Heritage Album Update

 

It's time for an update on my heritage album project!

At some point a few months ago, I felt like my mom's photos were organized enough -- and I had mapped out enough of her family tree via Ancestry -- to scrapbook her family's older photos with some confidence. So I've been making a concerted effort over the past few weeks/months to get all of her family photos into albums, and I can now say that I have accomplished that goal!

I still plan to add family trees to the albums but those trees are not quite ready for prime time yet. As I finalize them, I'll print and add them to the scrapbooks.

First, let's take a look at where this little project started -- because I know that some of you are in the same boat. After my dad passed away in 2013, I brought home ALL THE PHOTOS. Then after Grandma died the next year, I brought home nearly all of HER PHOTOS. 

This is part of what I had in front of me. Truly, it was a mess. Both sides of the family were mixed together, and nothing was in order. Only a few photos had labels. I was pretty overwhelmed, not to mention grieving the loss of my parents. I couldn't even deal with these boxes for quite some time.

I've periodically shared updates on this project as I've gone along, and you can read those posts if you'd like (search "heritage"). The first step was separating the photos by family (my dad's versus my mom's). Then I split them again into the maternal and paternal sides for each of my parents. By doing that, I could deal with only one "chunk" of photos at a time, and that seemed a lot more doable. This post goes into more detail about that process.

In addition to the photos, I had boxes of memorabilia that I hoped to add into the albums -- within reason, of course. I put a lot of that material into Life Binders. You can read more about those in this post. I can't stress how much the concept of the Life Binder helped me see my way through this project.

 

These are the tabs for my mom's life binder. As I've worked on these albums, I've pulled memorabilia from her binder to add chronologically to the albums. The binders helped give the boxes of mixed-up stuff a bit of structure -- and they helped me immediately find documents when I was ready to add them.

So now I have three relatively complete binders for my mom's side of the family. I won't lie: It hasn't always been easy. Photo identification was often a challenge. And I won't even get into the emotional component that comes with a project like this. But I am SO HAPPY I at least have this much done. It is one of the most rewarding scrapbooking projects I've completed.

These albums start with the oldest photos from Mom's side of the family and continue through her high school graduation. My parents got married the fall after she graduated, so the next album I start in this series will pick up there and move through my childhood. I'm definitely not ready to tackle that chapter yet!

 I enlisted my mom's sister to help me identify and date the photos. That helped enormously, and from there I was able to sort them by age -- basically elementary school, middle school, and high school. I tried to group photos logically within those categories, then arrange them on pages.

 I also had a few photos of my mom and her sister with their extended family. It was a great feeling when I finally could identify all of the people in these photos and even find them on my family tree! As a result of this project, I have a much, much better understanding of my family history.

 

 My mom kept a few special cards and letters over the years. I incorporated many of them into the album. I made pockets so that they can be pulled out and read easily.

 

During high school, two of my mom's best friends (twins, actually) drowned in a nearby quarry. This tragedy affected my mom profoundly throughout her life and, as a result, she was terribly afraid of water. In going through her memorabilia, I found the funeral programs for both of these girls and wrote up a small piece about them.

 I also added in Mom's report cards using small pockets so they can be removed and opened.

My mom had some great stories about detasseling corn in the summers as a high school student. I found a few photos from her detasseling crew then, in going through her box of papers, I found her pay stubs, too. It was fun to match up those photos and memorabilia and add them to the album.

 Mom kept a lot of memorabilia from her high school days, including her time playing basketball. I used her yearbooks to figure out dates for her team photos so I could add them to the album.

 

 

Mom was crowned Homecoming Queen during her senior year. I enlarged a photo to use on this page.

 

 I also included all of her senior photos. A few years after these were taken, my dad's parents had them hand-tinted for her. I learned this from a note on the back of one of the photos.

 

I also included pages for my mom's sister and her late husband, including their wedding invitation.

In the section about my grandma's family, I added a page for each of her siblings. It was such a great feeling to be able to finally know who is who in these photos and be able to create this record for posterity.

 

I know I've said this before: My mom was a woman of amazing talents but organizing her photos was not one of them! From the time I was a young girl, I've been on a mission to get her pictures organized, and this is a big step toward finishing that project. I know that my mom would have loved these albums and would be so happy that her story -- at least the first part of it -- is now recorded.

If you're in a similar photo/scrapbooking situation, take heart! I hope my posts will show you that it IS POSSIBLE to document your family's story through scrapbooks. It just takes time, diligence, and emotional fortitude. Even if no one but you cares about the albums now, your family will thank you in years to come.

Now to clean up the craft room, re-group, and keep going! I need to turn my attention back to my dad's family albums. No time to waste!

Happy scrapbooking!

jp