Tuesday's Tip: Blogs and Journals - A Lesson Learned

My husband volunteers at the local Family History Center.  Recently one of the volunteers gave him a DVD of an April 2010 conference held in Salt Lake City, A Celebration of Family History.  The DVD is a wonderful compilation of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a talk by Latter Day Saints President Henry B. Eyring, a talk by Historian David McCullough, and wonderful family history research stories.  In his talk, David McCullough stated he tells his students if they want to be famous, all they need to do is keep a journal. Keep a journal; write down what is happening and how you feel about it.  In our increasing virtual world that information is becoming scarce.

His words have been resonating with me, because I have tried to keep a journal; in fact I have at least four almost empty journals sitting on my shelves right now.  My plan for a page a day went awry when I found myself writing way too much, and so I got discouraged.

I know that through blogging I am sharing and preserving my genealogy research, but I also know I should document the other parts of my life. To do this successfully I need to develop a formula for journal writing.  I will work on that and then add to my Genealogy Goals for 2011 – Keep a Journal.  Wish me luck!

A Lesson Learned

I am in possession of twenty years of my great grandmother’s diaries. She started writing a diary in 1944 because of the war. I learned that she went to the small town of Jacksonville, NY each week to wrap bandages for the troops.  She would document how many bandages she was able to make. Occasionally there would be a birth, marriage or death mentioned, but for the most part the information was disappointing. I knew the temperature that day, and what area of the house she cleaned. I learned that my great grandfather came over from the barn for lunch, and that their son stopped by. But as for what was going on in the community, economic, social, political, there was nothing. And there was nothing of how she felt about her life or what was happening in the world.  I started to transcribe those diaries of Jessie Tucker Agard and have labeled the document, “Life on the Farm.”  They begin like this:

January 5 - Rather mild -Addie [Tucker] went up to Merritt’s while Arthur went to Trumansburg. She sent a box of clothing to Asbury Park by parcel post. Addie and I went to the Red Cross with Alice. There were seven of us to make surgical dressings. I made 110. It is very interesting work. January 6 -Not very cold -Addie went to Asbury Park today. Marian and I took her to the Black Diamond at noon. I did some shopping. It got colder in the p.m. Very windy. We got home at 3:30 in time to do some extra washing. I ironed two dresses. January 7 – Cold - Cleaned the rooms for the weekend. Was too tired to go to the WCSC tea at Julia Lueder’s. Have felt like grip, but guess I am going to fight it off by being careful. Got a nice letter from Adeline. The sun has gone back almost to the big barn when it rises. January 8 - 9 a.m. 2 above zero; cold wind -Emma Kelsey’s funeral. Went to spend Christmas with her brother, Tom. All had flue. Emma taken to hospital. Had pneumonia. Baked bread, blueberry pie, hickory nut cake. Martha Schwartz gave me the hickory nuts last year. Bill, Marian and Johnnie Will went to Ithaca in p.m. Stayed to supper at LaRue’s.

I suspect that our genealogy blogs and personal journals will greatly help future historians and genealogists with their particular research.  

Wedding Wednesday - September 12, 1941

Soon after I began my genealogical research I realized I had never seen any pictures of my parents’ wedding.  I mentioned this to my mother and learned that no pictures had been taken with the exception of those on an eight mm camera owned by her Uncle Bill Agard.  Because it was a “moving” picture camera, no photographs were produced.

Consequently, on September 12, 2001 when my parents would have been married sixty years - would have been except my father died in 1988 - it really bothered me that my mother did not have one photo of their wedding day.

Since Bill’s daughter lives in the family farmhouse, I asked her about the film. After several months it was miraculously located and mailed to us. A local technician repaired the tear in the tape and transferred it to a VCR.  But I needed it on a CD so we could put it into the computer and using PhotoShop make stills that we could send to my mother. I mentioned the situation to our neighbor, a commercial photographer, and he said he would give it a try. He successfully transferred the VCR tape to a CD and then showed us how to manipulate the film in PhotoShop. Another neighbor gave us special Kodak paper on which to print the photos, and on March 18, 2002 via Federal Express, my mother saw, for the first time, pictures of her wedding day! 

This photo is a sampling of what we captured from the 8 mm film. Top left is their friend and fellow lifeguard, Chuck Lueder; middle is Mother of the Bride, Maude Agard ; right is Uncle Bill Agard. The wedding party consisted of Maid of Honor Adeline Agard (Tamburino), Carol Agard Nunn, Edward Nunn, and Best Man J. Richard Agard.

The marvels of technology!