Heritage Album Update

It's been a LONG time since I've updated my blog on much of anything, I know. Let me try to jump back into the swing of things with an update on my heritage albums. Of all the scrapbooking I've done, making my heritage albums has been one of the most rewarding projects. If you haven't documented your own family's story, I hope you'll be encouraged to do so by this post!

 

In recent months, I've spent most of my personal scrapbooking time and energy on this big project and I'm so happy with the progress I've made. I have seven albums in the works or complete. Now I'm ready to start the section for my parents and my own childhood. So that is big progress! 

In this post, I'll share some of one of the albums that I consider "done" -- at least as done as it CAN be for the time being. I'm continuing to research my family via Ancestry so will be adding to the my family tree as I go along. But the actual photos and memorabilia I have for this particular line are now all in the album, safely stored for posterity.

I have four sets of albums, two for my dad's side of the family and two for my mom's side. This album is for the Blood family, my dad's mother's side. My grandma's maiden name was Blood and she was the keeper of our family's genealogy, so it's been fun diving into her side of the tree. I've learned a lot and have much more to discover.

 

Now that I've filled out several generations of my family tree with some degree of confidence, I've printed a tree to go in the front part of the album. Unfortunately Ancestry no longer has a good "print" function (they direct you to go to a third party site where you can pay to print a poster or book, or print a test copy with limited formatting options). So I've done the next best thing: Pulled a screenshot of my tree directly from Ancestry and added text box overlays with additional details. It's not super clear but it's readable and at least provides a roadmap to who's who in the album. As time goes on, I will update and hopefully print more generations.

The album itself is divided into tabbed sections by each set of grandparents, beginning with my great grandparents in this case. I started each section with a picture of the grandparents.

 

  Then I included the earliest pictures I have of them as a couple and throughout their marriage. My great grandma lived a long life. She was interviewed by the local paper in her golden years, so I included a copy of that article in which she describes her family's life and activities.

 

Side note: If you're new to family history, you should definitely check out Newspapers.com. It's not free but is a treasure trove of historical newspaper articles from all over the country. I've found a ton of information about many ancestors through this site. Ancestry sometimes offers a discounted subscription for members.

I am lucky to have quite a few photos of my great grandparents. I knew my great grandma as she lived just up the street from us, but my great grandpa died just before I was born.

To this marriage, six children were born. Since they are not listed on the family tree, I included a "Family Group Sheet" from Ancestry in each section of the album which details them all. Again, Ancestry doesn't provide a good way to print this chart so I resorted to screenshots, piecing it together to fit on one page. My hope is that this will clarify who is who in each family. The people at the top are my great grandparents, and my grandma is one of their children.

 

The section goes on to include  birth and childhood information about my grandma. I have several pages in this section of the album, as my grandma was a detailed memory keeper all of her life.

 

I was lucky to have a few pieces of memorabilia she had saved over the years, so I included pockets and pull-outs so it can easily be accessed. 

 

I also included photos of the entire family if I had them. In my case, I'm an only child and the official keeper of all of this so I used many originals in my album. I would normally not advise people to do this -- it's typically best to work with an archival copy and save the original elsewhere so others can have access to it. But in my case, the best and safest place for these items to be preserved is in an album.

The album continues by going back to the next generations, following the same general format. Of course, the farther back you go, the fewer pictures you're likely to have. This section includes the information I have about my 2nd great grandparents.

 

This great grandpa was a creative man and even invented a piece of farm equipment which he had patented. He didn't have the money to produce it but the patent was a point of pride for the family. He was also a gardener and talented woodworker, making chairs for many family members. A distant relative wrote two books about one branch of the Blood family, and I found many photos and stories about him in the books. All credit goes to my grandma for saving this information!

There's a family group sheet for this generation. Lewis and his wife Anna came from Maine and Indiana to settle in Iowa.

The next section details my other set of 2nd great grandparents, the Martins, my grandma's mother's family. Ironically, even though she had done a ton of family history research, my grandma hadn't done much work on her own mom's family. For instance, I have pictures of my 2nd great grandfather Willis but no pictures of my 2nd great grandmother Martha. But I recently connected with someone on Ancestry who has information about this line, so I'm hoping to learn more about her!

 

  Next we go back a generation to my 3rd great grandparents. In my grandma's records, I found a copy of this sketch or painting labeled with their names. I feel very lucky to have it!

 

I don't have much information about this couple, but I have enough to create a family listing. I've also visited the cemetery where they are buried so I included some photos of their stone.

Side note: You can find many photos of headstones from all around the world on Find-A-Grave, a free website which is easy to search. It's a great resource.

This gentleman is another 3rd great grandfather, Ira Sellars. I have no photos of his wife, Nancy, who would have been my 3rd great grandmother but I'm hopeful that there's a photo out there somewhere!

I included the information I could find about them to fill out their section of the album.

Family history is never truly DONE, as there is always something new to discover. As I finish additional generations, I can easily add what I learn to the album. In addition to this album, I have finished or almost completed three albums for my dad's father's side of the family and three for my mom's side of the family.

 

Although this has been a long and complicated project, it has been totally fascinating and worth every minute. My hope is that I've put our family history in a format which makes it easy and interesting for future generations to follow and learn a little bit more about those who came before us.

 

 

jp