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