I did find another pile of family history. Yet another photo album (I'm going to need to dig through the family tree and figure out if any of the surviving relatives are in direct descent to these people), and another big 19th-century family bible.
But the curious find is a *huge* blank book, pages numbered, starting with a series of A-Z pages apparently listing clients, with the remaining 300 pages full of what look like diary entries -- but the diary dates are in no obvious order. I think it's some kind of professional book, but the handwriting is rather dense, so it's hard to be sure. (One possible sign: in the front, it has a pile of blank IOU forms.) It all clearly dates to 1901-1904.
So yet another mystery added to the pile. At some point, we're going to have to decipher this thing (very carefully -- it's fragile) and puzzle out what it is.
(Oh, and the Matrix is finally registered in my name. Yay! They even let me keep the PELICN license plate, which I think Jane would approve of. Now I just have to get it towed to the shop and find out how much it's going to cost to get it back into working order.)