An unassuming suitcase that had been dropped off at the Coaldale American Legion last week has opened up a rich historical investigation for one local group of high school history buffs.

The Jim Thorpe Area High School History Club, advised by social studies teacher Chris Holub, received the suitcase from fellow social studies teacher and Coaldale Legion member John Rosahac, who hoped that the group could dig into the contents and provide a genealogical history. Found in a Coaldale home that was being cleaned out, the suitcase and its contents had no obvious heir.Packed with numerous photographs, some dating back to the late ’20s or early ’30s, greeting cards, prayer cards, personal records, and more, the suitcase provided an intriguing mystery for the history club. Who were the people in the photos? How did they relate to the homeowner? Were any relatives of that person still around?“Last week, we spread all of this stuff out, trying to pick out who was who. Some of the photos have names on the back, so we did a little detective hunt, and took it from there,” Holub said.Holub and the club employed several investigative strategies to connect subjects in the photos and documents, linking the history of numerous strangers.“There’s always clues and identifiers in photos,” club member Christian Gould, 16, said. “One of the things I did when I went through them was say, ‘Oh, OK, that was more from the ’50s, that was more from the ’60s. And if I recognized the face in another photo, I would know it was them this many years later.”“Rose Kissner was the most common name we found in all of this,” club president Logan Farnell, 17, said as he pointed out several documents and photos with the name on it. The name of the Coaldale resident and German immigrant was the launching point for the investigation. Farnell found tax records that confirmed her name and address, and researched Kissner on ancestry.com. There, he was able to find census data on Kissner from 1940.“She lived in New York City back then, and it had listed her son and daughter,” Farnell said. “I tracked her son to his obituary, and his wife’s name was on the obituary. So I found his wife’s obituary, and there it talked about their daughter, Teri Powers, and then I searched her. I found that she is a real estate agent in Warwick, New York.”After Farnell found contact information on Powers’ website, he and Holub called her on Wednesday.“She was puzzled at first. We called her at her office, and she volunteered right away that she had inherited the house from her grandmother, Rose,” Holub said. Powers had donated some of the contents of the home to No. 9 Coal Mine and Museum in Lansford.Holub is sending the memorabilia to Powers, who had no idea of the scope of the personal effects before now.“I’m glad that whoever has the house now, instead of just saying, ‘I don’t care about this, I’m pitching it,’ dropped it off somewhere that somebody cared enough to say, ‘Hey, maybe students could do something with this.’ And you know, we did. It’s a nice learning experience,” Holub said.