On this episode of Our American Stories, Andrea Ludden’s mother was an archaeologist who began collecting salt and pepper shakers after moving to the United States in the 1980s. What started with a search for pepper mills grew into a collection of thousands as she realized that these ordinary household objects could reveal changing fashions, technology, travel, manufacturing, and everyday life.

Andrea shares how the family’s 35-year collecting adventure eventually became the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, home to 20,000 shaker sets and 1,500 pepper mills, and how carrying on the museum after her mother’s death became a way of preserving both American history and her mother’s legacy.

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