By Tammy Morales
Publisher, ScrapbookersInnerCircle.com
Guest Writer
In genealogy, there is an interesting niche developing today that intersects a few related disciplines. The combination of scrapbooking, journal keeping, and historical research, are coming together in a profound way, as experienced hobbyists prove.
The Triangle of Hobbyists
Never before has there been such an interest in researching one’s family tree. The capability for researching old records and documents over the internet allows anyone access to the records previously only obtainable at libraries and historical centers. As avid researchers add to the online resources with their own records, facts, and family stories, the public domain expands. It’s no longer necessary to read old microfiche in a dimly lit basement of a public building, and to slowly build long lost family lines. Now, you can discover amazing facts quickly, and link to ever-expanding lists, with merely a mouse click. Websites like Ancestry.com provide an abundance of resources and links; so do the many useful blogs and websites about genealogy like www.all-about-family-trees.com. Information that used to require a road trip, or several phone calls with helpful staff, now pop up on your computer screen at your convenience. Even lists like graveyard compilations and criminal case files are available online. And the availability of previously obscure records is increasing weekly.
In another sector, you have the scrap booking community; the people who painstakingly photograph and document their family and friends as they live their lives. Everything from babyhood to school years, from weddings and vacations, to the everyday lives of families and their work, are fair game. Photos, journaling text, and a flair for artistry, add depth, color, texture, personal memories (and just plain fun), to a story. Handmade and digital books chronicle current events, both personal and public, through one person’s point of view.
Finally, there are the avid journal keepers, the keepers of history as told by the average person. Throughout time, humans have written their stories in personal journals, and recorded their thoughts and commentary about events which affected them. One of the best ways to learn about history is by reading journals and exploring people’s fascinating (albeit average) lives. The need to tell one’s story (and to read about others’ lives in their own words) is a common human thread that ties us all together.
The excitement of this common thread, and the elemental need for people to follow it, is truly apparent when you combine all three bookish hobbies together. Family lines spread, branch out and link back together. Amateur ancestry hounds have fleshed out the range of possible resources in great detail over the past few years, and they connect their clues with each other’s findings every day. Furthermore, due to the ease of access to new information, more and more families are discovering, piece by piece, the illuminating stories behind their own histories.
What better way to document this common genealogical ground than through the journaling and scrapbooking arts!
Scrapbooks Provide a Landing Place for Genealogical Research
Why do people keep scrapbooks and journals in the first place? Many authors put inscriptions in their handmade books, dedicating them to future generations. This is a gift of love, for sure, because the scrapbook maker will probably never really know the children of the children who live past the current generation. Those unknown descendants will be able to access the faces, activities, places, even the styles, of their own families!
Useful Tips to Ensure Historical Relevance in your Scrapbooks:
- 1. Accuracy: It’s very important, then, to make sure the details – spelling and dates that are penned alongside the pictures -- are accurate. It’s certainly a lot easier to ensure the correct (though unusual) spelling of “Great Aunt Troodie” today, than having to discover it the long way round at some point far in the future by the historical researchers of tomorrow. By keeping your dates and facts straight, you do a great service to your grandchildren and fellow historians!
- 2. Details: Another suggestion you may want to consider when scrapbooking your families’ events is to put them in context of local trends and national history. Information about events which shape communities are always interesting because these details provide understanding about the lives that may be linked by the same events. For example, even a casual mention that a flood prevented vacationing in a certain campground one year, adds so much to a living history that links people, places and events.
The Next Step
It’s likely that as you begin to tell your immediate family’s story, you will be very drawn to the old pictures and stories of your relatives, and then by extension, to their ancestors. There is nothing more delightful to a modern day scrapbooker than to discover and pore over an old family scrapbook that was made long ago with much care and love. The pictures and the handwriting, the old postcards and travel logs of your distant family; all of this seems to heighten enjoyment and familial ties even if you never knew the folks in the old books! Inevitably, the journaling scrapbook hobbyist will ask herself:
- Who are these people?
- What made them tick?
- What jobs/work did they do?
- Where did they meet?
- Where did they live/move to?
- Why did they leave?
The answers can be found through research -- and then brought to life through journaling and scrapbooks!
Getting Organized
Advice for family ancestry researchers includes journaling your findings, and where you found your information, as well as your feelings about the findings. The running commentary you provide as you hunt for clues and chase down family lines will help you stay organized. Whether you choose to do it through a scrapbook format or (increasingly popular) through a blog, your notes will provide fodder for interested readers, whether they are family members or fellow family tree buffs. It’s almost guaranteed that even other people who are distantly related to you, will value your research notes!
Getting Creative
Now, although a beautifully photographed and chronologically correct family tree would definitely be a legacy worthy of your efforts, the story (or parts of the big picture) that you choose to tell about your family are completely up to you! You may simply see a family resemblance you’d like to show off…a perfectly valid reason to begin a new scrapbook! Or, why not begin a new scrapbooking hobby with some quirky detail which personally enchants you? For example, you may want to make a few pages (complete with photos and stories, maps and thoughts from your own imagination) about all the lepidopterists in your family tree, for what are the chances that so many people interested in butterflies happen to be in one family?! These are the details and facts that are the fruits on your family tree, those little delights along the way.
A Meaningful Pastime
A note about the relevance of your hobbies: The importance of research, and the careful documentation of it, will strengthen family bonds in the long run. There may be times when you are up half the night (following the line of a civil war soldier, say, or cropping a picture of your kindergartener’s first lost tooth and writing the related sweet story), when you may question the meaningfulness of your task. It may occur to you to wonder who’s ever going to care whether this soldier two hundred years ago made it home, or how many quarters the tooth fairy left your boy…What could lit possibly matter?
But the keepers of memories and histories know that somewhere, somehow it all matters. By keeping a journal and scrapbooking your findings, you’ll be able to broaden your ancestor’s stories to include pictures, anecdotes, maybe even copies of pay stubs or store inventories! These explanations, carefully compiled by you, are what help us (and future generations) make sense of history, family, and our connections to each other. Your story becomes a legacy, and a creative and unique work of art.
About the Author:
Tammy Morales is the owner of www.scrapbookersinnercircle.com and an expert on scrapbook arts, journaling, and organizing. As genealogy research grows in popularity, her resources provide limitless ideas for chronicling and keeping family keepsakes. She shares her creative life with a husband and two children within view of the gorgeous Canadian Rockies
