Scrapropos

Heritage: Characteristics, traits and monetary gain of a family passed down from one generation to the next.

As a scrapbooker, you are chronicling your family’s heritage, telling the stories so that future generations will understand from whom they came. There is nothing more frustrating then looking at an old photo and not knowing who the people are, what there story is or when the photo was taken. Hopefully you are preventing that by journaling in your own scrapbooks.

On my last visit home I gathered up a bunch of old photographs, some over 100 years old, and decided to undertake the task of scrapbooking them. First of all they need to be placed in an acid-free environment, and secondly they need their stories told.

Luckily our family has quite a lot of genealogical information. My mom and I spent a lot of time when I was younger looking through microfilm of newspapers and birth/death records tracing our ancestors. They are special times I’ll always remember, and we have some excellent documentation to show for our time and effort. My dad’s history on his father’s side has been traced back hundreds of years from a relative in Holland. But there is much history that has been lost and so many stories that unfortunately can no longer be told.

Finally, after six months, I’m getting started on the project. Do we put these things off because we think they have to be perfect and it is beyond us?

Below is my first effort:

This is my grandparents on their wedding day (my dad’s parents). I searched their hometown’s newspaper on microfilm at the library and was able to find their wedding announcement dated June 30, 1932. It provided a great deal of information including specifically what my grandmother’s attendant’s were wearing so that I could identify them in the photo. Sadly, at this time there are two people I am unable to identify, though I will continue digging for information. For now they are identified with a question mark.

I will continue to work my way through my heritage photos and will share that journey with you. If you are working on a similar project and would like to share your process and layout ideas please email me at annl101@msn.com.