The Photographs I Wish I Had Taken
Oct
2010
2010
12
I wish. A statement we use over and over. But, I do wish. Wish I had taken photographs from a very early time. Photographs of people in my family. Ancestors. I wish that I had always cared about family history. If I had, I would have preserved the right things and taken photographs of the right people. It is much more difficult to go back and try to fill in the blanks where faces should be, especially if I don’t know which extended family member has the faces or if there were ever portraits or photographs taken in the first place. Learning from the past, this is what I do today:
- I work to find a face for each name in my ancestral file. Not just direct ancestors, but those whose information stretches out horizontally as well as vertically.
- I go beyond direct ancestors. I reach horizontally to the siblings of grandparents and their families. Aunts and uncles and their children. The families of first cousins.
- I keep all wedding invitations, birth announcements, Christmas cards and newsletters received from any related person. I scan the faces into the computer. I add the dates of the events being announced to Personal Ancestral File in the computer. PAF is the software I use to keep track of my family history. I have learned that the time to do this is when the document is received. A wedding invitation is a new family group. I go directly to the computer and add the new spouse to what was a single child in a family. I also add the date and place.
- I scan the face of the new spouse so that I can add it to my Personal Ancestral File. Now I have a family group record for the new family.
- Some family newsletters contain information about each person in the family. If I think that the information will be of value to someone in the future, I enter it in the notes section of the individual record in Personal Ancestral File.
- If I borrow photographs from someone to add to my records, I make a color copy of each even if it is a black and white photograph. Color makes a black and white photograph look wonderful. I also scan photographs. Depends.
- I write the name, date and place on the back of every photograph. If my family history photographs have been scanned into the computer, I label each photograph there.
- I use a funeral or other family event to take a photograph of every face I need for my records. If I don’t know who a family member is, I take the photograph anyway and ask someone else who was there to help me identify each person.
- I photograph the grave markers of ancestors. If the cemetery is too far away, I use various message boards to ask for help from someone who lives nearby. Many people have helped me in this way. I have done the same for other people.
- I photograph the entrance to each cemetery to include in the ancestors’ record as well as the area surrounding their grave.
- WHEN I GO TO A RELATIVE’S HOME TO GO OVER THEIR FAMILY HISTORY DOCUMENTS I TAKE A CAMERA WITH ME. RATHER THAN WORRY ABOUT TAKING THE ITEMS FROM THEIR HOME TO BE COPIED, I TAKE A DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH OF ANYTHING I THINK I MIGHT WISH I HAD IN THE FUTURE. I TAKE MORE RATHER THAN LESS AND DISCARD WHAT I DON’T NEED LATER. I HAVE TAKEN DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS OF PHOTOGRAPHS THIS WAY. WHILE THEY ARE NOT PERFECT, THEY ARE REALLY QUITE GOOD.