A Trip to My Grandparents' House

I remember one summer when I was in college and I was going to be doing a semester in Nauvoo, Illinois, my parents dropped me off with my grandparents in Missouri to stay with them for a short while before my semester at school started. I enjoyed exploring their old Victorian house and searching for all the “treasures” I could find there. It seemed like every drawer, box, or cabinet I opened I could find old family photographs or papers. I was interested in genealogy, and I wanted to have the information preserved about those old photos. Many of the photos didn’t have names written on them, so I spent hours during my visit there going through the photos with Grandpa Carl and Grandma Bev. I know that I got on my Grandpa’s nerves a bit – not that Grandpa Carl wasn’t also interested in genealogy and very willing to take the time to talk with me, but I know that it took a lot of his time to sit and tell me about the people in each photo while I wrote each name that he could remember and he seemed tired at the end of the days, and I remember doing this almost every evening for the entire time I was at their house.

At that time I didn’t know much about my Mom’s ancestors, just that they were German, and I recognized a few names and stories that I’d been told about her family. But it was at that time that I took all of the information I found on handwritten notes and pedigree charts in my grandparents’ home and compiled it into a genealogy file on the computer so I could try to organize the information.

I remember in those sessions of questions and answers about all the old photographs that my grandpa mentioned the Schaefers. At that time I didn’t really know how they were related to me, but I remember him mentioning them and the fact that they were in a few of the photos. I remember him mentioning a relative named Nonnie Schaefer, and a couple others named Kenny and Annie.

I’m glad that I took the time to try to identify the people in those photos, even though there were many photos that he was unable to identify, because the ones who we were able to give names to would have been lost to us, since my grandparents have since moved (and some of them may have been lost or misplaced at that time), and my grandfather has since passed away.

While I was at their house I also spent quite a bit of time using my Grandpa’s scanner to scan all the photos so I could have copies of them. Unfortunately, I didn’t know a lot about scanning and preserving old photos at the time, and I regret that many of the photos were scanned at a very low resolution, resulting in small images that aren’t all very sharp. At least I have the copies, though, even if they aren’t the best quality copies.

After going through the copies of old photos that I have, I don’t have very many of the Schaefers, but I will share what I do have.