Genealogy
 

My Mother was the family genealogist. She passed several years ago, and left me her family research.

As she and Dad were "amassers" (a nicer word for hoarders???), it took several years of disposing of "collections" before I was able to work with her research.

Our family is quite lucky in that some of our ancestoral lines believed in pictures. I have hundreds that are more than 100 years old, and many more than 125 years old.

What is surprising to me is the resolution of these early pictures. Most are so small details seem abysmal, until they are scanned at 600 dpi. Once scanned they may be blown up to, in many cases full screen. Yes, to you professional photographers, there is grain; but the resultant picture has great eye appeal.

This being the purpose of this post. I would never have guessed the quality of these old pictures.

For those of you thrust into a similar situation, try high-def scanning.

Jon.

You are lucky to have all those old photos. I did both my wife's and my genealogy (about 8 years of research) and value every photograph I located. Yes, high resolution scanning does a decent job on them. You can also use Photoshop if necessary to remove/improve flaws some may have.

Is simple, those photographs were direct exposures on the plates and detail is the same as a good pair of binoculars. Wasn't until people got Brownies and Hawkeyes and tried to hand hold they got shaky. Also down to 35 mm you can have good resolution but below or above about 200 ASA ***edaboudit.

Am not a phographer but had some shots taken with a 35mm Canon (I like Canons, have three SD780IS ELPHS now) with a 1000 mm lens of cars on the banking at Daytona that are very sharp.

My brother is the family genealogist, and he's scanned a number of old photos. The quality can be impressive, but some are pretty fuzzy too.

The tricky part about old photos is when no one has identified the people or place or date...if there's no family left who is directly connected to them, it can be difficult or impossible to figure out what they're about. So, as a public service announcement: do your kids a favor and write (in pencil) any information you know on the back of your old photos, so when you're dead and gone they won't end up as mysteries for them.

Stuart - you are so right!

I am so lucky that my Mother laboriously mounted these photos to cardboard with two-sided tape, PRINTED THE NAMES OF THE INDIVIDUALS UNDER EACH PICTURE, and placed the cardboard in archival sleeves.

Mother has done the work, all I am doing is digitizing and organizing. Some of these folks died 50 years before I was born. Wish the digital tools that are available today were available 40 years ago.

Mother and Dad amassed an incredible private research library. Since Mother did the hard work, I did not need the library, and have donated it to both the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Missouri Archives. They had several Missouri reference books that even the Archives did not have a copy.

For those of you that have resources of this type, sometimes donations are better than ebay. (opinion).

Jon.

I find this pretty interesting. What is the drive to know the history? I’m not saying anything negative I’ve just never really looked into it and curious as to what motivates you?

I will be the first to say I have no idea what I am talking about when it comes to tracing family history

The short answer is simply that family history is interesting to us - finding out about our ancestors, who they were, where they came from, what did they do. It can be like a mystery or a detective story, gathering the information and putting together clues to follow the family tree back further and further.

My wife loves this stuff. Her favorite shows are biographies and whodunnits.

I had an uncle that was heavily into the family history thing. He even wrote a small (self published) book about our family. Made several copies for his siblings. I think my brother has dads copy of which I have never read but would love to get a hold of it. My oldest brother traced our roots back to europe. Personally I know about 4 generations back but it gets fuzzy after that. I try to ply as much info out of mom every time I see her as she is 83 and other than 1 aunt is the last of her generation. She has tons of pictures and most are labeled on the back with the help of my sister.

Going back centuries everything was documented. Records exist of what furniture people owned in the 18th century! I think that the time we are living in now will become a blank spot in personal history as everything is collected electronically and will be lost as technology quickly changes. I dont think I have more than a dozen photos of my kids growing up, but I know where thousands of images are locked up in my old computers sitting in the garage.

I would guess there are various levels of genealogy fanatics, just as there are different levels of Pontiac fanatics. I do not have it near to the level as did my parents.

As Stuart stated, family history is interesting. There are many family stories. As an example, lots of government job applications have a question about have you or any of your relatives fought against the goverment of the US? One of my ancestors was with the Sioux, so guess the answer is yes! The answer tends to break the ice, so to speak.

In my case, NOT preserving, and in some instances improving, my Mother's work, when I have the capability of doing so, would be to dishonor her memory.

Jon.

I never had much interest in genealogy until I met one of my relatives at a family reunion a few years ago. He had a lot of history documented and referred me to one of the genealogy websites for more details. Our family history is documented back into the 1300s if I remember correctly. My ancestors were wealthy relatives of English royalty, but fled Wales after backing the losing side in the War of the Roses. They ended up in Scotland, even built a castle there that is in sad shape but still standing.

It's because the negatives were enormous compared to modern film cameras.

6x9 (2 1/4" x 3 1/4") was not uncommon.

Couple that with even a middling sharp lens and you have great detail.

Personally, I feel a close connection to my parents, grandparents, great grandparents... etc. I wanted to know more about them and document the findings for future generations.

I wanted to know from where, when, and how ancestors came to the US and the later family migrations/movements within the United States. I found some very interesting stories.

I wanted to know the military history of my ancestors and wondered if any were part of the American Revolution, Civil War, etc. I found several and some interesting stories.

Other genealogists have various other reasons for their research; finding medical traits, confirm family legends that have been passed down, look for famous people in ancestral line, find relatives, and others.

I have been doing my family history as I am the last one of my immediate family left. I have a son who, I hope, will be interested in it. I use a free genealogy web site run by the latter day saints. They even notify me when a new information about one of my ancestors is found. They do not contact me about their religious beliefs.
Anyone interested in doing family history should give the site a try. All you have to do is register.

https://www.familysearch.org/en/

What I find astounding about genealogy is the sheer number of ancestors that one has, how the numbers grow exponentially with each previous generation.
For example, 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 GGP, and so on.

Go back eight generations, you had 256 grandparents, fifteen generations back, (about 375-400 years ago), you had 32,768 grandparents. Or maybe not, because here's the problem, If you go back 30 generations, (about 750-900 years ago), you had 1,073,741,824 Grandparents. Over 1 billion, which, of course, is impossible because the world population at the time, (1100-1250ad) was less than 1 billion.

This paradox is explained by "shared ancestors" known as Pedigree Collapse, which is ancestors related to each other in various ways. That's right, we, (everyone), are inbred to some degree :D

When my parents passed, they had hundreds of lbs. of family photo albums also going back over 100 years. Some notated, some not. Thousands of pics. None of my 5 sisters or any other living family members wanted any of it. They wanted it all to go to the landfill. I couldn't do it and bought cheap suitcases and sent them all back on the plane with me from San Diego to OH. UPS wanted over $1000.00 to send them in a conventional way. I have found some interesting general non-family items in the thousands of photos. Probably the coolest is a pic of the Wright Brothers standing in my grandfathers butcher shop. His shop was about 300-400 yards down the street from the Wright Cycle shop on West 3rd. St. in Dayton. Another one was the original Oscar Myer Weinermobile parked in his parking lot. Not to mention all the cool cars from the last 100 years.

As I get older I find myself wishing I would have listened more to the stories of my Great Grandparents, Grandparents Uncles and Aunts. More and more of my relatives are passing away and with them the true history of my family. As rough as some people think they have it, they had it worse and better(simpler times). My Parents have a lot of photos, some old and some not but I find myself staring at the older pictures wondering what they were doing and thinking. Back in the day you could tell it was a big deal to get dressed up and take a picture, no smiles of course lol. I have been asking my parents a lot of questions about past generations but need to start recording them since the memory is not as sharp as it used to be. History lets us know where we have been and can be a good indicator on where we might end up.

I have alot of my families shtuff. Havent research like others yet, but history, no matter what has always intriged me. Doesnt matter if its family. Buildings. Equiptment. Military. Cars etc. etc.
I have a friend who's great great great uncle? was a photographer in Minneapolis. (I think) Might even be New York or Chicago.
He has ALL the negatives of all the photos he took. I only saw a handful of them but pretty sure he has thousands.
Real cool stuff.
Imagine the history in them.

[QUOTE: What is the drive to know the history?

Years ago my brother and I became interested in documenting our family history in the American Civil War aka "War of Northern Aggression" (if you are a Rebel)"

CarbKing: FYI. Our direct patrilineal line traces back to Cass County, MO, and the Border War with Kansas prior to the Civil War. Cass County has quite a history...The state of Missouri has done a fine job documenting the history of your state.

A direct patrilineal line ancestor was in the Missouri State Guard early on, then the CSA. Later, his next in line son was with Marmaduke when Sterling Price went back into Missouri on his 2nd raid. Both survived the War.

Turns out our direct matrilineal line shows our ancestor on that side of the family served in the Iowa Cavalry fighting up and down the Mississippi River valley. He survived the War as well.

We can claim to be a Yankee or a Rebel, depends on who we happen to be visiting with at any given moment.

Anyway, doing a history of our family during the Civil War led to continuing the ascending patrilineal line to the U.S. Revolutionary War. Our patrilineal ancestor fought with the Virginia militia.

That all led us to The National Society of Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). It's similar to the DAR, but for men. Google here: https://www.sar.org/

The reason for my brother and I doing the family history thing was like just about any other hobby. One starts out with an interest and it just snowballs.

Kinda like 1970 GTOs....

I am currently continuing my mothers work on our family history i wish i started this years ago as there are only a handful of relatives from the generations before me. My dad and two of his siblings are still alive but don't remember much about their grandparents and that generation. On my moms side she has a 1/2 sister that is still alive and she has helped me a lot.