time she was telling me these stories. Those letters and things you have are valuable simply because they are so rare. I doubt we will ever go back to the time when we wrote letters like that to each other. Hold on to them as they are even more valuable that what you were "hoping for" when you tore into those boxes. :-)