Bashing Brick Walls, One Brick at a Time: When I began researching my family history years ago, I thought that locating elusive birth and marriage records would solve my most difficult genealogy puzzles. I was SO WRONG! Read More »
You have boxes. Everywhere. They over run the closets, office space, basements, attics, garages. Admit it: you have a historic photo problem. So do I. Years of submissions to the family archives, which I now hold, gratefully, have caused my storage capacity to, well, hit capacity. We are swimming in old photos. It’s a treasure, a joy. It’s a pile of stuff I just cannot seem to get a grasp on. This morning I was discussing with another collaborator the best ways to preserve those photos, to protect them, to separate them from glass and frames they’ve been in for 100 years or more. He asked the question “is it worth it?” Is the photo itself worth the effort? Do you have another photo that would be easier to work with that is similar? Is there a way to get the information from the image without risking any damage? Read More »
If somebody had told me five years ago that ebay can help with your family history I would have laughed. If a genealogist had told me that ebay can help I would have laughed and then snuck off quietly to have a look. But, neither happened to me. I found it out by accident, in a moment of sheer boredom. I was searching for items relating to my favourite UK music group, and Australia really had very little so I widened my search area by looking up the UK and the USA ebay sites. Now I was getting somewhere, and over the months that followed I won some great items. One afternoon I found myself searching for scrapbook items (another fantastic reason to give ebay a try, by the way!) and after an hour or more my brain was starting to fry. For the heck of it, I put the name of my childhood hometown into the search area and hit the return button. What came up next, both surprised and dazzled me completely. I found postcards, carte de visites, books, maps and trinket items, all relating to my hometown. It was like being let loose in a candy store! From there I tried searching for other towns and villages I knew my ancestors were from. Before I knew it, I was bidding on items from counties all over the UK and all relating to my family history. I have won a few less than desirable items over the years; local history books smelling of mildew or cigarette smoke, dog-eared pages, broken spines, rusty staples and yellowing paper. But the good far outweighs these expected misdemeanors because I have found many more true gems. My bookshelf is fit to bursting with booklets, publications, and history guide books filled with ... Read More »
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