Photograph Organisation- Begun!

Sorting out old family photographs has been on the 'to do' list for a couple of years now, and really, 2023 must be the year I get properly started on the task! In February I even wrote a piece for the local genealogy newsletter, drawing attention to a series of magazine articles in Family Tree Magazine by Ann Larkham from the UK. (This magazine is in my local library.) She was interviewed for the magazine website, and discusses why and how to treasure family photos.

There's a good summary of her five step process on her own website. I am at the first stage of this- Gather & Back-up- but at least all the family photos are now all on one table ready to be dealt with!

In January a cousin asked me if I had a copy of a group photo taken at a family reunion back in 1992 in Kumara. As part of my gathering process today, I found the photo he was wanting. I have scanned a copy, and also scanned it with a slip with all the names on. (That's a tip I read on Twitter somewhere!)
A sad thing about this photo is that only two of the ten of us in the photo are still alive. I was awfully young then- about 34!- and still with dark hair.

The table is full of photos- let the sorting and organising begin!

Direct Ancestors- one page summaries

It's my plan to write a one page summary about each of my direct ancestors, (using Ahnentafel numbering.) Some family lines I can go back further than others to find these of course. The plan is then to put the summary in a plastic sleeve with a copy of birth/baptism, marriage and death registrations where I have them. (This will alert me to gaps I need to try and fill as well.)

Although the page is my own design, I got an idea for doing something like this from a presentation given by Fiona Brooker of Memories in Time. 

I have been working on collecting that BDM information for my great grandmother, Johanna Scettrini (who married Francis Davis Payn.) It was only late last year that I finally got Johanna's birth registration printout from Australia. The Scettrini name is so often misspelled in so many different ways, but I happened to see a "Groamina Leetrini" spelling on an Ancestry index, and lo and behold, it was her.
Then in the past few weeks, I ordered a printout of her death registration. I was preparing a talk about cemetery listings for a local genealogy event at the library when I realised Johanna was missing from the index of the Hokitika Cemetery burials where I expected to find her. For a while I had dreadful thoughts that she might by lying in a pauper's grave in Greymouth, though family all thought she was in Hokitika Cemetery with her husband Frank. But the printout of her death registration arrived and confirmed she was buried in Hokitika as we all thought. (Now I am in the process of trying to get her name added to the index.)

So Johanna then became the first person I wrote a one page summary about, and her bdm info is neatly filed with the summary. She has the Ahnentafel Number 15.

Any bets on how long it will take me to finish this task??! I have also written one about her father as well now, Giuseppe (Joseph) Scettrini, (Ahnentafel Number 30).