18 January 2022

I read something today that is very true.  It involved the reason why I am so resistant to going through all of our physical items saved throughout our life.  I am a very sentimental person when it comes to saving every little thing that has a memory attached to it or made me feel happy in the moment.  I also look at this from a family archivist viewpoint and want to document as many who, what, when, where and hows that I can.  It leads to what some would call my being a packrat. I prefer Keeper of Memories.  But as the story that I read says, each and every item that you have kept triggers those memories from the past.  That's why you kept it. Something that maybe you do not think of or talk about very often, but important to who you are and simple reminders of times gone by.  It feels the same as a familiar song or smell does.  A ticket stub from one of hundreds of kids and grandkids activities makes me smile.  A dried flower from a long ago high school dance.  A child's drawing given with love.  A child's  homemade stuffed pillow in my favorite color.  Even some trip souvenirs. Family heirlooms passed down till someone doesn't want them anymore.  Granted, my children and grandchildren won't know what the dried flower means to me but for now, I can look at it and it takes me back to great memories that will be gone one day with me.  It's kind of sad when no one else but me seems interested in these memories, but that's because they are mine and not theirs.  So be gentle with us oldsters when the time comes to let go of the physical reminders of those memories.  And maybe make just a few of them yours as well.  

Please give credit and post a link to my blog if you intend to use any of the information written here. My blog posts are © Ann M Sinton 2022. All rights reserved. 

Week 3: Favorite Photo (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks)

I love the photo aspect of genealogy.  It is so exciting to run across a photo of an ancestor who you've never seen before.  It adds so much to their story to be able to see what they looked like and their resemblance, if any, to current family members.  I am fortunate to be the current caretaker of many family photos from my family and a few from my husband's family.  I have been able to have access to photos in other family members possession and made digital copies of them as well.  And of course, when you begin a correspondence with a new genealogy friend who shares photos that they possess with you.  Sometimes that is the most exciting thing because you might never have seen those shared photos otherwise.  I know when I share my photos with others, they have that same excitement as I.  

So for this week's theme, Favorite Photo, I chose a photo that was not necessarily THE favorite one, but one that has a story and is interesting from a technical aspect.  This photo is of ten siblings from a Bedford, Pennsylvania  Arnold family that includes my 2nd great grandfather, William Henry Arnold.  William was born in 1856, the son of Henry Wertz Arnold and his 2nd wife Margaret Over. They had 12 children, two of whom passed away before this photo. Henry W Arnold and his first wife had 8 children.  We think the photo was taken in the late 1920's to early 1930's, but not later than 1935 when one of the sisters died. If that is the case, that may be why there are only 10 of the 20 children in the photo as all but one of the first wife's children would have passed on by then.  

In the photo, William Henry Arnold is in the front seated on the left end. William was a carpenter and in the construction business for 62 years in Bedford, PA. He learned his trade from his father.  In 1878, at age 22, William enlisted in the Pennsylvania National Guard.  He was discharged in 1887 and married Elnorah Amos, who by the way, led me to my first Civil War ancestor, her father.  But that is a story for another week.  William passed away in 1939.

If you look closely at this photo, you will notice something a little odd looking about one of the men.  I have taken to calling this our photoshopped picture.  It turns out that James Arnold, in the front row 2nd from the right, was added after the fact.  Back in 2009, I received a message from a woman who found my tree and wanted to let me know that it was her father who added James to the photo!  Her father is a grandson of Jake Arnold, on the far right standing and he seems to remember adding James to the photo in the 1950's sometime.  His father, Jake's son John Herbert Arnold, had possession of the group photo that was missing a person and he also had an individual photo of the missing man, James.  So the grandson, John Herbert Arnold Jr, made a copy of the man's photo and resized it to fit the group photo and added him.  He then made a copy of the photo with the added man and made prints from there.  I often  wonder if the group photo was taken in mid April 1929, when James, the added man died?  It certainly could have been chilly enough in Pennsylvania then for them to be wearing overcoats.  And a funeral would have been an event where all of the siblings were together and they left a spot open for James in the photo.  

I guess we'll never know exactly when the photo was taken, but at least we know how James was added.  Vintage photoshop!

Please give credit and post a link to my blog if you intend to use any of the information written here. My blog posts are © Ann M Sinton 2022. All rights reserved.