The World's Best Online Classes & Products for Digital Crafters

Making our heritage album in class made me REALIZE my heritage.I knew it but knowing something & really realizing it are two different things. does that make sense?

Sarah ..its like opening a lucky dip when you were a kid ..you don't know what you will find....must of been so hard in the old days because people really didn't have much and there was no help like now ....your grandfather must of been a sensitive man towards his fellow man..With my Mum I just talk to her and all of a sudden she will go into a trail of stories about her family so I have pen at hand and write sometimes on whatever is close ...though today she said she will sit down and write her life where she has lived up to her marriage and I can go from there..I have to be very sensitive with Mum as a lot of the things I want to know ..she has put away in her memory to stay ...she is opening up to me more each time so that is so good ...

Lozzie, I'm glad you have your mum to ask all those questions. Do it quick! My parents are gone and there's no one left to ask; only these little treasures that pop up and give me bits and pieces of the story. But then more questions are stirred up. I will only find the answers on the other side of heaven! =)

I found another personal history page my mom wrote a few years before she died; boy what's with all the timelines? Anyway, she grew up in the south in the early 1900s and said her dad tried to run a general store during the depression but had to close up because he couldn't turn down all feeding all the hungry folks who came to the back door. I understand that if your house was a place that would give out food then your fence was marked some way so that other hobos would know. Anyway, it's wonderful to find these stories that paint our kin in a personal way. I know you treasure your mom's stories. Are you recording her telling them?

Sarah..there is no ramblngs ..there words that have bought out the passions of our researching and family .what a treasure to be able to searh and follow your great grandmother on her journeys..and to have so much info to go through..to take you on many a journey.I am like you I am now having a lot more respect and honour of my past family and can see where some of my ideas and talents come from ..if I could have one wish it would be that I could have my granparents back to ask the questions...lucky mum is still surving so she is now telling me little family snippets because I am prompting her...

That was a great find, Lozzie! I have "found" so much stuff from my dad's family that I dropped doing my album altogether for awhile. I use the quotes because I have had these things in my possession since 1993 when my dad died! I have schlepped them around the country with me on my moves from Calif to Texas and now to Tennessee. Lucky for them, I have always had them in climate controlled places.

I found a timeline that my great grandmother typed of all her diaries that has turned out being so amazing! She was a minister's wife in England during Victorian times and did an amazing amount of traveling to places like Bermuda, Switzerland, US and Paris. And, I have her watercolors with the names on the back of them of the places where she did them. So, now that I have her timeline, these watercolors make more sense. She met Teddy Roosevelt and visited a Miss Randolph at Sidwell, Va for a month. It I googled it and it turned out to be Thomas Jefferson's birthplace! I am researching the places on the Internet and some of my old history lessons are coming alive for me; very cool.

One of the great things about this class was that i now am storing these old papers and photographs properly and am digitizing them. Sorry for rambling but I'm having such a blast doing this. I am enjoying everyone's discoveries; it's great to have a place to share.

That is surely is a treasure that you stumbled upon

I had a wonderful moment in my research for my fathers mother a few weeks ago ..as I have said in my layouts my dad died when I was 1 year old so I never really knew of him o r his family until I was older ...I was searching for years about my grandmother being the first single woman to receive the lifesaving certificate in Australia .. I was doing a search on google nearly ready to give up and I pleaded with my darn computer to do some work for me....reworded my search and ..what a gift ...a news letter from a local historical society in our state popped up with my Grandmothers full story about her childhood and her parents owning the local bathing pool and how she got her certificate ...she was 19 years old ..At the age of 16 she was teaching local school girls to swim ..she was managing swiming complexes at the age of 2o and lots more ..she wrote the articale when she was 83........so happy am I