A family relic, a wooden box estimated to be 160-170 years old, was returned to a Gwynn’s Island family last week by retired Auburn University professor Christine Guy Schnittka. Story of the box Martha Peyton Hudgins (called Mattie) was born on Dec. 31, 1841, the daughter of Mary Tompkins Hunley and Walter Gwynn Hudgins, and lived on Gwynn’s Island all her life. In 1861, her twice-widowed mother kept a detailed diary of life on the island during the Civil War. Doing some family genealogy research, Schnittka read Mary Tompkins Hunley’s diary trying to connect her ancestral family on the island to those in the diary. During her detailed study of the document, some names jumped out, looking familiar, but not in a family sort of way. They looked like names she had seen before—names written in the old wooden box on her dresser. Thirty years ago, while cleaning out her great-grandmother’s home on Gwynn’s Island to sell it, Schnittka discovered an old box and took it home to Charlottesville. ...