Friday, July 13, 2012

Project Family History




My family seems to have been very good at taking pictures,

not so good at getting them into albums.

'
Or writing the who, where, why, what and when on the back of each photo.


When I left the farm I brought everything with me.

I had to use this wall organizer for the hundreds of loose photos.

Each pocket has a title like  Mom, Dad, Dad War, 1950s, 1960s, Farm, etc.






My mother's albums were fairly easy to put together.

I am familiar with the people and places.






I really enjoyed this.

Here she is as a young woman in her backyard

in downtown St. Catharines, probably in the 1930s.


Her father's family came to this area from the US

because of the American Revolution.


I'm very proud of my U.E. status.








This is the contents of the Dad, War pocket which I'm working on now.

Unfortunately he didn't write much of the back of his pictures.

And none of the places and people are familiar to me.






His sister did save all of the post cards he sent home.

Most just tell his family that he is well.







Some items are easy to identify but I have no idea of the story behind this.

Maybe that's a good thing.





Some people are easy to identify.

He was stationed in the Caribbean before being sent to England
 in preparation for D Day so perhaps
 the Duke and Duchess of Windsor visited the troops.






The few albums that my parents had are so old the paper is crumbling.
I'm taking them apart and putting the pages in archival plastic
before I put them together again.






The old covers are astonishingly strong though.



Much like the family history found within.





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6 comments:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

What a wonderful project! I hope you'll share more photos with us as you go through everything. And that wall organizer is a brilliant idea for sorting and organizing them!

Victoria said...

Hi Francie..this is magnificent..and deeply touched my heart..how very special and beautiful!! gorgeous photos and tributes..wonderfully inspiring...hugs..
Victoria

Anonymous said...

It is so frustrating when you find old photographs and cannot identify all of the people, or places, in them. I know from our own photos though just how time consuming it is to label every one. I still have loads I need to sort through. I enjoyed looking at you pics, it looks like you have an impressive collection.

Plowing Through Life (Martha) said...

Wow, Francie, this is spectacular! What an amazing collection of history of your own family! It's too bad that not all the places and people in the photos were identified, but it's still an amazing thing to have. I'm with Debra; I hope you share some of these photos with us. I'd love to see them. I really like black and white images. Especially for way back.

Jane said...

What a lovely labor of love. Old family pictures are so fascinating and future generations of your family will treasure any history you are able to record for them. I think you really look like your mom from what I can see - have you been told this over the years?

Doug Jamieson said...

Thanks for this, Francie. You've motivated me to buckle down and sort through the boxes of photos that came out of my mother's basement, I task I have been avoiding for quite a while.

I hope some of those will be as interesting as these.