Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Safeguarding the Family Treasures

Sad family news makes one think of the past and look back at the family treasure that have ended up in your custody. One of my first cousins, Helen Heini nee Clarke (1929-2018) has just died and I had planned to attend the funeral tomorrow, but unfortunately the current snow means I will not be going.

Instead I will be looking at this lovely hand-made album which was presented to my grandparents, Walter and Bertha Locke when they celebrated their Diamond Wedding on 15th July 1955. When it was made all their family got together and it contains a wealth of family photographs, the earliest taken in 1868 showing Walter as a baby with his parents and 11 siblings. This is unfortunately a rather fuzzy copy of the original but the copy of the whole family in Aylesbury in 1883 is far clearer and I have
put a copy of it on the "Ancestor" pages of my web site. While I have recorded the names of everyone in the picture I am not always certain which is which but hope to add that information later.

John and Caroline Locke and their 12 surviving children in 1883 (Click for their names and dates)
Yesterday I produced a digital copy of the album and started to document it, so that multiple copies can go to interested members of the family. In a few cases I may have better images and I definitely have other family pictures which are not in the album which I can add to the digital file.

So I echo my previous message, How Family History gets lost. If you have any unique photographs or documents that represent the history of your family - now is the time to ensure that the information they contain is properly recorded in a way that preserves it for future generations of family historians..

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