My great grandmother, Lillian (Tuma) Radej was a saver. She saved photographs, news tidbits. Sometimes just brief notes in random places maybe as she was thinking of something. When my grandparents passed, I got custody of many of the piles of miscellaneous tidbits. At the time, I had no clue who many of the people were in the pictures or why Grandma Radej saved this obituary or that newspaper edition. Years later I have been through it all millions of times, and still don’t know the importance of some items.

You may or may not have some old family photo albums in your history collection. There are often two big problems with these old family albums.

1) The photos are unlabeled so you don’t know who they are, what event was taking place, or what the story is behind the photos.

2) The materials used in the construction of the album is full of chemicals which deteriorate the photos.

As you take photos at family events, don’t just take the photo and leave the photos in the sleeve they come in when you get the film back or on your harddrive if using a digital camera. First of all depending on the age, the sleeves may or may not contain acid which could deteriorate your photos. Secondly, it is important to write down the who, what, when, where and why the photo was taken. Even part of the information may help someone in later years. Most important are the names of people, (first and last if you know them, maiden name if a lady is married) and the date the photo was taken.

If redoing an old album or creating a new one, be sure to use acid free paper for mounting the photos or writing the captions. Using a word processing program and printing out captions will allow you more room to add stories and additional information about the photo without taking up a lot of room on the page. And….if you do it with a word processor, you don’t have to worry about someone not being able to read your writing!

Take the time to gather information for the story behind the picture. In years to come someone will thank you. These stories can be long or short. They can be about the person in the photo or about the event taking place.

Every so often take the time to record special information that doesn’t necessarily go with a particular photo. This can be information like what new words a baby has said, who a child’s best friends are, anecdotes a family member has told, accomplishments, even things like how much the price of gas is. You may not think these tidbits are interesting now, but in a hundred years, someone might want to read what it was like way back when. I know I was fascinated to read my grandparents record book which showed how many eggs they sold and how much the tractor cost.

Make the creation of the album a family event. Interview your kids and include in the album what they thought of the family picnic. Did they make any new friends? What games did they play? What was their favorite part? What is their favorite part of the school day, favorite food, favorite pasttime.

It is one thing to have this information in your head, but after you have passed, people like me and other genealogists out there will wish you were still in their lives so they could grasp the history behind the photos.

What better time to grasp history than when it is being made?