Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with familyhistory

Help me preserve Grandma's travel scrapbook

rtha — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:02:03 -0800

I'm looking for tips and best practices for scanning the contents of my grandmother's scrapbook. I have my grandmother's excellent scrapbook. It's filled with souvenirs of her life and travels in the US in the 1920s and 30s: snapshots (mostly black-and-white, some sepia - either by design or due to fading); train tickets; menus; postcards; newspaper clippings. And so on. These are mementos of trips to Banff, and San Francisco (before the Golden Gate Bridge was built), and Los Angeles, and DC, and other places.

The pages are held together with a cord looped through two grommets; the photos and other items are held in with either glue or those little photo corners; many items are captioned in white ink.

I have access to a large flatbed scanner. I'd like to be able to scan the entire page when possible, at a large enough resolution that I can go back and crop individual photos and captions if I want to.

I don't know enough about this process to even know quite what questions to ask. What resolution? With photos or other items that are easily detachable from the page, should I just scan them separately (but that would lose some context - most of these are grouped together by event or time period). If you've done a project like this yourself, what do you wish you'd known before you started?

What was my great-great grandmother's occupation?

snugglebunny — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:39:09 -0800

Please help with translating this ship manifest. This is the manifest of the ship on which my great-great grandmother sailed to the United States in 1857. My mom is doing family history research and has been able to figure out nearly all of the information on the manifest. All we have left is the Gewerbe column, which is where the occupations of the passengers were listed. My relatives (great-great grandmother and her two traveling companions) are the first three on the list. Can anyone figure out what their occupations are? Thank you in advance for your help.

Papers written in a spidery hand

zadcat — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:53:59 -0800

Today I had a reason to be looking up a family document, and once again I became fascinated looking at the old family certificates and documents I have in my files. My sister and are both childless, there are no other close relatives, and although the documents have no obvious historic value it seems a pity they should eventually just get tossed out when I die.

I have a basic family tree which diagrams out the relationships between most of the people mentioned on the documents. Are there genealogists who take an interest in such things even for families they're not related to? Any other organizations I may not be thinking of that might have some interest in such things?

I'm in Canada, and the documents come from Canadian and British sources.

Questions for Mom and Dad

extrabox — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:43:51 -0800

I just got a video camera, and the first project I would like to do is a family history. I'm going to see my parents this weekend (76 and 80 y.o.). What are some creative and interesting questions to ask to get them started talking? I'm looking for fun and unusual questions - I have googled the topic of family histories for some of the standard ones. I want the stuff you really wish you knew about your folks but never asked. Thanks!

I must organise my past!

ndaguiar — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:19:24 -0800

Help me organize my family history info on my mac I'm just getting started in documenting my family history and plan to use various types of media to do so - including photos, video, recorded discussions (probably mp3s), scanned documents, etc. I found some information on askmefi about what to do once the information is collected, but I want some help on how to organise the actual data. I plan to use Memory Miner for the photos and probably the videos, but I am not sure how to organise the mp3 files (which might end up as typed up conversations, with no photos to go with them and therefore not really useful for Memory Miner) and scanned documents.

Recommendations of Mac software to help do this would be gratefully received!

Presenting newspaper scans as a book

slightlybewildered — Sat, 13 May 2006 16:03:25 -0800

What's the best way to organise a book of old newspaper clippings, quotes and recipes? (Scanned and/or transcribed) My grandmother left me a biscuit-tin full of newspaper clippings. During the 50's, 60's and 70's, she contributed short essays, opinions, hints, and family stories, to local newspapers and magazines. I've also got a hand-written recipe book which she had written out as a young woman, and her 'Treasure Book' in which she transcribed quotes, poems and Bible verses in later life.

I want to compile all of the newspaper clippings and highlights from the other two sources into a book to give to friends-and-relations, at least.

I'm looking for insight on the best way to organise it - not all the pieces are dated, though many are; I could group them by theme, or date, or pen-name. Then there's photos, and so on...

They'll all need to be transcribed first, because the clippings are yellowed, so not all of them will have scans in the book. (although I am planning on scanning them all at a high resolution for archive purposes) There are about 200 newspaper clippings alone.

Bonus points if you can point me at an example where someone has done something vaguely similar before that isn't in the "scrapbooking" genre of prepackaged "craft" materials!

Where was this picture taken?

RakDaddy — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 11:34:08 -0800

New Yorkers: where in Times Square is this? I'm not sure who took the shot, but the subject is my grandfather visiting New York City for the first time during WWII. I'd like to know if that view still exists and if it would be possible to reenact the picture today.

Preventing Colon Cancer

Keyser Soze — Fri, 06 Aug 2004 02:18:59 -0800

My dad died of colon cancer at a rather young age. I have always been nervous about it myself, and i am 20.

I have never had blood in my feces, or anything unusual to that effect. What steps should I take right now to check for anything unusual?