Christmas Albums

So, one reason that I have been so busy the last month or so is that I decided, rather late in the season, to make genealogy albums for my siblings for Christmas. I found some cute photo albums for a good deal, and I ended up printing each album “page” as a 4x6 photo (so I wouldn’t have to use a ton of ink on the printer or spend hours cutting out all of the pages). I made a few individualized pages for each siblings’ album – a title page, a picture of themselves, a basic pedigree chart showing how they are related to the ancestors, etc., and then the rest of the pages were the same in each album. It took quite a while, but I was very pleased with the final product when I finished and I made a copy for our family to have too. I wanted to show each of them how they were linked to their ancestors, and to try to show a photo and tell something about each ancestor. I have at least one photo of each of the direct ancestors back 5 generations from myself, except for Eliza Lucinda Smith Chidester’s parents. (Although for some of the ancestors I have digital copies of many photos, it was sometimes challenging to find high enough resolution images for printing, as many of the old photos that I scanned when I was younger are not very high quality, but I was able to make do with what I had). The albums included each of the direct ancestors back 5 generations, and then a few selected ancestors from the 6th generation. I tried to keep the sources pretty basic – I kept having to remind myself that this was an album for them to look at the pictures, to read, and enjoy, not a research paper – but I also tried to include enough information that they could look at the basic pedigree charts that I included and figure out how each individual is related to them if they want to. Although I’m glad I took the time to make these albums, it reminded me why I usually start working on Christmas gift projects in October or November, rather than waiting until December. I hope they enjoyed them, I know that I’m glad to have my copy of it for our family.

I also decided that for the cover photo for each album I would use a photograph of an ancestor that we have not yet been able to identify (we have lots of old family photos, especially of my mom's ancestors, that have no names written on the back). So in the back of each album I just wrote a little note about what we knew about each of the ‘unknown’ photos that I used on each album’s cover.

The little blonde girl in this photo has since been identified!  She is Annie "Nonnie" Schaefer, eldest daughter of Amalia Spohr Schaefer and William Albert Schaefer.  Nonnie was born in August 1897 in Illinois.  She married Kenneth C. Ross in 1924.  Nonnie passed away in Florida between 1974 and 1979.

Family surnames mentioned in the albums include: Chidester, Conde, Monk, Spohr, Moore, Conners, Dick, Wilson, Monk, Dobbins, Graham, Ott, Rees, Taylor, Hunt, Moss, Smith, Heath, Rasmussen, Erickson, Allen, Strunz, Villardsen Johannesen, Iverson, Hyatt, Paramore, Levi, Jolley, Vincent, Vance, Collins, Jefferis, Davis, Portell, Heath, Holden, Burgess, Dodge, Fritz, Hamburg, Dunn, Dowling, Clarkson, Fleming, Petersen, Breinl, and Schaefer.

(Just let me know if you are interested in any additional info about my sources for the albums, or if you’d like digital copies of any of the photos).