In many conversations that I have had with my friends the past few weeks, I've talked about three photographs that my grandfather gave me. He had been in the Korean War, and a man that he met there (I assume one of his friends) gave him pictures of his family. The pictures are very interesting, covered in a plastic protective sleeve. Although I had initially opened the genealogical trunk to find a different source, I was very happy to find and scan these. It has been a great relief to post them as "Unidentified Pictures" with the hope that someone will be able to see who they are and identify them! Initially, I was looking for some pictures from World War I, but I was also keeping an eye out for this little beauty: Charles and Edith White are my grandfather's paternal grandparents. I'm so glad that I found it (not that it was lost, mind you, but it was in a box…somewhere stacked away)! I think that the recoloring of the photograph is absolutely fascinating.
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I have a long drive in the mornings. Fall has always been my favorite season, and during my drives I get to experience amazing sunrises every morning, mist rising over bodies of water, and livestock waking up for the day. I delight in aspects of my drive, the scenery is always inspiring. I was listening to the radio this morning and I heard an interview with Paul Gregory. I wondered, who he was and his importance. I didn’t have to listen for very long before I realized that he was being interviewed about his association with Oswald and the Kennedy assassination.
The anniversary of the assassination is coming up. November 22. It's a question that I ask all of my older friends and relatives when I interview them - What do you remember? Where were you? How old were you? As I listened to this man and his experience, with the news anchor asked him ridiculous questions (as I feel they often do) Gregory said something that captivated my attention. When asked why he had decided now, after all of these years, to write an article about his friendship with Lee Harvey Oswald his reply delighted me. He basically said that experience was history, and that if when he died, if it wasn’t written down, he would be lost with him. I was delighted to hear this confirmation that his experiences, as a friend of an assassinator, were relevant to the interpretation of history. His article features a strong narrative frame, personalizing it for his audience. It made me wonder - what other experiences can be narrated this way. Why not emphasize the actions and memories of each person that lived through that day? I was interviewing a local physician. When asked what he remembered about November 22, 1963 he said that he had been working the floor in a children's psychiatric hospital in Dallas, Texas. My grandparents and their children were in Berlin, Germany. So, a challenge? Think of the historical events that have happened during your life time - or your parents, or your grandparents - and narrate them like Gregory did. What might you come up with? This semester has been so busy that I have had little time for ancestry work (and that means blogging about ancestry work). But I do just want to say this: I was going through cigar boxes this past week. It was the first time this semester that I have actually be able to really sit down and look at anything. I found some really neat things, which deserve more attention. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just looking. When putting them back, another box caught my eye. The box was medium sized. Maybe an old cream-colored shoe box. For the life of me, I cannot ever remember getting this box from my Grandfather, but I know that that was where the box came from. My Grandfather is the best contributor to my genealogy project. With most of my boxes and containers I can remember what their contents are, but this completely escaped me. I took off its lid. The box had pictures and letters from his mother in it - but more than anything it was the smell of the box that captivated me.
I shuffled the pages in the box around, in hailing as I moved them, letting the smell of the box and the pictures and the letters really soak in (my friend yelled at me that I sounded like a squirrel rooting around, so I guess I was really involved in it). The smell of the box was so familiar to me, like a place I had been before and should be able to name. After standing still for a few moments, I had to close the box. The next day, my mother and I drove to Houston for a conference. While there, we visited with relatives that lived in my great-grandmothers house. I saw the address and immediately felt a stirring of recognition when I put it into my GPS - oh! It’s THE house. Opal’s house. My mother said that the house had been passed from my great-grandmother to my great-uncle and then to my cousin. We went to pick him up for dinner, and stepping into the house the smell of the box came back to me - it was THAT smell. How could this box, that has been closed for over 20 years (Opal died in 1992) still maintain the smell of its original owner? The last time that I was in that house, I was three years old. Yet, on some level I am certain I could recognize it. Which is not unusual - I know the smell of my other great-grandmother’s house that is still in our family (although I have visited that home more than once). When I hold my grandmother’s scarves (and she has been dead for ten years) I can still recognize her perfume. I now anticipate exploring this genealogical treasure, still sitting in the corner of my room. Waiting patiently, as it has for twenty years, to be opened and acknowledged. I’m not sure what specific items lie in this box, the box that had been hidden underneath the cigar boxes for so many months sitting quietly. But I am going to go back to it. And soon. For school this week I have an archival exercise due. This archival exercise focuses on paleography. Paleography s the study of writing from the past. Now, in theory this sounds awesome. What is better than looking at handwriting, and if you work with ancestry, you can definitely identify this as a useful tool. However, the more that you look at old writing - the older the more complicated - you will quickly realize that this task might be a pretty difficult.
I emailed a friend of mine this morning about paleography, and she reminded me (not very gently either) that this is a VERY useful skill especially with family history research. I paused, considering the old cramped, handwritten documents that I've looked at for my family history research. Her point was definitely relevant. How many times have I confused an "f" with a long "s"? Probably more than one time. The National Archives offers great resources for recognizing handwriting from 1500-1800. This site even features several different practice activities! The study of paleography isn't limited to English letters or handwriting. There are also resources available in Spanish. The Spanish Paleography Tool allows users to interact with old Spanish documents, and provides a transcription and alphabet key for these ecersises. I've actually discovered that this is more interesting than I initially thought. I went home this weekend and started talking to my cousin and aunt. We talked about how much we'd regret it if we had no record of memories and experiences. So, collectively we decided to launch the self-interview series.
We talked about how great will be to not only watch ourselves age and change, but to watch how the children age and change. What a great experience for my 14 year old cousin to one day be able to show her grandchildren a video progression from the time she was 14 until she was an old woman! More details to come later! I was on Twitter today. I saw a tweet by geneabloggers concerning a writing prompt for family historians to participate in self-writing. What a fantastic idea! The project is going on for the next 15 months. A series of writing prompts will be listed on the geneabloggers site, allowing family historians to participate writing about themselves.
Self-writing/ recording/ documenting has long been a concern for me. It is something that I am interested in, but I also feel kind of weird about. What do I really want to say about myself? I feel a lot like I haven't really done anything. I'm young. I'm not married. I don't have children yet...but I don't' give myself enough credit - and I don't think that a lot of people give themselves enough credit. I know I have had awesome adventures - traveling and with school. That's something to write about. I've received awards. That's something to write about. It's all about perspective! Finding the perspective can be a little tricky though! Think about this: I was visiting with one of my best friends the other day, and the discussion about audio recordings came up (as it so often does). She said to me that she acknowledges a weak spot in our own research - we spend a lot of time recording and interviewing older family members. What about the perspectives and experiences of our other family members? This got me thinking - what she said was absolutely true. Everyone has a life story, and sometimes you don't get to live it out in nine decades or ten decades. There are people that I have lost in my life that I wish I had thought to ask them questions or record their laughter. So, don't just consider older family members! Think about younger family members too. Think about yourself. I am going to start a project with the younger people in my family. I want to do a series of recordings. I've been thinking about doing this for a long time too. A few years ago, when I first started this site, I began to do a series of self-interviews. I asked myself the same questions that I would ask another family member. And then I deleted them and tried never to think of them again - they sounded so dorky. I couldn't believe that I sounded the way that I sounded when I tried to answer questions. And I became so distracted by the way that I could see myself in the camera that I didn't want to do the interview anymore - which made me sympathize COMPLETELY with older family members that I have recorded on video. So, now I'm going to change my approach. I'm going to have my set questions. I am going to interview myself and the younger people in my family. But here is the twist: ideally, these recordings could range - they could happen every ten years, every five years, every three years, or every year. They would document the challenges and joys that the individual has experienced. Talking about themselves can be a challenge for some people and some topics might be pretty sensitive - so take that into consideration. Try to capture stories, as well as facts. It has been my experience that people LOVE telling stories, but providing the specifics about where they were born isn't necessarily that much fun. It is a project that I am going to implement in my own life. Now, audio recordings, video recordings, or written word - that's up to you. I was on Twitter the other day and saw link for a youtube video by My Heritage featuring the Photo Detective. I thought that the entire video was interesting, and I think that it is something that all genealogists do - that we are all our own Photo Detectives. But that was not what really got my attention.
You can see this as a plug if you want to. The representative for My Heritage emphasized the importance of digital preservation. Obviously, their website focuses on the creation of family trees and the sharing of information, and in his own way, he was encouraging those viewing the video to engage in his website. But the call for digital preservation goes beyond that. This is a topic that I feel very strongly about - for which the evidence is this entire site (and this one too). A lot of the work that I did for my History MA, and in my own family history work, has been with a strong focus on digital preservation. With the wide world of the internet available at our finger tips, why shouldn't we share what we have with others? It is the easiest way to include everyone in a project, and to allow them access to sources that were previously unknown or difficult to access. I know that there are a couple of issues with this, one being the decision of what to preserve and what to let go. My advice: as much as you can, preserve it and share it. Find a way for people to take joy in what you are able to share with them, and they will take joy in it! So many of my cousins see the pictures that I post, and they remember the picture being taken or they have a story about the people in the picture. It is a great way to make connections and learn about your family! Another issue might be what you do with material items. My advice is to take pictures and make those available as well. Shoot a 360 video of the item, if you can. Preserve it yourself, but let people know that you have your great-grandfather's baby shoes - and show them the baby shoes! I know that computer codes change, and that maybe one day these digital images will be gone, or morphed into something else other than a .jpg file - or whatever - but, at the same time, I have to acknowledge how many members of my family - close and distant - that are able to see pictures and faces and people that they have NEVER seen before. I'm not necessarily telling you to take on creating a website for your family. But, what I am encouraging you is that you consider the importance of digitally preserving the physical images that you have. Put them on a hard drive. Put them on Facebook or Twitter. Make a blog for them. Do something so that someone else is aware that these pictures exist! Family history is an activity of collaboration...so collaborate! Okay, vent over :) I made a book of memories for my grandfather (I'm pretty sure that I've talked about this before). In the book I told him that some of my favorite memories of him and my grandmother surround our goodbye ritual. After school, my sister and I would go to our Grandparents house (more times than not) and wait for our mother to get off of work. A lot of the time, we knew about what time she was supposed to come get us, and we would be waiting for her. She would load us into the van (she drove a Dodge Caravan), and my grandfather would stand on the sidewalk. My grandmother would start talking to my mom through the passenger side window (sometimes). More often than not, she would stand in the street and talk to her through the driver side window. Before we would pull away, my mom would tell my grandmother to watch her toes. The would stand together and wave at us on the sidewalk until we couldn't see them anymore. Depending on which direction we went, sometimes she would wave at us from the middle of the street. The other day, I gave my grandfather this book. When I drove away, he waved at me fro One of the things that I love about doing family history research is seeing the resemblance between different members of my family! I love looking at different pictures of family members, for example, I can tell that my maternal uncle looks strikingly similar to my maternal grandfather.
One of my friends looks like his paternal grandfather. His father looks nearly identical to his maternal grandfather. My best friend has the exact same color eyes that her aunt has. I was on Pinterest this evening (as I often am, that site is SO addictive), and I saw a picture of a grandmother and her granddaughter. They looked surprisingly similar. Now, I am a Pinterest fiend, and I love completing projects that I have seen on there. One of them was the combined faces picture. So...I became completely obsessed with it, and wanted to do it too. So, I did. Although the pictures that I have combined above aren't the best, there are moments when looking at pictures I see my own face staring back at me (what I'm trying to say here, are that there are better pictures but that I am too lazy to dig them out of the trunk right now, so these are going to have to do). I think that there are a lot of people interested in where they came from or who they looked like. For my friend, who had had little contact with the paternal side of her family, to find aunts and cousins that shared strikingly similar features was a real treat! Ulric Collette has done some pretty serious portraits representing family similarities. And while I am COMPLETELY fascinated by the repetition of genetic code, I don't see myself trying to do an exhibit of family similarities. I do think that it is awesome that sometimes the combinations repeat in just the right order to carry on a really specific heritage. So, with your own family history, I think that you should try to combine pictures too I am truly blessed. My grandfather is restoring his house by going room to room. He is always finding new genealogical information! Today, he called me to see if I was able to come to his house. When I did he gave me cigar boxes,a suitcase, and this tin box. They were filled with amazing family history
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The BloggerI love family history and the various ways that it can be approached by researchers! I hope that this blog is interesting and inspiring!
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