My vision issues make reading and participating in comment quite challenging just now, but I continue to enjoy your blog posts which the computer reads for me.
A similar sequence in families throught the Western world, labelled in albums if they are lucky.
Early in mine, among the various family lines, are my great-grandparents around 1908. My great-grandfather is resplendant in is uniform, a newly qualified Master Mariner.
Later there are lots of weddings. Don't they all look well!
Now a very faded picture of his son, my grandfather, with his new wife, on holiday with friends and cousins at Mablethorpe Lincolnshire after the Great War. Along comes a son, my father, then a daughter, my aunty. They begin to look more prosperous and go on days out to the Yorkshire coast. My grandfather sits on the beach in his hat and suit looking uncomfortable.
The children grow older and get married. My father and mother help tend the family allotment. Then I appear as a baby and begin to grow. Dad plays and entertains me for hours, carrying me around town on his bicycle crossbar seat, and then does it all over again six years later with my brother. Wasn't he fantastic! Again we take holidays on the Yorkshire coast, and further afield too.
We even have audio recordings and bits of digitised cine film from the nineteen-sixties.
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I look at it all over and over again obsessively, and digitise it, and add pictures of my own family. I leave everything well-organised for the future.
And in that future, my children have little more than passing interest in the earlies pictures of people they never knew. And their children even less.
"So who was he? Is that some kind of seaman's uniform?"
I suppose I might be the same if there were photographs of relatives I never knew from 1800, who lived such unimaginably different lives through unimaginably different times. It is too difficult to connect with them.
The whole lot might survive another century at best before being deleted, becoming inaccessible or simply thrown out.
All you need is ONE descendant who grows up to have an interest in genealogy and your photo albums will be their TREASURE TROVE!
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely true, Debra. At present, all my grandparents' descendants are probably too young to be interested, but you give me encouragement.
DeleteWhat a great dad, taking you around on the bike! And putting your pictures in your blog is a valuable service. It's not only relatives who need to see them.
ReplyDeleteI never realised at the time how patient he was, but I think he enjoyed it too. The film of my brother in his bike seat is a gem. There are so many more pictures I could post here.
DeleteThe old photos and movies bring back so many happy memories. It is wonderful that they are being saved and identified for future generations. You never know who will want this info in the future and it is great that you have it ready!
ReplyDeleteI hope future generations like it. It took many hours over many months to assemble it all.
DeleteDebra and Boud are versed in genealogy. Paying attention to what they say could be important.
ReplyDeleteYes. I've spent a lot of time on genealogy too and agree entirely with what they say, but so many think family history is boring and show no interest.
DeleteWe got a house that was just filled with photos and home movies. I kept thinking that they would matter to the right people. We had bought the house from the stepchildren of a man who did not much care for him. It was a hoarders house, and there was so much stuff. I was going through sheet music and I happened upon an unusual name, one that I recognized, a friend of a friend. They were contacted. They were the nieces and nephews of the first wife of the man. They had lived in the house with them for a while during a hard time. When they moved on, these things were left behind. When they tried to reclaim them, the man said that he'd thrown everything out. The entire family came and went through the house. They were told that they could have anything they wanted. That ephemera meant so very much to them. We gave them the movie screens and the projector too.
ReplyDeleteThey must have been so pleased to get them back. Home movies in particular.
DeleteTalking of those old fashioned movie screens. I remember as a child the reel would sudden burst into flames as the film rolled through. But gathering family history for all members of the family is good. I only found out last year that I am the eldest sibling of about 4 others.
ReplyDeleteReally? I hope it was a wonderful surprise.
DeleteI remember reading about it on you blog. I cannot imagine what it must gave felt like to discover that.
DeleteYour Dad sounds like a wonderful man.
ReplyDeleteRemembering one's family like that, with photos, is important to some, and while others seem not interested, some develop an interest much later, as they get older and realise they, too, will not be here forever.
Sorry to read of your vision difficulties, but good to know you can still "read" our comments.
Longer comments I read with the help of Narrator. It can sometime be a slow process.
DeleteIt is interesting how we grow detached from ancestors the farther we are away from them in time. We had portraits of my great-great-grandfather and -grandmother in heavy gilt frames. When my mom downsized, we mailed them to my uncle and just made digital copies for ourselves. I"m sure we're never going to hang them on the wall!
ReplyDeleteI have my grandparents on the wall but I knew them. Also remember my Great Grandfather - the Captain. But would not have older ones of those I never knew.
DeleteInteresting reflection on how long family connections remain relevant after the generations move on and no one remains who remembers the person in the picture. I sometimes have similar reflections when watching Antiques Roadshow or Repair Shop, things passed down through the family don't remain relevant. I have a Chinese soapstone inkwell that I keep and display because I associate it with my Grandmother. My father (her son) associated it with his grandmother. I never knew my great grandmother and don't keep her memory alive. I can't help wondering where it will go next and why.
ReplyDeleteThat reflects exactly what I mean. My dad used to imagine a skip outside his house with all his treasures in it. I actually kept quite a lot, but, yes, what happens to them next?
DeleteTasker - I am so sorry to hear about the issues with your eyesight and hope that significant improvement occurs quite soon. I am not suggesting that you are like this but some people can become obsessed with family history. It's almost as if they are seeking to give credence to their own existence.
ReplyDeleteI've spent hours on family history over several decades simply because I found it interesting. Much of this was on my wife's family so not to validate myself - she could have a whole series of Who Do You Think You Are? just to herself. I do hardly anything on family history now.
DeleteSome time ago I had an interesting conversation with a librarian and archivist, around the time that digital cameras largely replaced film, about the impact on their professions. both were seriously worried about how ephemeral the digital worl was compared to film and paper - we have many centuries of historical records on paper, a century and a half on film, but are in serious danger of leaving a black hole for future generations of unreadable digital media. I have read that NASA has seriously large amounts or irreplaceable data from early space missions that the technology to read and transcribe no longer exists, although this maybe an urban legend. Certainly in my professional life I have come across training courses prepared on 12" video disc that the company could not get transferred, and once the last of the video players broke then that coursework would be lost.
ReplyDeleteYes, working in computing as I did, people were saying in the 1990s that "these are the new dark ages".
DeleteI feel much the samr Tasker about my tin of old photos - now somewhat faded, Shall I pass them on to my son? I have written all I know of them on the back of each one - but will anyone ever look at them? Weaver
ReplyDeleteI think most would say you should pass them on and trust someone will be interested one day.
DeleteI love the old photographs. I have just given my Grandson a lot of both of our families going back to his great grandad, it's nice to put a face to past members of your family isn't it?
ReplyDeleteBriony
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it is, but I still say that the further back you go the less interesting they become. I also have a picture of my great-great-grandfather (the Captain's father) from a newspaper cutting about local railwaymen, but I find it difficult to associate myself with it.
Delete*A capital fellow with a hard-working reputation.*
ReplyDeleteA clue in a cryptic British crossword ...
It perfectly describes your great-grandfather, the Master Mariner.
And he had a very fine lady by his side, if I am any judge of fine ladies.
Last photo is emblematic of happiness on the go, happiness in motion.
*Say Ta Ta to your Da !* as the old music hall song went.
I hope the children of the pandemic have happy memories like this.
I realise now just how good it was to grow up is a self-contained town that had everything you could want, social activities, places to go such as the docks, river bank and countryside. Also that our generation has lived through the best, wealthiest and most settled era there is ever likely to be.
DeleteI have photos of my ancestors on my Mother's side, I don't know that anyone would be interested in seeing them, but I photocopied the whole lot four times and made albums for each of my kids, they can add their own families to it if they wish. I hope they do. BUT, all I have is the names, phots, birthdates and death dates, of the ancestors, nothing at all about who they were, what they did and so on. And nothing at all from my Father's side.
ReplyDeleteYou could find out more from genealogy resources if you can be bothered, even make discover distant relatives, but it's a labour of love.
DeleteThere is nothing at all there of my father's family, they may have been from the poor side of life that didn't register births? or there is just no one left to put anything at Ancestry dot com. Also, such places can only give names and dates, no information about what they did or how they lived.
DeleteYour father looks like what we might now call a 'fun dad'. I love the action shot of him and you, I presume, on the bicycle.
ReplyDeleteMy sibs and I have just been having a look at the trust our father's widow did not much to abide by in the last two decades after dad's death. Apparently, the Batz (our surname) family photos were meant to have gone to his eldest sibling. We have much of them instead.
It's my brother. There were so many places to go in the town, and relatives to visit. Here they apparently arrive at my uncle's when he has the cine camera in hand, although I suspect they were asked to go back and "arrive" again for the film. Uncle could afford the expensive equipment through working abroad - they were just visiting at the time.
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