In 1989 before I went online, I found my father's first cousins in Ireland by means of a letter that was passed from house to house in the district I knew my grandfather came from. My Cousin Cissie at first said it couldn't be she as she had no relatives in New Zealand. Then Betty persisted and made her look at the little tree I had written which included her mother and father. Except for James, these lovely first cousins of my dad have now all passed away. I have kept and archived the letters and cards they sent me.
Last year almost as soon as I began the tree online, I received a member connect with my second cousin in Sheffield in England. we had been searching for this branch of the family for about thirty years. Then a few weeks later I found that my maternal grandmother, who we thought was an only child had five half siblings. Here was a side of the family I never knew existed. over the years I have had memorable trips to England and Ireland and USA to meet these cousins and some of them have become friends.
I am the family archivist and now have all our family hard copy photos on computer. In doing this I was very appreciative of my mother and paternal grandfather's care of photos and artefacts and also of the way they had caption
ed and dated everything.
Captioning and dating photos is probably something I am pedantic about. People seem to throw photos into shoe boxes and think or say they will write on them later. After they have passed away relatives look at these photos and haven't a clue who they depict or when. Or, sometimes the caption says,"Mum and Dad at the Beach." But whose Mum and Dad is it and which beach? And what year was it?
No comments:
Post a Comment