4 Tips for Preserving The History Of Your Family
Most people aren’t entirely sure about their entire family lineage, as after all, genealogy and the preservation of familial and historical records were a privilege adopted by royal families and wealthy individuals far before this became normalized for common folk.
It’s easy to wonder what those people generations from now will think about us today, and our thousands of digital pictures taken yearly. A good way to preserve the history of your family is to first find it out. This is why many ancestry services have exploded in popularity because they help us feel an anchor to the past rather than emanating from it with nothing but a mystery.
Everyone serves as an ambassador for their own family, and for this reason, it can be healthy to pass that legacy down. Sure, your story might not be as privileged as those in palaces and at the top of ‘civilized society,’ but we believe your story is worth telling, and now there are more ways than ever to tell it. Here are a few tips for achieving exactly that:
Photographic Restoration
Some people keep photographs of their near ancestors and do so with care, but unfortunately, printed materials like this can fade and over time, will not be as easy to identify as before. However, with new technologies, photo restoration has become a prominent and worthwhile service to use.
It might be that seeing your grandparents in rich color once again can help you truly see them as people rather than two-dimensional figures in a photograph. It could be that the small tears and distress that the photograph receives gains a new life and new details when given the attention such a pursuit deserves. In the long run, you may be shocked as to how effective such an outcome can be.
Ancestry Reports
Of course, for many people ancestry hunting has allowed them to discover the histories of people they were descended from, for better or for worse. Yet there’s no way to suggest that this is anything other than exhilarating and very revealing, potentially even helping you realize you have blood connections to cultures and counties you had no idea you shared anything in common with.
Ancestry reports look through historical records, measures of note, contextual information, and more to determine what aresa you may wish to look into. You can attend to this work yourself of course, but it’s also helpful to use services that can abet this administrative task more readily. Furthermore, DNA testing providers have also been able to offer estimates on the kind of cultures you may hail from, identifying the percentages that matter. It could be that you’re 5% comprised of a culture you had never really thought of before. This can open our minds, and make even the most hard-headed person realize (as if we needed further proof) just how silly any form of discrimination is.
Keepsakes & Soul Items
It’s good to preserve goods that you feel are the most important so that your descendants if you’re lucky enough to have them, might enjoy them just as much as you did. Your grandfather’s watch, for example, could be refitted, preserved, and placed in a keepsake box or time capsule so that later on you may hand this down to those you care about.
Of course, in some cases, it might be that providing gifts within your own family can make all that difference, too. If coming into possession of your great-grandmother’s engagement ring, for example, you may wish to have this professionally cleaned and repaired and then provide it to your younger sibling who may be gearing up to propose to their true love. This is a lovely means of passing down the legacy of your family while also ensuring that you don’t simply consider everything to be an antique, but also an object that can be used and appreciated today.
Small Creations & Tokens
Passing down your own contribution to your family’s history can be worthwhile. If you know that your family name has a motto behind it, for instance, then it could be having this made into a small plaque with a coat of arms you designed could be a fun way of ‘branding’ your family – an approach that might seem quite antiquated now but is no less enjoyable and proud.
Don’t forget, you’re a part of your family history too, perhaps the most important part because you’re actually here now. As such, you have the freedom to make these decisions, provided you also couple that with respect and care.
With this advice, we hope you can continue to preserve the history and legacy of your family, no matter how humble or grand this is.
