Making scrapbooks is all the rage today. Parents make scrapbooks of their children’s trips, birthday parties and other special days. Children are making scrapbooks of their school papers and photos. This is such a contrast from the high tech world we all live in and provides a wonderful opportunity for discussion between different generations.
Keeping scrapbooks is an old-fashioned activity. People in the generations before me kept scrapbooks dedicated to specific topics, and some were filled with newspaper clippings of a more general theme. Some were all poetry, others all obituaries. Our local historical society has dozens of scrapbooks which were donated over the years. The obituary scrapbooks are an extremely valuable research resource, as are the “general” ones which include news items about forest fires, local happenings, weddings, etc.
As curator for the historical society, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of identifying photographs and yes, putting them in a scrapbook. This is a perfect winter project for indoors and generations of folks will thank you! Perhaps you can get together with grandchildren or nieces and nephews to work on a project such as this.
Ideally, a tape recorder could be operating to record conversations while you explain who that man is in the Army uniform, or what that strange wooden cart was used for.
Personally, I have hundreds of photographs in several different boxes. This is how I’ve started sorting them out, in preparation for a day or two (or longer) when I have no typing to do. One box contains “old family photos.” These are pictures of my grandparents and their generation. They depict posed studio portraits in very fancy clothing and jewelry. There are pictures taken at a barn raising, in the hayfield, standing looking at a lobster boat, sitting in the field, on the steps, and atop a horse. There are sleighs, old cars, cows, geese and hens in these pictures. Another box holds more contemporary pictures of my immediate family – school pictures, showing off a fish just caught, waiting for the school bus, and various celebrations.
Like most of you, I have identified very few of these photos. While I know who everyone is, unless they are labeled, no one will ever know that the beautiful woman with the fashionable hairdo and straw hat is my grandmother. Who will identify that falling-down barn and old house as the place where my Aunt was born and raised a family.
Local historical societies are many times the recipient of scrapbooks, photo albums and boxes of photographs. They are maintained in the files and archives, but their usefulness and value is diminished if they aren’t identified. Each summer, I arrange several displays of unidentified photos to see if any visitor can identify them.
Christmas is a time for remembering, and memories pervade our lives. As the new year approaches and it’s time for the tradition of resolutions, promise yourself to take a soft-leaded pencil and write on the back of each photo the name and place and approximate date of the picture. Or number each picture and make a list identifying them.
Sort the pictures if you like. I prefer chronological order, i.e., the oldest ones first, but I do have one scrapbook devoted to just siblings.
When you take on this identification project, use one of the kid’s glue sticks (the ones which say “acid-free” on the label) and gently paste the photos on the scrapbook pages. Don’t use the photo albums with the black pages because that black paper eventually will destroy the photos.
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