Family History Day | Pad Patter Wed June 14th

[Angela Toucan]

Happy Wednesday fellow memory keepers. Today is our day. We record our lives for the history records of the future, and record our past. We have some awesome family history scrapbooking pages in the gallery.

Have you explored your family tree? If so how far back have you gone?
How old is the oldest photo in your collection?

I haven't looked at my family tree other than the immediate family. My Dad has and he went back as far as the 19th century. Apparently I'm a descendant of Irish boat people. My husband's Aunt has researched theirs. His dad's side of the family have mostly lived in the same area for generations and generations. They were Quakers.

The oldest photo I have is my paternal grandparent's wedding photo from the 1940s.

 

[umyesh]

I use an app called Family Tree to explore my family history. My husband's family has a lot of history in the United States; my family has a lot of history in Europe.

The oldest photo in my collection is a picture of my great grandmother that I scrapped here:

 

[HavaDrPepper]

Have you explored your family tree? If so how far back have you gone?
Yes, one of my hobbies in the 1990's was genealogy. I had a head start since my maternal grandmother had done a lot of research by writing letters in the 1950's. She wanted to prove DAR ancestry and did find the people that far back but she never got a chance to get the proof needed to actually apply to join DAR.

In my software, I have 10 generations of information on some of my lines. The oldest one I have a birth date (year only) for is born in 1669 and he died in 1769! This is the line that had the DAR ancestry. In my research, I was able to fill in lots of information that Grandma didn't have, especially on my dad's side of the family. I still have paper files of info on ancillary family information that I have never entered into my program but do have over 1800 individuals in my database. Which is quite small compared to one in a FB group about the software... some have over 25,000! I haven't done any research since maybe 1999.

How old is the oldest photo in your collection?
As for photos I do have photos back to the 1920's on my dad's side of the family. His parents were married in 1920 and there is a photo of them that they always called their wedding photo (they ran away since Grandma was only 17). I also have a photo of my Grandpa's grandmother on that side of the family and she died in 1920. Photo appears to be from early 1900's. I have a photo of my Grandma as a child with her father. She was maybe 4 and her brother 3 so that would be about 1907. There is another photo that appears to be Grandma's mother and father. It could be a wedding photo (married 1903) but if not it was before 1910 as she was not in the census with the family at that time. By 1913, he married another lady and proceeded to have 14 more kids. Rhoda Grace is the brick wall in the family!

For mom's side of the family, I have a photo of her mother as a child in 1913. I also have my grandparents' wedding photo (1927). These have been scanned. I do have others that were never scanned but were scrapped traditionally.

 

[IntenseMagic]

I am adopted, so I don't really know anything, biologically. I have explored some of my adoptive parents family tree. Someone has done some stellar research on my dad's side. On the site I searched, his family has been documented back to the 1400's or earlier. My mom's not as much.
I did do an Ancestry test. I started back in March, but the day I was due to get my results, I got a message saying there was some kind of problem with my DNA and I had to start all over. I'm now due to get results the first part of July *fingers crossed*.
I have a few photos of my mom and dad as children in the late 1930's. I'm sure if I went digging in their collection I'd find more treasures!

 

[Karen]

I haven't really explorer my family tree past my great grand parents, but my sister is huge into ancestry.com and has done years and years of thorough research. I think she's gone back to the Mayflower! I can never keep it all straight once you get more than two generations back, but she's so good about keeping it all straight. My Dad's side of the family were all photographers, so I have some really great old photos in my stash. Again, my sister went through all the work of scanning all of those old photos too, so I have them digitally and she labeled them by names of who is in the photos too! Yay for her being willing to do all of that work!

 

[StefanieS]

Have you explored your family tree? If so how far back have you gone? Only my grandparents. They died when I was early teens. No one else seemed overly interested in their histories.
How old is the oldest photo in your collection? My grandfather as a young man.

 

[jam-on-toast]

I have recently developed quite an interest in all things genealogical... the oldest photo we have in the family is of my great-grandfather as a baby - and we know he was born circa 1890 so the photo must be at least 130 years old... I don't have it with with me, unfortunately...

 

[mary kate]

I've gone back to the late 18th century with a few of my Irish ancestors. And I've actually visited a couple of the thatched-roof cottages in which my Irish ancestors actually lived before emigrating to Canada.

My oldest photo is this very rough photocopy of an original daguerreotype from the 1840s, with my great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Leavy, from County Longford, Ireland, at the far right in the back row.