Capture family stories before they are gone

Often when loved ones pass away, particularly from the generation before us, we go through their possessions and are left with a box of photos. As you dig deeper and deeper into the box, you realize there are so many photos in there that you don’t understand. Who were they? Where were they? What do these photos signify? What is the story?

Wouldn’t it be better to go through those photos and capture their stories with the people who lived these moments than try to guess after the fact?

I keep these photos in a SmugMug gallery to share with family. This is my husband’s great great grandfather.

The gallery displays the captions, so no need to guess who they are. This is my husband’s great grandfather.

I have had this conversation a lot lately. A dear friend of mine lost her mother last year and now has several boxes of old photos from mom sitting in her house. She knows some of the stories and people contained in them but there are many more that are foreign to her, with no notes or indicators as to who these people are or why they were in her mom’s collection. Yesterday morning I was out with my early morning running buddy – one of the few people willing to meet me at 6:30am – when she mentioned that she has been thinking about reviewing old photos with her parents and gather their stories while she still can.

Now is always better than later. There are many reasons for this. The obvious reason is to preserve the story before it is lost. But a secondary reason is that reviewing these photos with loved ones now can be a fun experience for both you and your family members. Let them reminisce about the past depicted in their photos. Discover that your husband’s great great grandfather was head coachman to Queen Victoria at Durham Castle and therefore our boys are descended from royal servants (helpful when trying to get them to do the dishes - I may have suggested they were born into it…) Soak up the stories they want to tell you. Create new memories while reliving old memories. I promise you won’t be sorry.

Going through these boxes might be overwhelming but it doesn’t have to be. Start small. Don’t try to go through every photo, pick a few that you find interesting and start asking questions.

Then what to do with them? You can obviously write down the stories. But there are many different ways to display your stories. Start small. Create a gallery of old photos to share with family. I often use SmugMug for this - it is easy to set up, displays photos beautifully, and you can turn on comments for guests to add additional details. If you are really interested in genealogy, there are fun apps out there like Collectionaire with which you can create, display, and preserve a complicated family tree (I will delve into this in a later post).

For now, consider gathering the photos and stories before they are lost. If you need help digitizing these photos and setting up a gallery in which to display and share them, give me a call.