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

Organizing: The Domino Effect

We recently ordered a new mattress for our guest room. Long story short: To better accommodate the new mattress size, I got the idea that we should swap the furniture in our guest room for that which was in our daughter's old bedroom.

So we spent one long day this weekend doing that. The bookcases had to be unloaded to move them so of course that started me thinking: Would it be feasible to move all of the genealogy stuff currently housed on those bookcases into my craft room? That's where I use it, and it would be great to have everything housed in one spot -- especially in case of an emergency.

One thing led to another -- the domino effect! -- and we ended up at Home Depot. Instead of the shorter wire rack I thought I needed, Spouse convinced me to get a taller one which is about the same height as this one that currently holds my 12x12 scrapbooks.

Turns out I had PLENTY of family history/genealogy stuff to completely fill the new shelves! I moved all of the genealogy stuff from the guest room bookcases and onto my new shelves.  In addition, I moved all of the boxes of loose photos and slides which had been on the floor of the guest room to the new shelves as well. That made a huge difference!

After we got the bedrooms put back together, I spent some time organizing the new shelving unit. Now all of my grandma's genealogy binders are in one spot, along with old family photos and completed family history albums. I can see at a glance what still needs to be done. Answer: A lot!

Since this shelving unit sits in my craft space, I wanted everything to be somewhat coordinated with my room. Having things organized this way feels more settled/less chaotic to me. So I moved the photos and memorabilia to containers I had on hand that better match the colors of my craft space. I didn't have to buy any new containers -- I just re-purposed those I had been using elsewhere in the house.

I'm really happy to have all of this family history/genealogy stuff in one place rather than in a mess on the floor and shelves of the guest room. Now I don't have to move all of it when we have a guest, and it will be so much handier to have stored it right where I use it. Everything is freshly labeled so it's easily accessible. 

With all of that done, it makes me feel ready to tackle another spot. Next up: The Linen Closet of Doom!

Family History Mystery

I've been working on a mystery in my family tree and I'm pretty excited that I've now solved it, at least in part! 

The mystery involves the family lineage of my 2nd great grandfather, Sam Weaver. As I've been working on my family tree, I've run into a fair amount of confusion about his parents. I want to know exactly who they were and what happened to them. 

This photo of Sam Weaver and Mary Hayes, my 2nd great maternal grandparents, was taken in 1930.

My best source of information about Sam and Mary is this delightful family history book which was written by one of their daughters, Mate. Aunt Mate lived to be over 100 and had an avid interest in family history. I am so grateful she took time to write down everything she knew. Her book doesn't include a family tree, but instead features several chapters with colorful stories that bring our ancestors to life. I've read through it many times and discover something new each time. It's a real treasure.

When I first started reading the book, I began putting the names and dates Aunt Mate referenced into my family tree on Ancestry, verifying them with contemporaneous documents. Other than a few typos and slightly off dates, her information has been extremely accurate. In addition to being quite interesting and entertaining, her book has been invaluable as I try to piece together this particular family line. 

So back to Sam. When it came time to write about her father's early life, Mate had very little information. She knew his birthdate and that his parents were William Weaver and "Levina" Biery, so I added that information to my tree. It was at least a start.

 But things got very murky from there!

I also inherited another distant relative's research into this side of the family. I could see in her notes that she had written to a library in Pennsylvania about Levina Biery, but they actually sent her information about a Levina with the MAIDEN NAME Weaver, not Biery. The library materials suggested that Levina had married a man named Samuel Owen. After digging around in many records, I concluded that while this information may be correct for Levina Weaver, it is not at all correct for our Levina Biery. Sadly, our relative passed away before figuring things out.

In addition, some Ancestry trees suggested that Levina had a twin sister named Sovina -- and they were born a month apart. Now...how likely is that? 😏 In researching this I discovered that on old census records, the letter "L" often looks like a letter "S". Turns out there was only one girl -- and her name was actually Lavina.

Meanwhile, in the very old family Bible I found a few other clues to Lavina's (my 3rd great grandma's) life. On a page of pictures, there's a photo of a girl named Amanda Bergstresser, labeled as "father's sister". 

Hmmm... Assuming Mate also wrote in this Bible, then she would have been referring to Sam as her father, making Amanda his sister.

 I'd seen the name Bergstresser before. The relative whose research I inherited guessed that perhaps "Sovina" married David Bergstresser and "Lovina" married Samuel Owen. Of course, both of those theories turned out to be false.

But a quick check online confirmed the facts: David and Lavina were actually married and Amanda was one of their many children. They were married just a few years after Sam Weaver was born to Lavina. It was a second marriage for him and POSSIBLY a second marriage for her, although I've yet to determine if Lavina ever actually married Sam's father, William Weaver.

The lesson here is that when you're doing family research, you must always verify -- and verify some more. It's extremely easy to find yourself going down a completely wrong path and you may never realize it. You can never take someone else's research as fact without verifying!

The other lesson is that when you come up against a "brick wall", as I have with William Weaver, you can often learn a lot by researching others in the family. I want to learn about William, but in order to do that I need to piece together details of the ENTIRE family. In researching broadly, you'll often uncover the missing information you need. 

Since I cleared up the mystery about Lavina and David, I've been able to identify Lavina's parents, too -- my 4th great grandparents. I'm just starting to fill in their family details which will include Lavina's siblings. In the process, I hope to learn more about Lavina's relationship with William Weaver, my elusive 3rd great grandfather. 

Did Lavina ever actually marry William? If so, when and where? If not, what happened to him? Did he leave her to raise Sam on her own with her family, as seems to be suggested by the census records? Or did he meet an untimely death? It sounds a bit like a soap opera...but it's really my family history!

 If you haven't started looking into your family's story, I highly recommend it! It's a fascinating journey and you never know what you might discover!

jp

Organizing Family History Albums

 Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
-- Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton --

In recent weeks, I've been working very hard on my family albums. I decided to jump into my mom's family and tackle those photos because many of them have now been identified, thanks to a couple of older relatives. I still have a ton of work to do on my dad's side of the family so I'll get to back to that when these albums are at a logical stopping point.

I've learned a lot as I've worked on my mom's albums, both about preparing to make a heritage album and also about organizing it. In this post, I thought I'd share a bit about how I've approached the process. In the next post, I'll share some recent pages.

Organizing Photos

I inherited a lot of family photos from my mom. Bless her heart, she was a woman of many talents but organizing photos was not one of them! In fact, throughout my entire life -- starting from my late elementary school years -- I tried to organize her photos to no avail. In spite of my efforts to set up a system for her, they were scattered around the house in drawers with no organization whatsoever. Well, better late than never: Mom's family photos are now organized! I always told her I'd get it done! 😌

I sent a large batch of photos home with my aunt. She and her cousin did a great job identifying many of the people in the photos and in the process, I received copies of several photos I didn't have. Once I had them all back, I used my family tree to set up a file folder for each married couple (my grandparents, great grandparents, etc.), then I dropped the photos into the proper folder. Now when working on the album, I just grab one family's folder at a time. This has made the process much less overwhelming.

A well-sourced family tree is a MUST for creating an accurate family history album! I would not be comfortable creating these albums if I didn't have an accurate family tree.

As I go along, I've uploaded many of the photos to Ancestry so that others who are looking for them can enjoy them. As I've worked on family history, I've learned that many people are possessive of family photos and resist sharing them. That's something I just can't understand. It's a true joy to find a photo of an ancestor you've never seen. Why not give someone that happiness? *sigh* I found these photos of my 3rd great grandparents on Ancestry, thanks to someone sharing them.

Memorabilia

When I cleaned out my parents' house, I brought home boxes of keepsakes for both of them and for my maternal grandma. This photo was taken back in 2014. It took me a long time to sort through those boxes and separate the memorabilia by person so that I could use it in these albums.

Eventually I created a small tub for my dad, my mom, and my grandma. As I tried to see my way through all of this stuff, it made more sense to me to put the papers and memorabilia into a binder format. If you've been following my blog since then, you might remember that I decided to create a "life binder" for each of them.

I created a binder with tabs for birth, elementary school, high school, work, etc. This format allowed me to sort the memorabilia so that it was "scrapbook ready" for my chronological albums. You can read more about that process HERE.

 

I've had the binders done for a few years, just waiting to be scrapbooked. They truly made the scrapbooking process much, much easier. If you have family history albums to make, I highly recommend making a life binder to get you started.

  

 For example, because I had made a life binder for my grandma, I was able to find and include a letter she had written to her sister when she was a little girl and valentines from her classmates, all of which can be pulled out to read.

 I had organized all of her school memorabilia into that section of her life binder, and I matched it up to the photos I had from that time period then added some information about the one-room school house she attended. What a delight it was to find these little end-of-school-year keepsakes from her teacher! If not for the life binder, I'm sure I would have forgotten about them. I think that including some of these little pieces makes a scrapbook so much more interesting.

On this page, I included a "year-book" from a Farm Bureau meeting held at my grandma's family home. As I went through my photos, I happened to find a picture taken at one of those meetings. You can pull out the year-book and see that in December, my grandma (then a young woman) gave a presentation on Christmas decor. Her mother, my great grandma, made several presentations throughout the year on flowers and other homemaking topics.

 Album Organization

I have two albums going for my dad's side of the family and now I have started two for my mom's side. I don't have a lot of photos for her dad's side as my mom's parents divorced when she was very young. Because of that, I have actually finished putting photos into this album but still need to print family trees and a bit of family history for context.

 

 Each album is tabbed by married couple: Grandparents, great grandparents, etc. I'm sure there are many ways to organize a family history album but this just makes the most sense to me.

 I have started out each tabbed section with a photo of the couple or the entire family (typically a professional photo).

 

 The subsequent pages include snapshots and memorabilia associated with that couple and their children.

I'm really pleased with the progress I've made on these albums in just the past few weeks. I won't lie: It takes a long time to identify photos, sort memorabilia, and figure out your family tree. But all of that preparation makes putting together the scrapbook so much easier -- and very gratifying. It's a great feeling to look at empty photo boxes and life binders and know that photos and memorabilia are now safely stored in scrapbooks for posterity.

If you're working on a similar project, I hope you'll be encouraged! A bit of organization on the front end is well worth the time and will help you navigate a big and complex project like this.

jp

More Heritage Scrapbooking

 

I spent some time over the long weekend working on my heritage scrapbook albums. I have been slogging through a pile of unidentified photos from my dad's side of the family, trying to figure out who the people are. After studying them closely with a magnifying glass and comparing them to "known" photos, I ended up with fewer than 20 which are still a mystery, so I put them in an envelope and tucked them away for the time being. I know that as I learn more information, those pictures may be identifiable and important so I'm not getting rid of them.

In going through the photos, I found a few more to add to my scrapbooks. It was a great feeling to be able to fill in a few more pieces of the family tree puzzle!

I finally figured out the identity of the man in front of the tree below: My 2nd great grandfather on my dad's side of the family. My grandma (whose pictures I've been sorting through) had several copies (or photocopies) of photos and I stumbled upon one with a label on the back - yay! From that photo, I was able to identify several more - enough for a scrapbook page for this family! Since these photos include only my grandfather, I'm hoping I'll be able to find a picture of my 2nd great grandma through Ancestry. 

 I also found two photos of my other 2nd great grandparents on my dad's side of the family. Their families came from France and settled in Ohio, eventually moving on to Iowa. 

 

 In researching my great grandfather (their son), I learned that he raised chickens. At the time I discovered this, I made a page for the album using some old county biography information about him. 

 So when I ran across a picture of chickens in what I knew to be his front yard, I added it to the next page. If I hadn't read that biography, I wouldn't have known he raised chickens and that photo wouldn't have seemed significant to me! 

At the same time, I included two photos of keepsakes I have that belonged to these great grandparents. I will probably re-do these pages to put the chicken picture with the biography. I've had to do a fair amount of re-doing, which is the downside to discovering new information.

   I also stumbled upon another small school picture of my dad, so I added it to a page I'd already created. I will say that I probably should have done all of my photo sorting before making pages. But then I wouldn't have felt like I was accomplishing anything at all! LOL

 One of the best things I ran across in my sorting was this unmarked, torn picture. As soon as I saw it, I was pretty sure I recognized the shorts. Back when I was clearing out my parents' house after my dad passed away, I discovered a small pair of wool shorts in a plastic bag. I assumed they had belonged to Dad but they were not marked so I just packed them away -- something to figure out later. When I saw the photo, I knew that it must be my dad wearing those shorts. This was a very special find! It remains a mystery as to why the woman's head was torn off. It looks like the photo was intentionally torn.

 

In this stack of photos, there were very few with writing on the back, but one was written on by my grandma (whose genealogy books I have). I cut a small sleeve from a pocket page and adhered it to the background, then slipped the photo in from the side. Now it can be removed to read Grandma's notes on the back. Her handwriting was always beautiful and I'm told that in her younger days she won some penmanship contests! Her handwriting remained nearly perfect throughout her life.

 

 

So after making a few more pages this weekend, I think I've made good progress with this side of the family. Next I hope to create an overview page for each branch of the family with a family tree, country of origin and their path from the homeland to Iowa or wherever they ended up. I still have a lot more research to do before I'm ready to make those pages. Onward!

jp