I’m not sure if I’m in the right sub so please direct me to the correct place if I am not. While home for Thanksgiving, I’ve been going through a box of family history records that my grandmother put together before she died. She died in 1998 but no one ever went through the box (until now).
The box is full of photographs and newspaper clipping from the 1920s to 1980s, as well as letters and other artifacts. There’s a NY drivers license from 1918, a page of the New York Times from 1929, and a handwritten family history - and I’m not even halfway through the box! They are literally the oldest photos I’ve ever seen.
My question is: what do I do with all this stuff? I want to preserve it and compile it in a way that allows people to trace the history through the generations, but I don’t even know where to begin. Or maybe the best course of action is to just put it all back in the box for the next generation?
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Edit: Finished going through the box and the oldest photos I found are dated c.1866! There are description on the back of the photos but they’re all written in German.
The gold standard would be to scan them at a relatively high dpi as TIFF images. The documents could then be stored in a dry dark place in acid-free folders. Scanning can take a long time, but it is a great idea because the images can be shared with family and no one will need to handle the original images.
There is an outside chance that a local historical society or archive would be sufficiently interested in the material to do the scanning so they can have access to the images. Most likely they would want the originals, but sometimes these repositories are willing to respond to a gift by giving the donor electronic copies of the images.
In general, something like the page from the New York Times in 1929 is not of interest - the newspaper is available digitally already, so there is nothing to be gained by scanning it. If you wish to keep it as a keepsake, an acid-free folder is the answer. Newspapers are particularly vulnerable to light and acids. The photographs and other documents are what is unique to your family story. That's where you want to focus your time.
Decades ago, I helped an old man who had uncovered a wealth of material in the attic of his family home (dating to 1875). He allowed me to photocopy the material (in an age when scanning wasn't possible), and those copies are now curated in a local historical facility. This article - go to page 300 - about the McCarthy family can provide an example of what can be done. In this case, I made a great deal of a photo from 1875 that included a Gaelic inscription on the back.
In addition, this man allowed me to borrow and document a communion wafer press - his grandfather was a blacksmith who made the wafer press for the local Daughters of Charity so they could supply wafers to the local church for Mass.
If he had not come to me with his discoveries, this material would have been lost from the historical record.
I hope this helps. Best of luck with all of it!