Sorting Family Photos and Letters

Lily of the Valley is the flower for people born in May, so the photo I used today is perfect for the flower and for my topic today. For those who don't see the photo used at the top of each post, this one has the flowers, a photo from long ago, a blank piece of paper, a pen--the kind you used in an inkwell--and a single strip of lace. For readers who do see the photo, it's a perfect one to use for a photo prompt writing exercise. 

It also speaks of finding family stories and family history in old letters and the photos your ancestors kept. One of my pandemic stay-at-home projects was to go through 4 boxes that have been stored in our garage for x amount of time. The boxes were actual treasures because they were filled with photos and more that both our mothers had given us plus our own. I sent duplicates to other family members and sorted others by family. It took a part of several days. 

One thing I found was that people seldom put the year the photo was taken or who the people were. Bless those who did that so that their younger generations could identify relatives and the time. As I studied the pictures of my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, I was surprised at the number of times I noted facial features that had been passed on to my siblings and me and to my own children and grandchildren. 

A great many of the pictures were taken outside, probably because that was the better light. My husband and I were surprised at the number of studio portraits we found. We knew money was scarce in both our families, but they still spent money to pay a photographer. They must have felt it important. We are the ones who benefited by still having those special professional photos. 

It was fun to note the hairstyles and the clothing through the many years of our family pictures. Many triggered memories of a family story. I jotted notes to myself to write the stories later. 

Besides the photos, I discovered a few letters from my great-uncle to his wife when he was overseas fighting in WWI. Even those few letters revealed much about their relationship. I also found a tattered and faded small pocket calendar Great Uncle John kept during the war. The inside front page says Calendar, then For the first-year members of the Enlisted Men's Bible and Prayer League. Farther down the page was the name of the man who 'prepared' it for the Army and Navy Department, International Committee Y.M.C.A. Finally, it says Published by War Work Council, Young Men's Christian Association and a New York address. Inside, the small booklet has a scripture verse for each day of a month, then blank pages for that month. Between the blank pages, I found a couple flowers that had been pressed, plus several small pieces of paper with the name and address of men, whom I assume he served with and a 1 cent postage stamp. He'd also kept a couple of newspaper clippings, not war news but a humorous poem and joke. I remember Great Uncle John as a grouchy old farmer in Minnesota, but these few mementos told me a lot more about him. He also must have meant something to my mother since she kept the letters and photos for so long. I believe I mentioned something about this in an earlier post, but I went into more detail today to show how much you can learn about your ancestors from small things saved, in this case over 100 years. 

Some families save everything--letters, photos, receipts, and more, while others toss them out with not a thought as to their worth. When I first got married, my mother and I wrote letters to one another on a weekly basis. She would never have spent the money to call long distance just for a chat. Those letters continued until a year before her death. I didn't save them, and now I would give anything to have them to read again and again. Those chats by letter were a record of family history--who did what and when, who got angry at whom, who got married, divorced, or died. If I had it to do over, I would definitely have kept the letters. 

If you have boxes of photos and other family memorabilia, take some time to go through them. Be prepared to have memories triggered and the desire to start writing family stories. Now is the perfect time since your social life has probably come to a standstill. Use that time to sift and sort through your family treasures. Just this morning, a friend who lives in England mentioned in an email that she had been going through photographs. She noted that many did not have a year written on the back. The sorting of family photos seems to have become a pandemic project here and other places in the world as well. We must know the past to understand the present.