I know, I said last month that I'd try to go a bit before subjecting you to yet another genealogy related post, but here I am already doing another one. Though, for those getting tired of them, I can say that this one will be slightly different, as it does sort of have ties to collecting, so maybe it'll be worth your click.
Before getting into the meat of the post though, I did want to mention that I thought it was kind of, I don't know, fortuitous, I guess, that after lamenting about the subscription prices for some of the genealogy sites in a post last month, I ended up receiving two heavily discounted offers for separate sites within days if said post going live. First, Ancestry, who had been sending quite a few not-so-enticing offers, sent a rather amazing one, where I could get a three-month subscription for just $1 a month. Yeah, one dollar! I don't always check my email at night, but I did on this particular night, and I'm glad that I did, because the offer was sent at like 7pm, and was only good 'til midnight. After reading all of the fine print, you know, to make sure that there was no monkey business involved, I couldn't click that subscribe button quick enough.
And if Ancestry's offer wasn't good enough, just a few days later I got one from Ancestry Bank too. I can't remember now the exact price of this one, but basically broke down to 13 months (12 paid + 1 free) for $3.75 a month. I've already mentioned how much I like this site, not only for the genealogical aspect, but also because you can alter your search and use the site just like another Newspapers site. And they have a lot of papers that are exclusive to them, so there's no shortage of papers to look through. I may not be rolling in dough, but I could do $3.75 a month. My Black Friday discounted subscription to Newspapers.com recently ran out, and they don't seem to be in any hurry to get me back with another discounted offer, so this Genealogy Bank offer couldn't have come at a better time (though the selection of papers is quite different). Ideally, it would be great to have access to both sites at the same time, as that would pretty much cover every single paper available, but one is still better than none.
The only down side to these new subscriptions is that I've been spending a lot more time on the computer again. I had been doing so well at limiting my time spent in front of a screen over the last few years too, but now I find myself back in front of one for more time per day than I'd like to admit. I would have to think that there's only so much information that'll I'll be able to find, so this is probably just a temporary problem, but even so, I've been doing an awful lot of computering as of late.
Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was an idea that I had last week, which saw me wondering about the feasibility of trying to put together a (physical) collection based on my family tree. I say collection too, but I really just mean trying to get a physical item that represents each person on the tree.
I'm one of those people who, right or wrong, doesn't believe that just because something is currently available to view (or read) on the internet, that that means that it'll be available to view (or read) until the end of time. Admittedly, I don't know how the "cloud" works, nor do I know much about data storage, so it's possible that the information will exist forever, but that doesn't mean that we'll always have access to said information. And even if I didn't believe the things that I believe, I'd still want to print everything out, if only so that I could look at all of my family stuff without having to be on a computer to do so. The problem with this is though, at least for me, is that the way the information is presented, is, how do I say this, kind of boring; and isn't conducive to me wanting to look at it.
I've never had scrapbook before, but I've been wondering if that would be the way to spice things up a bit. I've seen some videos recently on the YouTube of people who keep mixed media journals, and I really like the presentation of those. I'd just be focusing on direct relatives at first, giving each person their own page (I don't know if it would be humanly possible to do this for aunts, cousins, etc.). I have no idea how it would be laid out, but I think it might be fun to try to do some sort of mixed media genealogical scrapbook type of thing. And as much as I try not to be sometimes, I am an accumulator of things (aka a collector), so once the idea of mixed media entered the equation, I couldn't help but think of trying to add some sort of collectible that represents the person to their page as well.
Since the item, in theory, would have to be something that could fit onto a page (without taking up the whole page), I'd be somewhat limited to what I could get to represent that person. Most likely this would be things like coins, stamps, postcards; that sort of stuff. Whatever it is, it would hopefully correlate with where they were born, lived, did for a living, etc. Ideally, said item would also be from their time, but obviously that gets a bit more challenging (and expensive) the further back I go. For anyone who goes back a couple of hundred years, I'd unfortunately have to probably get something more contemporary for them.
Like I said, I don't really know how, or if, this is gonna work yet, and am sort of only mentioning it now for any possible feedback; or ideas that anyone might want to contribute. I'd try to Google around for anything like this, but didn't come up with any results. I know that I can't be the first person to have thought of this, I just don't think the right results are coming up from my various search words.
I suspect that this is gonna be one of those trial by error sort of things, but I'm all in on this idea, and therefor welcome all of the challenges that it is gonna present.
And while I'm here talking about genealogical things again, I thought I'd mention another recent idea, that being to take a genealogy road trip. I've been fairly surprised to learn that a few branches of my family have been here in the United States for so long; some even before the colonies were officially united. I had previously been aware of some of the other countries that folks had come from along the way, but finding out that I've got some old colony blood in me is quite something. Knowing this now, I thought it might be fun to visit some of the places that my relatives came from/lived in. I figured that a lot of people have done this before, and this time Google actually came through with a bunch pertinent links. I never had much interest in visiting places like Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, but with what I've learned, I do now kind of want to. I've never been much of a big city person, but most of the places I've come across so far (though there is a couple of notable exceptions) appear to be still somewhat rural, so that would work out pretty well for me. Obviously the places will probably have changed in the last couple of hundred years, but at least I can possibly tread on some of the same soil, and maybe stop in and say hello at some of their final resting places.
I don't have enough information yet to make such a trip this year, but I could definitely see myself trying to do one next year. The really "fun" part will be trying to figure out the logistics. I also wonder if I should try to get everything into one trip, or just do one part next year, and another the following? I know that there's only like five people reading the posts on this blog, but I would be curious to know if anyone else has made such a trip.
On a completely unrelated note, my mom found out the other day that one of my grandpa's (her dad, who passed about 10 years ago) best friends passed away at the age of 94. I didn't remember his name, but am pretty sure that I spent some time around him way back when. I think that we even stopped in at he and his wife's house at the beach a couple of times. Apparently he was still very sharp, and active, right until the end, which is pretty cool. And at 94, he obviously had a good run; so there's nothing to be sad about. The most amazing thing to me though was, finding out that he and his wife (who is still alive), had been married for 71 years. That's just awesome! In this day and age, where people get divorced over the most trivial of things, it's just neat to hear about two people being together that long. I hope that anyone whose reading this, that's married, will get a chance to do the same.
I'd like to say that I'll spare you from anymore posts like these, at least for the next few weeks, but I can see that I'm not gonna be able to do so. This has been my primary interest for these last few months, and I have no doubt that I will be continuing to talk about it; though I will keep trying to mix some other non-genealogy posts as well.
