Preserving and Protecting History and your Families History!! Ridley Park Walking Tour

 

The above picture is of Clifton Heights. I'm looking for a location. Taking a few minutes and going thru family pictures can prevent this. Take the time and identify people and locations to preserve family history for future generations.

Preserving, Protecting and Identifying

My history room is lined with 3 ring binders filled with archival plastic sleeves filled with pictures, maps, documents, booklets etc. Preserving and protecting local history and family history is so important. The most important thing first is getting the pictures properly identified.  Take the time sit done one day and go thru all those family pictures, who they are and where they were taken. etc. That is so important! I have heard so many stories of unknown family pictures of great grand parents etc. In one case grandmother talked about her parents and grand parents and she had all the pictures. She never wrote anything down. She died suddenly and the family ended up with boxes of pictures and they had no idea who the people were. Relatives helped with some. 

PLEASE take the time and sit down and identify the people correctly. Grandmom, granddad etc. Always watch out for Aunts and Uncles they can be tricky!! My Aunt Marge, and that is what my dad called her, was actually his stepmother!! Aunt Molly was her sister. Sometimes Aunt and Uncles are just neighbors or family friends, be careful. After everyone is identified and placed in archival sleeves who do you give it to?  BE CAREFUL!! I have heard so many horror stories of children tossing family pictures out. They didn’t care about family genealogy, etc. I highly recommend putting family pictures on cd and giving them to the children and grandchildren etc. Not all of them of course. Pictures of great grandmother etc. from about age 2 to 70. Add where she was born, lived, married etc. Make this disc and give it to all you relatives. Then give all the originals to the one you hope will take care of them and preserve them for future generations.

 Watch out for street and home etc. pics too. They can be tricky!! I have a number of pictures in my collection of homes etc. I do not know where they are. They are “ grandmom's house” etc. Always write down the street and address. In the old days there were no house numbers. Don’t just say the intersection of this street and that street say northeast etc. I have pictures that name the street but I have no idea where. Always write down the block, even side or odd side. I take after pictures of how the street or house look today in many cases, because the areas have changed so much. One time I was given pictures of a township all perfectly identified, street, block, house number etc. I went to check them out one day and nothing matched up house numbers etc. I checked with the post office  and they confirmed that years ago the streets have been renumbered, it took me a long time to get that figured out a number of the houses had been torn down.

So please take the time and properly identify family pictures etc. AND PROTECT THEM!!!

This year a number of my readers have given me pictures, maps etc. because they wanted to make sure they will will be saved etc. They will be !! Thanks to all of them

RIDLEY PARK WALKING TOUR

NOTE: I will be giving two walking tour of Ridley Park for the Victorian Fair on September 10. Times are 10 and 2pm. The tours will be of Sellers and Swarthmore Aves. The tours will start at Hinckley and Swarthmore Aves. And last about 1 hour. Cost ten dollars. I only take about 12 people on each tour so if you want to go, register early, send me an email. Keith106@rcn.com. The tours sell out fast!! I will be doing more tours in the fall.