You never know whose hand-me-downs or used furniture you might be buying when you shop at Goodwill.
One could stumble across an item that once belonged to a celebrity, politician or sports star.
Or, as one amateur collector of historical artifacts in Virginia recently discovered, fabric that once belonged to the very first U.S. president, George Washington himself.
The collector, Richard Moore, didn’t pick up the artifact at a physical Goodwill store, however.
Rather, he found one during an online auction, which the chain is known to hold for various used items and “oddities,” as reported by WHYY-TV.
Moore spends much of his free time cruising the internet — and many historical sites armed with a metal detector — for military artifacts from history such as this.
When he first spotted the piece of fabric at the online auction roughly two years ago, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
There it was, listed as a torn-off piece of a field tent used during the Revolutionary War by then-General George Washington.
“I was over the moon,” Moore said. “I was looking for something cool. This is really cool.”
Do you shop at Goodwill?
Moore had good reason to feel unsure.
Aside from a handwritten note attached with a rusty needle, there was no documentation authenticating the fabric.
The note said “a piece of George Washingtons tent, from the history building at Jamestown exposition 1907 property of John Burns Dec 23rd 07,” per Fox News.
Thanks to the low final bid of $1,300, Moore went through with purchasing the questionable artifact anyway.
“It was a heart thing,” he said, according to WHYY-TV. “I was, like, ‘This can’t be.’ And then I thought, ‘OK, I’m doing this.’”
Later, Moore was thrilled to discover the fabric was, in fact, authentic.
After learning as much, he decided such an important and interesting piece of history needed to be on display in a museum for others to cherish as well.
So, Moore chose to lend the fabric out to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.
Speaking with Fox News Digital, museum curator Matthew Sic said the fabric was purposefully cut to serve as a souvenir on display in a marquee.
“At that time, Mary Custis Lee, Martha Washington’s great-great granddaughter and daughter of Robert E. Lee, owned Washington’s tents from the Revolutionary War,” Sic said. “She put the dining marquee on loan to the exposition.”
He added: “We were able to determine that this fragment was cut away from the scalloped edge of the roof of the dining marquee.”
