Why do we hold onto and cherish artifacts from the past, particularly artifacts connected to our ancestors? That’s the question raised by today’s #stampoftheday, a 3-cent stamp, issued on September 25, 1939 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Stephen Daye Press – the first printing press used in Colonial America. In addition to being historic, the press is connected to both the most heinous of crimes (murder) and the most noble of gestures (the use of wealth in the service of such values as mercy, justice, and beauty.

Here’s the story: when the colonies were first being settled, all printed materials in America were produced in England and shipped across the Atlantic. But in 1638, the Rev. John Glover, smuggled a simple wooden printing press on board a ship bound for Boston. Glover also loaned Stephen Daye the money he needed to bring his family to Boston. But Glover and his printer died during the voyage. Daye, who was a locksmith, agreed to set up the press for Glover’s widow Elizabeth. Daye, however, was barely literate so it seems likely that his teenage son Matthew, who is believed to have apprenticed as a printer in England, brought what skill there was to New England’s first print shop.

Most historians believe the first thing Daye and his son published was about 50 copies of “The Freeman’s Oath,” a loyalty pledge required of all new members of the Massachusetts Bay Company in the 1630s. The few copies of the document, which made no reference to the King but instead pledged loyalty to the Massachusetts Bay Company, disappeared and for over two centuries there were no known copies. But in 1985, a rare-documents dealer named Mark Hofmann claimed to have found a copy in a New York bookstore. He offered to sell it – for $1.5 million—to the Library of Congress or the American Antiquarian Society. The library, which declared that the discovery “would be one of the most important and exciting finds of the century,” stated that its preliminary examination “found nothing inconsistent with a mid-17th century attribution.” The antiquarian society similarly reported “as far as we know, there are no anomalies.” Both organizations wanted to undertake further testing of the “Oath” to determine its authenticity.

However, things began to unravel in October 1985, when one of Hoffman’s customers, Steven Christensen, a prominent leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) was killed by a pipe bomb left at his office in downtown Salt Lake City. Later the same day, a second bomb killed Kathy Sheets, the wife of Christensen’s former employer. A day later, Hofmann was badly injured by a pipe bomb placed in his automobile. During the bombing investigation, police discovered evidence of forgeries of LDS documents as well as the Oath of a Freeman in Hofmann’s basement. Hoffman pled guilty to murder and is still in prison.

About two decades later, Daye’s work was again in the news, but this time in a more positive way. In 1640, Daye had printed about 1,500 copies of “The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre.” Better known as the Bay Psalm Book it was the first book published in the American colonies. According to Nancy Taylor, senior minister of Boston’s Old South Church, which owned one of the few extant copies of the book, it was “so much more than a book, in this modest treasure lies the tale of an early and defiant declaration of independence from England, religious imagination, entrepreneurial fortitude, and scholarly achievement.”

The book is also notable for its literal translations, done by local clergy, from Hebrew into English that could be more widely read. Those clergy recognized they did not do justice to the psalms, noting, in the preface, that “God’s Altar needs not our pollishings,” and adding their translations “attended Conscience rather than Elegance.” Their rendition of the 23rd Psalm, for instance, began: “The Lord to mee a shepheard is/Want therefore shall not I/Hee in the folds of tender-grasse,/Doth cause mee down to lie.”

By the 21st century only 11 copies were still in existence, two of them owned by Old South Church, which in 2012, the church began to consider selling one of the books and using the proceeds to fund its work. The proposal, however, upset some members, including Jeff Makholm, the church’s historian who noted that the church had owned the book since 1758. “It was there when the British troops used the meeting house as a riding stable during the revolution, it was there George Washington came to the meeting house,” he told NPR, adding, “it’ll be a really sad day for Boston, because this book has never been outside of walking distance from the place that it was published in 1640.”Despite such concerns, the church’s members voted 271 to 34 in favor of selling one of the books, which fetched more than $13 million at an auction in early 2013. As Taylor noted before the sale “we will take this wonderful old hymn book, from which our ancestors literally sang their praises to God, and convert it into doing God’s ministry in the world today.” She added, after the sale, that the influx of funds allowed the church “to convert an ancient hymnbook into ministries of mercy, justice, and beauty to make glad the heart of God.”

Taken together, these two stories make me think about the things we keep, including, of course, the stamps that I have been writing about daily for the last several months, which I inherited from my father. I am especially conscious of the fact that both of my parents were packrats, and my mother might have been a border-line hoarder. Moving her from New Jersey to North Carolina after my father died was very difficult because she was so attached to everything in the house that it felt like nothing had any actual value. And yet, I, like so many others, felt it important to take at least some things as she downsized and, later after she passed away.

Truth be told, I originally took these stamps only to get them out of my mother’s house. I didn’t even look at the collection for many years and when I originally did, it was with the intention of selling them, if they were valuable. And somehow in that process, they’ve become something that connects me with my late father, which seems particularly important in these troubled times. But I hope, if the time ever comes, that like the parishioners at Old South Church, I’ll know when it’s time to give up the things (which aren’t worth $13 million) and to concentrate instead on things that advance such qualities as “mercy, justice, and beauty.”

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, mercy and beauty, and work for peace.