Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Heritage Treasures and Some Questions

Regular readers of my blog know that I've been working on a heritage/genealogy scrapbook. Before my mom passed away, I sat with her and helped her organize the family heritage pictures and identify the people who were in them.  I've kept them safely in storage, trying to get the initiative together to start the project.  I had assumed that I had everything in my box, but this past weekend, my brother (who lives in the house where my parents lived for 40 years) gave me a bunch more stuff!!!  There were some really awesome treasures, like my Uncle Tom's baptismal certificate at the top of the post.  Isn't it gorgeous? I'll make a color copy and then send the original to one of his children. 
I also found these:
A packet of letters written from my grandfather to my father (including some while he was serving in World War II)!  They're in Spanish, so I'll have to get my kids to translate them for me.  I was happy to find a bunch of prayer cards in the box:
I collect prayer cards and use the images on collage sheets and in my art work.  I was thrilled, though, when I discovered that what I thought was just going to be some nice ephemera turned out to be a treasure trove of family history.  The prayer cards were from my grandparents', aunts' and uncles' funerals.  So, I have more dates to add to my genealogy.  I'll color copy some of these and use them in my art work, but I want to add these to my scrapbook.  I'm looking for suggestions as to the best way to do that.  Should I do a page of prayer cards?  Should I put them on the same page as photographs of my various relatives?  What do you think?
The box also included a variety of framed portraits.  As I was unframing several of the photographs, I found that the frame contained another piece of paper which looked like some sort of blessing of the home or of the photograph.  Here's my dad's college graduation portrait and the additional document I found in the frame behind the photograph:
 
Here's a scan of what's written on the back of the document:
Again, it's in Spanish, so I'll need to get some translation help.  And I'm curious about the pairing of these documents.  Was it traditional to add a blessing to a formal portrait like this?  Or was the frame originally used for the blessing and then the portrait simply added because no one had another frame?  Anyone have any ideas?
Here's my other question - how many photographs should I include in my album? I originally thought I would scrap all the pictures I had of my aunts and uncles and that this would be no more than a page or two for each one, as well as a couple for my grandparents, great grandparents and great grand parents. I also thought they would all be old photos (say pre-1950).  Now, when I look at what I have, I am perplexed by two situations.  First, I have LOTS of pictures of some of my aunts and uncles (like my Aunt Vera and Uncle Nano) and don't want to include ten pages of them (no matter how much I loved them or how colorful they were).  Second, I also have an assortment of pictures that are "newish."  They are of my aunts, uncles and cousins taken during my lifetime.  I like some of these because they are representations of how I remember my aunts and uncles.  But, they don't seem very heritagey to me, if you know what I mean. I was thinking about some sort of arbitrary cut-off, say only including pictures that are more than 50 years old, but I don't know for sure.  I would appreciate your thoughts on these strategy questions!
I'll leave you with one last treasure.  It brought a big smile to my face and I hope it will bring one to yours, too.  But you'll probably have to click on it to make it big enough to read and you'll definitely have to read to the last line to get to the punch line.  Answers to my queries in comments or via email most appreciated.

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