Photoessay #2562 - A house with a departed owner

This house, in an East Coast city, belonged to my cousin who recently passed away.  I met him for the first  time about a year ago when I had lunch with him along with my first cousin and my husband at an old fashioned pizza restaurant.  He was, as we expected, an eccentric older man.  He insisted on buying me a tea-shirt from the restaurant.  He told us a lot of stories mostly about his aunt.  I had asked him if he had any material from our ancestors; he wasn't sure,but at the lunch he said he couldn't find anything.

I figure I am his second cousin once removed.  He is a great grandchild and I'm a great great grand child of Maier Zunder, a 19th century leader I've written a lot about.

The impression that I had was that he had a lot of things stuffed in his house.  I think there might be two houses.  I talked to one of his friends mentioned in his obituary and she said he, along with his late wife, were hoarders.

So, now there's a house (or two) filled with lots of things with nobody connected with it.  I asked another friend of his if they would donate any family materials to the Jewish Historical Society.

He was an only child.  He had no children.  Looking at the family tree, he has no surviving cousins.  I think that it would have been his desire to leave his estate to his local Catholic Church but I don't know anything about that.

I see from the assessor records that this house was registered in the name of his late wife.  A deceased person cannot own anything.  He struck me as somebody who would not take care of things like that.