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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Your Family History Time Capsule

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!





Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing’s assignment this week: “Come on, everybody, join in and accept the mission and execute it with precision.”

1)   What would you put into your own "Family History Time Capsule" for your descendants to open in the future?  What would you use for the capsule?  Where would you keep it?  Who should open it?

Here's mine:

This may be the only way some of our family artifacts would be saved. I would put in:

**   Childhood items would be a troll from my troll collection, my Girl Scout vest, a Nancy Drew book, some baseball cards, high school senior yearbook, and a few miniature ceramic animals

**   Young adult items would be a Neil Diamond record, ticket stub from a San Francisco Giants game, slides taken of my first trip to England, a Great Northern HO engine, and college transcript from CSUH.

**   Beginning of married life (before children) would be manuscript of one of my young adult books, either Choices or Catch Me a Dream, some BART souvenirs (buttons & pins) and work-related items (business card, safety rule book, etc), our first CPM computer we owned (still have the monitor and printer, too).

**   Life with children would have photos of the family over the years, Girl Scout troop and camp items (I was a leader and camp director), Disneyland vacation photos, and soccer photos

**   Life post kids would have photos of European and US train trips, photos of environmental groups activities such as Friends of Alhambra Creek and California Native Plants Society, volunteer work at Contra Costa County Historical Society, BCG certification pin; all the writings I have done for the family, including any hard copies, and digital copies of images (need to give password to Backblaze where it is all backed up).

**   Historic family artifacts would include George’s wooden box and table, Joe’s bench, Amos’ chair and shaving razor, Mrs. Harden’s wooden figures (Gorrell side), Nana’s cast iron pans & wedding ring, Aunt Glee’s opera glasses, and a cookbook of my Mom (Betty Crocker) and one of my mother-in-law, Thelma (Swedish). Also a cutting board made by my husband, Norman and the shadow box made by my dad.

I would need a very large box to store all these items if I put in Amos’ chair. If I have a large enough box, then I could put in more items! This box could be kept in our basement until it is time to sell the house after we are gone. My daughters would open it. I don’t know if there will be grandchildren. I could have nieces from both sides of the family open it, so the appropriate items get passed down.

In reality, I think the best thing to do is take photos of the physical items, write a short story about each, and create a Shutterfly hard-cover book, so the memories can out-last the physical items in case they decide to sell or donate them.


Copyright © 2023 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

  1. You have a true treasure trove of items to put in your Family History Time Capsule. I like how you've categorized everything into time periods of your life.

    ReplyDelete

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