Tim over at Bringing up Charlie created a new meme ‘My Object’ in the week after watching the BBC programme A History of the World. Running in partnership with the British Museum, this epic series takes 100 (well, 99) of the British Museum’s most important objects and tells the story of human history through each one. A sort of every-picture-tells-a-story but with artefacts. The idea of the Meme is to share an item which tells the story of your family. I’m putting an open tag on this one, so please join in it’ll be lovely to see what you come up with.
I thought it would be dead easy….turns out I’ve spent the whole week trying to think of something! We don’t have massive amount of heirlooms and I decided I couldn’t put the iPhone in as our item! So it has to be my stash of family photos that my Nan left me when she died. I wrote about it recently, it’s an old camera box which still smells like my Nan 30 years after she died. I love it and get it out to show Lily regularly who her ancestors were.
In there are our family treasures. As well as photos there is a hand written list of all the items she lost in the Blitz,
A birth card for their son Ernest they lost at 15 days to diphtheria. Ernest had no headstone, it was during the Depression of the 1930’s and his wooden cross was stolen for firewood, so it was all she had left of him.
There are maternity hospital cards from some of my aunts and uncle births – amazing what you had to have ready for labour in those days, Mackintosh?!?! Not to mention having to pay a deposit for Midwife services!
And last of all the photos which she must have inherited. Pictures of Grandparents, Mothers, Brothers, Sisters, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins all from over 100 years ago. These people long gone who struggled so have given so much to me, their aspirations, humour and love made my family and for that I thank them.
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This is absolutely fantastic. I have a very similar box where I keep all our family tree stuff. I love showing the kids all the memories and it’s a great way to bring history to life for them too.
We have my Grandmothers hand bag that has all her old photos in it. One of my prize possessions is a card sent by my dad to his dad who was away fighting in WWII, it is a postcard of him aged 6 months and it was the first picture my Grandad saw of him.
Fabulous items!! What memories.
I have a drawer under the bed with all my “treasures” in – some inherited items, some just personal to me. We have a bunch of slides and a viewer which the kids LOVED when I showed them last year
Oh my god, that is amazing! Wow, what a wonderful box to have. I love the reference on the maternity card to ‘Please book early to get the best pregnancy advice’ – so if you were late you’d get rubbish advice?! Love it. You should make it into a book or something.
What a wonderful thing to have, my mum has a similar Tin which is filled with images from my fathers side of the family. I must get it from her one day and start scanning them, well I would if I had a scanner!!
Thanks for all the lovely comments and I’m so pleased to know that other people out there have boxes like mine. Scan or rephotograph the images, paper only lasts 100-150 years if it’s kept in the right conditions, so it’s good to back them up.
I have a similar stash of photos in an ancient chocolate box (when they were rare and beautiful) that I inherited when my Grandma passed awat before christmas.
I really need to get (beg/borrow or steal) a scanner so they are preserved.
Wow – what treasures! It’s not the same though having a scanned picture – I’ve scanned in some of my old photos and they somehow lose their charm. I like to hold them and as you say, smell them – it’s a shame they don’t last forever.
jx
Spectacular choice Liz! What a treasure chest of memories, and all in such a fragile container. Thanks for rising to the challenge, and sorry for taxing your brains. But it was worth it!
What wonderful family keepsakes. I recently found the ships log with the details of the crossing from Cobh to NY with my mother, and that of my father six months earlier. It was so exciting to finally get the exact dates, etc. My children are all in their twenties and not much interested these days, but that will change.
wow, that is such a treasure. It must be fascinating to pour through.
This is gorgeous. I have a similar box and a similar folder with scanned stuff on my machine. I even have a site set up where my sister and I claim we are trying to get the archives all online, but it’s been on pause for way too long. Thanks for the inspiration to get back to it!
Liz~
What a wonderful box of memories. How interesting to see family documents from so long ago. It’s amazing the things we take for granted these days. Thanks for sharing.
Wow, what a brilliant thing to have and to pass on. Makes me feels better about hanging on to random items now thinking how they will be viewed a couple of generations down the line.
Was wondering if you could laminate them but then I guess that would ruin the effect somewhat.
brilliant collection of memories. I am sure Lily loves looking at them!!
I have a room dedicated to preserving all my family treasures. Everyone sends me the documents: birth records, death, and marriage. photos, war medals and trinkets. I have an archive box for each person.
I have scanned most of the items….. but they keep coming in.
I love to do it, I just need to find the next family member to pass it on to:)
xx
callie
These are beautiful, I love the handwriting and type on the old documents.
wow what a fantastic box of treasues to be left. I love going to my Grandads and looking through all of our family photographs.
With the birth of digital technology I no longer print as many photos, I may stat doing so again, I do not want our family histry to be lost to technology.
Amazing, my mom dedicated herself to finding as much about our family history as she could when both surviving grandmas fell prey to alzheimer’s. It’s a great record to our families. x
What a wonderful box and such lovely photos. My mother has all of our family stuff, but I did get some copies made a few years ago and put them up on the wall. I tried to include one pic of each of the important people in mine and my husbands families, back to great grandparents. I’ll twitpic it so you can see.
These are absolutely fantastic – and fascinating. They tell such stories don’t they (and some contain real sadness too, especially the 15 day old baby). Thanks very much for sharing them.