I am certain it comes as no surprise that one of the heirlooms that I treasure most are pictures.  While many of us love them to take us to days of old and childhood memories, for me they go beyond that and keep those that have passed alive and dear to my heart.  Most of you know, but in case you don’t, most of my family is deceased.  My Mom & brother both died when I was 13, my Dad passed a few years ago from cancer and all of my grandparents are also gone.   All I have left of the beloved family members that have died is the memories that were captured on film.  While they may not be perfect, there’s nothing like the feeling of pulling out an old photo album and reliving the memories or even just seeing someone that you may never have met but you are related to and recognizing the little bits of yourself in them.  I also LOVE history so I adore poring over the old photos of my grandparents and times gone by, I find it to be a real hoot!  I love when I’m able to find that one image that captures the essence of that person and I look forward to sharing those images and memories to let my children get to meet my family and hopefully get to know them, even if it’s just a slice of who they were.

In one of my adventures through our basement (due to all of the deaths, I have quite a few generations of pictures and the like) I found an old Army album of my maternal grandfather’s.  I had seen it before when I was younger and I’d flipped through it and noticed my grandmother was a pretty lady (random fact but she once held the record for the high jump and qualified for the Olympics) and moved on to other things.  Recently I’d taken to scanning the images and adding them online for distant family members to enjoy via Ancestry.com and I took a look at this album again.  I was completely floored when I discovered that my grandparents had visited the same plantation near Wilmington that I had a year before and had taken an image of it from almost the same angle as I had.  There are multiple angles to take pictures of this plantation from, and they actually urge you to the front but I found this angle more appealing – and apparently as did my grandfather.

This also makes me want to remind the newer generations to make sure to print pictures.  Technology will change, file types will become obsolete but paper is forever (or at least last a very long time!) when taken care of properly.  Don’t deny your future generations the pleasure of meeting you 100 years down the line because you never thought to have any prints made.  Also make sure to include descriptions and dates when the images were taken!  While sometimes a distant relative can help out (my Aunt Carol has been amazing with helping me identify some of the mystery people) it’s never a guarantee that someone will be able to help them out.  So print those pictures and get them into albums.  Your great granddaughter will thank you.

In 2009 I asked my husband if we could visit this plantation because it was pretty in the brochures and lots of films had been filmed there (I like seeing film sites for some strange reason).  It was humid and miserable that day but since it was our 2nd year anniversary, he went along with it.  I had no prior knowledge that the other image existed or that my grandparents had even visited it.

66 years before in spring 1943, my grandfather stood in the nearly the same spot and took the same picture that I would mimic years later without knowing this existed.

Kind of neat huh?

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Corey Ann

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Latest posts by Corey Ann (see all)

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