Angels for Animals garage sale volunteer Mickey Cope-Weaver carefully unrolls some rare wallpaper that will be in the group’s garage sale April 11 to 13 at Canfield Fairgrounds. The wallpaper was made by watercolor artist Charles Burchfield of Salem and bears his name.

CANFIELD — Items donated for the annual Angels for Animals garage sale at Canfield Fairgrounds many times come from estates.

Often hidden gems are among the donations, according to Angels publicity director Kimberly Moff. She said several gems have been donated recently and one donation — from an estate in Poland — has items that are heading to Slippery Rock University.

Volunteer Lynn Hoffmann said he and other volunteer staff went through the donation to determine where the items would go. Moff said Angels for Animals has approximately 180 volunteers who handle the many categorized buildings during the sale in April. One of the buildings, Barn 2, contains the category Antiques and Uniques, where one can find rare and valuable items.

As the volunteers were going through the Poland treasures, they came across diplomas for Margaret Kyle Graham. Hoffmann said Graham was born in Cherry Township in Butler, Pa., in 1896. Her first teaching certificate was from Butler County in 1912, after which she enrolled in the Normal School at Slippery Rock University. From there, she received a diploma and went on to teach in the Butler area until she retired.

“When she retired, she moved to Poland and lived with her daughter Helen Sutherland,” Hoffmann said. “Helen passed away in 2014 and willed her estate to Angels for Animals. Both Helen and Margaret saved everything.”

From what Hoffmann was told, the house in Poland was so full it took weeks to process and pull out the sellable items. The final donations headed to Angels and as volunteers were going through the items, they ran across a few that brought Hoffmann into the picture.

The items included the Butler County diploma, the Slippery Rock University diploma and an oval-framed store print of Slippery Rock that was purchased by Margaret while she was an SRU student.

“For someone, out of 180 garage sale volunteers, to spot these items and decide this material (the diplomas) was not particularly valuable, but worth saving, and to get it to the one person with an SRU connection, was something of a miracle,” Hoffmann said.

Hoffmann said he has ties to SRU and when he saw the items, he placed a call and was connected to the university’s historical society. They indeed wanted the items for their collection and will be picking them up later this month.

Hoffmann said the items didn’t have a resale value, but did have value for the SRU historical society.

Hoffmann said Margaret is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Poland.

That was just one tale of the unusual finds Angels for Animals receives. Another came in two rolls of antique wallpaper. The wallpaper was signed “designed by Burchfield.”

“The wallpaper was the creation of Charles Burchfield of Salem,” said volunteer Mickey Cope-Weaver. “He is a famous watercolor artist from Salem, Ohio, who later moved to New York.”

She said a museum in Buffalo, New York, is dedicated to his paintings, and many are valued at more than $1 million. There also is a homestead museum in Salem dedicated to the artist.

“In the 1920s, Burchfield ventured into wallpaper,” Cope-Weaver said. “What makes his work unique is the way he said the leaves and trees spoke to him.”

The garage sale volunteers are considering a silent auction for the wallpaper as its value would be high.

Another unusual find is a Bradley and Hubbard oil lamp. The shade is hand-painted and the lamp has been carefully transformed into an electric lamp. The lamp, like the wallpaper, is rare and valuable.

“We get unusual things,” Moff said. “The sale often includes gold, sterling silver, designer purses, furniture, costume and vintage jewelry, and a wide spectrum of items. The barns at the fairgrounds are divided into categories and the 180 volunteers staff each one and help on the three sale days.

Research on the items is ongoing. When something looks old or rare, it is sent to Hoffmann, Cope-Weaver or one of the other “Antiques and Uniques” volunteers. Using the internet and other historical sources, the volunteers attempt to track down a value before the sale.