Recording Our Past II

Pictures! I love pictures of my ancestors. I don't have a lot, but the ones I have have been gathered from relatives. Some of mine are originals, but most are copies of the originals. If you have a printer/scanner you can scan the originals and save them to your computer and/or print them out. . . or

one thing I've done is make copies at Staples. They are very reasonable with their prices. I believe it is just a little over $1 for an 8x10 sheet on photo paper. What I do is loosely put tape on the back of the original photos and attach them to an 8x10 sheet of paper. That way you can get 4,5,6, etc. copies for the price of one sheet. Cut them out and put them in picture frames or photo albums.

a sample of a sheet of photos I had scanned at Staples

I like displaying mine in vintage looking frames. I've gotten a lot of them at yard sales for 25 or 50 cents each. Sometimes stores will discount their frames, go to that section of the store regularly and check it out for discounts. I like the one below which looks like a coffee pot, I am going to find a picture of my grandpa to put in that frame. Why not Grandma, you ask? Well my grandpa was known for something he always said. When working on something if it didn't come out just right he would say "that's all right, we'll set the coffee pot on it."


Here are some I already have in frames. I grouped all of these together to take a picture of them. You could have a special table in your house to display your pictures or place them throughout the house. My cousin had a special table set up to display her old pictures on and I loved the way she did that, it really looked nice.


Of course, I'm sure most of you have a shoe box or tin filled with pictures. Most of us older readers anyway. Now a days things are so different with digital cameras and all. Go through them and see what you've got. It would be a good idea to put them in photo albums so they would be easier to look at and enjoy. (looks like that's something I need to do). If your mother or grandmother has a box of photos, you could 'borrow' them and arrange them in a nice photo album for her. Put them in chronological order from oldest to newest and surprise her with the finished product.


You always hope when going through old pictures that the backs of them look like this. . . with information written on them telling who they are, the date and place. But unfortunately you will find a lot of pictures with no info on the back of them. If you do and you don't know who they are pictures of or when they were taken, ask other family members for information. . . before it's too late. As I said in my other post, people forget.


It's a good idea, even on more recent pictures, to put names and dates on them. My youngest and oldest son looked very much alike when they were babies. When looking at some of their pictures now, I sometimes find it difficult to tell who it is in the picture. And since the youngest wore the older boys' hand me downs that makes it even more difficult.

Visit relatives and look for pictures. You can borrow them to make copies. Share pictures that you have. If no information is written on them, find out the names, the dates etc. and write it down. If you don't want to write on the backs of the pictures, write down the information and attach it or store it with the pictures. You could take a picture of the photo with the information beside of it, print this in black and white on regular paper from your printer and put it in your family memory book for safe keeping.

I have told my children who the pictures are of, but that is no guarantee they will remember 20 or 30 years from now.

I hope I've given you ideas to inspire you in recording your past.