This weekend I materially completed the photographing, indexing, and cataloguing of my mother’s possessions. To give you some idea of the scope of the task, I learned as I went through the process that I was inventorying five generations of my family’s possessions (one of my sister’s children’s, my siblings’ and mine, my parents’, their parents’, and some of my great-grandparents’) as well as some collateral relatives’ possessions. For example, I’ve found some things that belonged to my father’s uncle, for whose estate my dad was executor and my mom became successor executor.
There’s also all of their financial records, the financial records of my dad’s law practice, and the financial records of the law firm for which he worked prior to striking out on his own (a story I’ll tell you about some time). I also found several ledgers from when another uncle of my dad’s was sheriff of St. Louis—more than 80 years old.
I’ve taken all of the files and I’m going through them, meticulously and laboriously, either destroying or organizing and saving.
I’ve got thousands of family pictures going back 150 years. I plan to post a picture of my great-great-grandfather in his Civil War Union captain’s uniform, taken when he mustered out (I think). There’s also a letter from another great-great-grandfather detailing his service in the Civil War, an astonishing record of activity but, then, he was an astonishing individual.
What will I do with a 12×18 photo of my great-grandfather Wagner? I doubt that I’ll hang it on my wall. I guess I’ll preserve it in appropriate archival storage, kicking the can down the road as my ancestors have done.
My next step is to create a system by which my siblings and I can identify the items that we want. The “round robin” approach that many people use is not really suited for us. Characteristically, I believe we’ll use a system of expressing wants and negotiating differences.
Oddly, this is all a task for which I am uniquely suited by temperament, training, and experience. Maybe not so odd. I guess I’ve been preparing for it for the last half century.
Update
The picture above is of my great-great-grandfather, Charles Wagner, in his Civil War Union captain’s uniform. My great-grandfather Louis Wagner told part of his father’s story here. There’s a four generation picture of the Wagners here.
Charles Wagner was born here in 1841 and died in 1885 of tuberculosis. His family was a prosperous middle class or upper middle class one. He served (if memory serves) in the 59th Illinois regiment.
You have some pretty deep roots in the US, Dave.
My family’s of much more recent origin. Both sides came over in the twentieth century (my mother’s family in the early twentieth century, my father’s after World War 2).
Yes, I do. Here’s a quick round-up of the dates of immigration of eight of my lines:
Schuler: 1865
Blanchard: No later than 1825
Wagner: 1830’s
Schneider: No later than 1860
Bader: No later than 1870
Fischer: No later than 1870
McCoy: 1848
Flanagan: 1849
I have some family lines that go back into the 18th century or before here. All of my grandparents and most of my great-grandparents were born here. My grandfather Schuler was born here in 1884 and my grandfather Blanchard was born here in 1875 so that already pushes us back quite a bit.
Bah, Johnny come-latelies. I can trace two of my ancestors to the Mayflower and one to the first permanent Dutch colony in North America (Fort Orange).
Anyway, enough about me. I think it’s great that you’re helping preserve the record of the family. I have two uncles, one on each side of the family, who’ve served as the unofficial amateur genealogist. Neither of them appear to be using the Internet to a great advantage, but they’ve kept the pictures, the word-of-mouth testimonials and traditions — things that will disappear if effort is not taken to keep them.
Whatever you decide, DO NOT throw away any of the photographs, try to keep them in one place, using acid-free storage materials etc. I would suggest that relatives make hi-resolution copies when they are interested in an item, so that the collection stays in one place as time goes on. My grandparents showed a box of photos to me (no one else interested) when pop’s sister Edith died (for a phtoto of lovely Edith paste in below, one that I saved) http://gilbertstuart.blogspot.com/2009/10/history-of-ownership-provenance-of-mr.html
I picked out what I thought were ‘the best’ and all the others went into the garbage. Now I have learned who everyone is in those that I kept, having dived into ancestry since being back from Germany, & so much regret that those old photos are gone. I have a photo of my gt gt grandfather, eerily similar to your photo, John L. Martin from Rahway New Jersey (another that I kept). I will post him soon, and will drop you a note~ no wonder your glittering eye has been drawn away from ‘current affairs’ !
I’m slowly moving everything to appropriate acid-free archival storage. It helps that one of my sisters is a librarian, has already begun the task, and is quite familiar with preservation techniques.
As should be obvious from the post above, generally speaking we don’t throw anything away and I have no intention of discarding photographs.
PD, it may well be that some of my French ancestors can give your Mayflower bunch a run for their money. They just weren’t much on record keeping.
The Blanchards probably go back into the 17th century. I can document them back to 1825 but prior to that it gets pretty fuzzy. And the Constants were standing on the banks of the Mississippi selling real estate when Pierre Laclede showed up to found St. Louis in 1763 or 1764. They probably showed up with the earliest French settlers of the region in the 17th century.
One of the peculiarities of my geneaology is how far back we go without a drop of English blood.
I can trace my Schuler ancestors back to the 12th century in Switzerland. But, then, that was in Switzerland. My multi-times great-grandfather wrote the Swiss Articles of Confederation.
You don’t want to mess with the Mayflower gang; look what they did to Jamestown’s reputation.
You’re right about different cultures keeping better records than others. The Puritans (and Pilgrims before them) kept a trove of town minutes, deeds, lawsuits, journals, etc. My “First Permanent Dutch colony” ancestors appear to have been French Huguenots or at least Walloons. A complete passenger list of the first settlers does not even appear to exist (IIRC we know about 20% of the first settlers).
having come from generations of packrats and preservers, I applaud the dedication and love you bring to the task….love to all
Jan, having been in your mom’s and her Uncle Matt’s homes I can honestly say that I have no words to describe the size and ferocity of the task that must have confronted you when she died. Mine pales in comparison
I’m feeling like the unwashed masses deposited on an Ellis Island dock like a load of fish at the turn of the century……for me, suspect Scots and Englishmen of ill repute…..
Seriously. Dave, have you availed yourself of these geneology services, or is this all in the family? All I get from my family is truncated at “a bunch of farmers – and a piano tuner – ” in Southern Indiana.
Drew: I started by buying a copy of Rootsweb and entering into the charts what I knew. There is a function that helps check names against some of the more popular, free sites. You have to have your b.s. checker turned on and focus on the ones showing their work. Second, states have been putting historical birth records and death certificates on line. I don’t know how well Indiana’s resources are, Illinois has not much to speak of, but Missouri is very good in having the actual certificates on pdf. The biggest challenge on these types of databases is the spelling of names can be inconsistent, either because the writing is unclear or the names were never spelled consistently to begin with. Third, google books is getting scans of all of those old city and county history books that are excellent sources. Anyway, the further back you get the more likely you’re going to run into family-focused websites that are treasure troves of information.
My longer-term strategy is to eventually join ancestry dot com to confirm and print-out some of the original sources that they have available. At that point, I will examine more closely what information is expected to be shared so Mormons can baptize my dead ancestors.
I’ve been doing genealogical research fairly actively for the last 30 years or so and my dad did quite a bit of research for the 20 years or so before he died. I also have a distant cousin in Switzerland whose researches have been interesting and useful. I subscribe to ancestry.com. It’s great.
Missouri’s online records are extremely helpful and useful since parts of my family have been in Missouri since the 17th century.
New York is harder. It’s no coincidence it’s called “the black hole of geneaological research”. Predictably, my Blanchard ancestors lived in New York.
I’m sort of jealous of my wife. Inspired by my model she started doing genealogical research. She subscribed to a family listserv and 36 hours later received a three inch packet of information by mail that documented her father’s family for 300 years, casting some doubt on her grandfather’s assertion that his ancestors had “all been horsethieves”. WASP’s.