Inspired By Mommanerd

[garnigal]

Mommanerd posted about her grandmother and the life she'd had before... before kids, before husband.

I thought someone might be interested in my own delving into family history.

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I'm going through the boxes of papers and photos we pulled out of my great-aunt's house when we had to put her in a nursing home. Somehow I seem to have been designated family historian, much as she had been.

I've found everything from a Nazi banner that either my grandfather or great-uncle brought back from their tours, to plays my grandfather's siblings wrote in the 19-teen's to entertain themselves, to the books another great-uncle used to keep track of fixing his car (and when it was clear enough to put the sleigh away and pull out the buggy) and how much honey he sold.

That was in the one box I've managed to get through. I can't can't wait to see what's hidden in the other 10.

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Comments

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

Family history is so cool.

[garnigal.livejournal.com]

The second box is labelled 'Bert's Letters From the War', Bert being my grandfather. I'm very excited to go through them in detail, but I'm saving them for when I have a nice long time to sit and read.

[whatawookie.livejournal.com]

My money is on ashes with no name.

[garnigal.livejournal.com]

Naw, we buried them on Ed's farm. It was damn hard to burn bodies properly in those days. :D

I've got a box labelled 'Bert's Letters From the War', Bert being my grandpa. That's one I'm pretty interested in. Oh, and we found a picture of my aunt Ede's Sellers cousins. They came from money and it's a 10 year old girl and a 7 year old boy dressed in fur and lace. Walter Sellers, the 7 year old, eventually became a crazy old coot bachelor, who, when my mother first entered his home, said to her "I wouldn't stand there if I were you. That's where the dog pisses and the floor's pretty rotten."

Bat shit insane.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

What a box of treasures!

[garnigal.livejournal.com]

It's so hard to know what to keep and what to get rid of. My dad is fascinated by Uncle Frank's diaries of car repairs/weather/farming, but the rest of us are more in the 'well, that's cool to look at once' camp.

Obviously we're keeping the photos, but then there's all these pictures of people we don't recognize or don't know at all. The Crown Deed is cool, we'll frame that, but do we really want to keep a three inch stack of hand-written mortgage reciepts and bills?

I didn't realize how complicated this would be when I volunteered!

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

That is a puzzle I'm glad I don't have to sort out. Good luck!

[jen-the-great.livejournal.com]

Spooky, but cool spooky.

[garnigal.livejournal.com]

Stranger! You found the internets! YAY!

It is pretty cool. I'm really looking forward to reading my grandfather's letters home from the war.