My grandmother was always a very generous person and gracious hostess. She would go above and beyond to make sure she had room for friends and family passing through and would give just about anyone anything they asked for. As I saw her continually giving away photos to family members it made me sad being the sentimentalist I am, and with her permission I started collecting her old negatives.
When we were moving her from one house to another, some helpful family members were throwing out trash, dumping drawers full of “junk” so that there wasn’t so much to go through at the new smaller apartment. I kinda panicked because these things were not junk to me. They were keys to unlock the past. Letters from family members, negatives, photos, rootin tootin cowboy post cards and other silly things that meant nothing to anyone else, because no one else wrote down the stories behind them. I salvaged as much as I could but there were lots of people helping so it was hard to be everywhere. I’m so glad I collected those negatives before the move.
My newfound soul sister distant cousin who is also interested in family history told me about a scanner especially for negatives (it was about $60). It loads them right on the computer digitally. I have been scanning and sharing them on facebook with my family. The stories that these photos have brought out are like little treasure boxes for me. Things to help me date things, understand things I hadn’t before, lending personality to the people in the pictures, many of whom died when I was very young or before I was born.
The moral of my story is when you see those old negatives at grandma’s house, they are very valuable to someone. Please don’t throw them out. Old letters also give important information about what was going on in people’s lives at that point in time. It can place someone somewhere you never even knew they lived. I found a post card my uncle wrote home from Italy while he was in the service, it went something like this: “Dear mom and dad, met some girls, having a gas in Italy, Love Dan” So if you are moving an elderly person, collect those things and send them to your family historian. They will turn them into timeless treasures for everyone to share and they will be a message to future generations.
~Julie
