Photo Albums

This really has little to do with Runnemede, but since the purpose of this BLOG is mainly to give my children and grandchildren a bit of my families history I've decided to include this post.

I've started scrapbooking -- putting remembrances into photo albums. In so doing I've found lots and lots of pictures of my family going back to the mid-1800s.

My mother's family came from Italy in the early 1900s so that's where her photo history begins. Dad's family has been in the USA since the mid-1800s as close as we can tell, thanks to my son's (Phil) efforts.

Since there were no TVs, no video cameras, and few box cameras until the 1920s pictures prior to that time are few, except for my father's family. They must have been a "photo" family because there are many pictures of his mother and father and him from 1908 through 1918. There is a plethora of pictures of his grandparents as well. After 1981, however, the pictures dwindle, to be picked up again in the mid-1930s when my father met my mother.

My mom's family pictures are plentiful as well, and they start in the early 1920s and go through to the mid-30s, early 40s, when the most pictures were taken. Those were the years in which mom's sisters and brother courted and got married, so we've lots of family pictures from those years.

Aunt Anne -- my mother's younger sister -- was the keeper of the family photos on the Italian side. And, when I was growing up, the biggest treat for me and my siblings when we visited Aunt Auune was to and look through the photo albums. My mother had some of the same pictures, and some different pictures of the family, but they were not as well organized nor as many as Aunt Anne.

Dad's family pictures were all in albums, including a family Bible, which now resides with my daughter. And there were duplicates of most of the pictures in those albums so when we shared the pictures (my brother and my sister and myself) we all got mostly the same pictures. Dad's Uncle Harry (remember him?) was a framer and so a great many of the pictures were already framed. They were stored in a trunk in the basement. We split those also. Someday, I'll talk about THE TRUNK IN THE BASEMENT.

So, I'm looking through these albums I've put together, hoping I'll recall some of the events from my childhood because my dad had a box camera (I have it now) and he took many pictures of me, because I was the first child, lots of pictures of my mother, because he was the love of his life, and some pictures of my sister and brothers. Isn't that the way of parents, even today. We have tons of pictures of our first-born, but then with each successive child, the picture taking dwindles.

Anyway, I think Dad ran out of steam on the photo-taking front when I got my first Brownie camera -- I was 9 at the time -- and he just left it up to me. He paid for the prints, I paid for the film, but since money was in short supply, I really didn't take that many pictures, although I think most of them reside with my sister and brothers because when we split the family photos we took pictures in which we, ourselves, appeared and since I was the taker of the photos, I'm not in many of the pictures.

I'm still taking pictures, more now that I have a wonderful digital camera and can print my own photos. I recently was blessed with a new grandchild (Elliana) and I have been driving her mother to distraction with requests to take pictures, but it will be the only grandchild whose photo album starts at her birth day and continues on a weekly/monthly basis for as long as I'm able to do that.

Making albums is relaxing for me. It has also shown me that while I can't draw a stick figure, I do have some artistic talent, I think, because, if I do say so myself, the pages I make are quite nice!