Topic: Your new year's resolution: family photos
I've mentioned a few times on Twitter and I think on this forum that I've been researching my family history. FamilySearch.org is a terrific site provided free (by the Mormon Church) that not only makes it easy to document your family tree but actually makes it fun by providing tons of documents (census, marriage, birth, death, military service, etc.) that you can attach to your relatives' entries. Once you've documented three or four generations, you'll start finding parts of the line that have already been well researched, and you'll magically be able to trace your family back hundreds of years.
The only frustrating thing I've encountered is something you can avoid today.
If your family is typical, some older relative has a big box of old photos that are largely unlabeled or labeled with worthless notes like "Dad and Fuzz". I have some great family portraits from the 1920s and even one tin-type from around 1870 that have no information. They might as well be strangers.
Even if you have no intention of documenting your family tree now, ask your older relatives to go thru the photos and clearly label them with full names of each person. And ask for a hand-drawn tree. "That's Delvin Landis and his first wife" is good enough because you'll probably find two marriage licenses for Delvin. And when you put names and faces together with the documentation, it starts to tell a story you never knew. In a matter of three weeks, I documented my family tree and created a PowerPoint presentation that told of people facing hardships in coming to America, helping found towns and colonies, getting fined for adultery, fighting in wars, nearly starving to death, and more. And my family is 99% farmers. Yours is probably more interesting.
Also, encourage your family to take a group portrait every few years--nothing formal, just whenever there is a family gathering and the weather is good, get them to pose for a group picture. (And then label it.)
You'll thank me 20 years from now.
Here is a 1900 census document that reveals my great-grandfather's thick Danish accent that caused the census taker to spell the names wrong and also revealed an aunt my father never knew about.
http://public.fotki.com/Tysto/old-famil … peter.html
Last edited by Zarban (2015-01-05 07:39:36)
