EVERYTHING I
NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT GENEALOGY
I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN: The Importance of Sharing Your Family Photos and Documents Online
By Deborah Gentit
In kindergarten we all learned a lesson that is probably the most
important thing to know in genealogy, the importance of sharing.
In the good old days, many people were unwilling to share their family
photos. I can understand this feeling since back then it was more difficult
and expensive to have copies made, especially of old photos. In fact, family
photos were sometimes a bone of contention with family members vying to gain
possession of a family photo. I can still recollect that after my
grandfather’s funeral, we returned to his house to discover that an unknown
family member had taken all the family photos from the walls. To this day no
one will admit to having the photos. Worse yet, one of the photos was the
only photo ever taken of my maternal great grandmother and her mother.
Today, there is no reason not to share our old photos. It is easy to scan a
photo and place it in a file on our computer. Best of all, it doesn’t cost
us anything and we can still keep the original. We can even attach it to an
email and send it half a world away at no cost.
I have learned the importance and joy of sharing my family photos online and
off. Many family photos that came to me from my father’s mother were
unmarked as to who the people were. Some people my grandmother was able to
help identify before her death. By posting my family photos and documents
online (Ancestry.com, Ancient Faces, FindAGrave etc.), I have met other
researchers. Five of us are now collaborating to identify the relatives in
each other’s photos. We are also sharing our photos and documents with each
other and posting them online. I create research trees on Ancestry.com and
post all of the photos and documents that I uncover in my research for
articles for this newsletter. I do this in the hope that the research will
be of use to anyone researching those families. I have met many new friends
this way. Hardly a week goes by now that I don’t receive a message from a
thankful researcher who found a family member in one of my research trees.
In fact, many of these people have sent me more photos of their family for
me to add to the tree and related some interesting family stories.
After all, how will our ancestor’s memory live on if we keep our family
photos and documents to ourselves? Another important reason to share your
photos and documents online is to protect them. If something were to happen
to your originals, at least you would have the digital images that you have
placed online. You also may find a photo or document of a long lost relative
that someone else has posted online. Perhaps in the spirit of Family History
Month we can embrace what we learned in kindergarten and share.
(Editor’s note: The above article was written by Deborah Gentit, a member of
the Wabash Valley Generations Newsletter committee, and is the Editor of the
Indiana Genealogical Society Newsletter. It appeared in the Wabash Valley
Generations, The Newsletter of the Wabash Valley Genealogical Society,
Volume 6 Issue 6 November 2009)