Holiday postcards....

I dashed off to get a copy of The Daily Telegraph, which I normally do with the dogs beside me, for they will always love another walk.  Of course, Alice cannot go for walkies yet because of her operation, so I had to sneak out without either of them noticing.  But never fear, next week will soon be here!





The Letters Page featured a continuing postscript on family holiday postcards and their relevance to  family history,  the senders whereabouts and activities, plus the idea of using the postcard stamps as a good start to a wide ranging stamp collection.  My response suggested such postcards provided a great introduction to your research by giving dates and addresses and holiday destinations to aid family discussion and thus bring live material to the dryness of dates and addresses.






My advice is to send and collect all such postcards for they will  form a solid start to anybody's family history; and if you then encourage the exchange of holiday memories and tales, you'll back up the somewhat dry list of dates and addresses with actual living recollection, to infuse your research with live history.  Priceless!!
But don't stop there!!  Keep, beg, borrow, copy from someone else's fund, of family letters, documents, papers, receipts (I have my Father's and Stepmother's  honeymoon hotel receipt !) in fact, whatever written scrap of evidence for your family and loved ones, and hold on to them.  Secrete them away where you know they'll be safe and hoard them, while you work out how to copy, use, and store.  Of course, today you can photocopy, scan, laminate, photograph and create a disc of chosen and particular family pieces; perhaps by branch, lineage, date, place and time.
 
Whatever you do, keep them safe and never lose them.  This is your family we are talking about here, your family and your ancestors.  They deserve your loving attention to their details and lives for many reasons, but mostly because if they hadn't cared about themselves, you or your siblings and descendants, would not be alive, and your history would be cast to the winds of time, without trace, scent or memory.
 Of course, no one person,  not even an entire family, could expect or even, anticipate keeping every single scrap of living recollection; and don't we already overload ourselves with stuff?  But do try and keep what you can, for it's yours and it belongs to you and yours.   And photographs....!













It breaks my heart to see collections of undated and un-named photographs, thrown into a box and consigned to the rubbish bins.  They're not litter, they're somebody's kith and kin, and if the descendants don't know about them, I mean who they were, or when they were around, find a secure body or museum or historical society who might be willing to be interested in saving them for posterity.

















I have a fat folder, chock-ablock, with collections of letters and Christmas cards and odd scraps of paper from family and friends,  and photographs too, and to me, these are my life line to my family's joint past. and they are utterly precious to me.


























Daisy xxx