GeneaBabble

In my last post I mentioned how important it is to document any family history that you may know. Well, I decided to finally go through all of my dad’s old letters. Letters, for those of you who don’t know or don’t remember, are how people used to communicate in the old days. See, people would write on a material called paper with some sort of writing implement, usually a pen or pencil. In later periods they would use typewriters which are like big noisy keyboards. Then they would put them into an envelope and put a mailing address on them. The letters were then taken to a mysterious place called the Post Office where they were delivered by rugged men through all kinds of nuisance.

Er.. so, anyway… I now realize that the task of reading all these letters and documenting the history in them could take years! I mean, I’ve just looked through the first box and there’s hundreds of letters! What have I gotten myself into?

On the bright side, it’s giving me a much deeper appreciation of my dad’s life. I can see where he was and what he was doing year by year. Also, I’m very fortunate to not only have the letters that his parents wrote to him, but all the letters he wrote to them! I guess after they passed away he must have recovered them. So, although it will be more work, I can reconstruct his correspondence with his parents over the course of more than 20 years.

So, while I have a lot of work ahead of me I’m very glad that he saved what other people might consider “junk.” And I really love that “old letter smell.”