This is the Oliver family. William James Oliver, seated in front, was a veteran of the Civil War. Nancy Jane Thurman was his wife. Granny's mother is standing in the back row behind William. You can see that tall-and-skinny goes back in our family a long way on this side..
I am a Keeper of Memories for my branch of my family. That means that I keep old pictures, interviews, and stories, and try to expand what is known about my ancestral lines as I get time. Previous generations have been generous enough to share their wealth of stories and precious photographs (please, please, please label those for the future, in hard copies, archival quality- you never know what great-grand-cendents of yours will want to know about that wacky summer in France), so I try to save what I can for my brother's children. Looking through the old photos and postcards and newspaper clippings, I can step back in time to a different world. It was a world of much less material wealth, but much closer interpersonal relationships. A world where agricultural time ruled (milking, planting, harvesting, hog-killing, etc.), but everyone knew everyone, and neighbors were there to help if anything went wrong.
I am a Keeper of Memories for my branch of my family. That means that I keep old pictures, interviews, and stories, and try to expand what is known about my ancestral lines as I get time. Previous generations have been generous enough to share their wealth of stories and precious photographs (please, please, please label those for the future, in hard copies, archival quality- you never know what great-grand-cendents of yours will want to know about that wacky summer in France), so I try to save what I can for my brother's children. Looking through the old photos and postcards and newspaper clippings, I can step back in time to a different world. It was a world of much less material wealth, but much closer interpersonal relationships. A world where agricultural time ruled (milking, planting, harvesting, hog-killing, etc.), but everyone knew everyone, and neighbors were there to help if anything went wrong.
I live a few hours away from their stomping grounds now, and miss the hills of home pretty severely sometimes. It helps a bit to go back through the old stories, and stare into the eyes of the stern old men in the photographs, to remedy the lies told in revisionist histories ("they only lived to be 40 years old in the days before modern medicine..." "the Civil War was a regimented affair- we've never seen roving mobs in America..." " we are so much more intelligent/evolved than our ancestors were... the tests tell us so...") with the truth of the actual records in newspaper and copied microfilm and photograph and old family tale.
If you have no Memory Keeper, and your elder members are aging, start now before it is too late! Interview! Get copies of pictures and newspaper clippings! Collect the arcane memorabilia of the past! You'll cherish it when they are on the other side.
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