Contact the descendants of your uncle if he has any and ask them if they'd like to have it. If that doesn't fly, and you don't want it, contact the historical society where the school is/was located. Ours has portfolios with memorabilia collected concerning the schools.

Yes, sunlight will can fade old documents, especially if they're ink documents. I have some framed, but put where direct sunlight won't hit them.

You don't even want to know what kind of "historic" things I have tucked all over the house. Nothing of interest to my family history goes out the door. I find some genealogy geek in my tribe who will take it for posterity if I don't want it. I have found that just because one generation might now want gramp's stuff, that doesn't mean a little kid now might now give his eye teeth fifty years from now to have it. Once it's gone...............it's GONE. I've spent the last ten years of my life and thousands of dollars pulling my family's life out of the closets and dusty bookshelves and boxes of photos to preserve it for those down the line. I've given instructions to my family that when I am gone, if they don't want to be the keeper of the keys, then to donate it to the local genealogy chapter if they want it.

Have it frame professionally and ask for everything to be archival and for glass that will protect the certificate from uv light.

Interestingly enough I was in an antique shop today and we were talking about this very thing, although primarily about furniture. Half the stuff in the store is inherited furniture the heirs either don't want or don't have room for.

I have a list of "tangibles" that is filed with my Will - it lists things that have special family meaning or special meaning to me who I want to have them. There are a myriad of things like that, things we want certain people to have and have a list such as I have is a way to advise the executor. An attorney suggested it.

Good suggestions. Also, there are folks who collect paper memorabilia of early childhood...I remember reading of a former schoolteacher who collected early Primers and children's books, so many of which hadn't survived that her collection was priceless. If you just want to find a "good home" and all else fails, offer it on ebay. Might not get but a couple of dollars but that's not the point...saved with other similar papers by a collector it may someday be part of a library or museum exhibit somewhere.

May even end up on the net someday...LOL When I'm reading a book set in Victorian times for instance I love to go look at the clothes, undergarments especially, hair fashions, buttonhooks, etc., even various carriages...it's all online because someone saved the old catalogs or clothing or manufacturers specs. josh

I've got lot's of stuff from my family that goes back to the late 19th Century and early 20th century. About 10 years ago I made an investment in acid-free, archival albums & storage boxes to keep all of them in. Luckily, there are plenty of young folks in my family who are interested in these things & not to be ghoulish, but they've already got their "dibs" on this stuff for after I go on to my greater reward. If not, I'd make a note in my will to have them go to the appropriate local historical society. These organizations are usually grateful for bequests of this kind of stuff.

I also vote for achival framing. And if there IS a young/er someone who might be interested in the family history, make sure that s/he knows all the details about it.

I have nothing from my family. When I was in my 20's, mum offered to give me her family album - it had possibly the only existant picture of my grandparents, and a few of my father as well as some of us kids. Not a lot of pictures, but there they were. At the time, I was changing jobs, in the processs of divorce, and re-locating my home. Did I want one more thing to take care of, knowing that mum's gifts always had yo-yo strings and I would likely have to take the album back to her? No, I just didn't want one more detail on my platter. I have since regretted not taking it, because the album disappeared, never to be seen again.

So maybe the twenty- and thirty- and the forty-year olds aren't interested or don't have time now, but the day will likely come when they wished they did have something. You can't force it on them now, but it would be nice if the momentos were available once they do develop an interest.

I have collected a lot of paper in my genealogy research (wills, military records, etc) ... all packed in an archival box. I have instructed my children to donate all to the Western Reserve Historical Society if they do not want it.