Organize Your Family History

On November 13, 2020 I wrote these words in a blog post about Stacy Julian’s method for going through a box of family photos, documents and memorabilia.

“When I drove to Walla Walla in September, I took the opportunity to bring home a box of family stuff. It’s not so much documents as photos, but I intend to use Stacy’s framework as I go through it.”

Nine months later, I finally opened that box this past weekend. I was excited to use Stacy’s method, which I had first heard about in her terrific 2020 RootsTech presentation. I decided to go through each of Stacy’s five steps and blog about each step after I finished it.

The first step is to sort the contents of the box into five categories:

1. Picture Stuff
2. Written Stuff
3. Document Stuff
4. Memorabilia Stuff
5. Dimensional Stuff

I had an unused Elfa rolling  file cart and I rolled it to my workspace. I used sticky notes to label the folders. Here’s how it looked right before I started sorting:

It took me only 30 minutes to sort the entire contents of the box. As I had expected, the box contained primarily photos. I was able to tell by the handwriting on the back of many of them that at least some of the contents of the box had come from my grandmother, Susie Jeffries Brown, after she passed away in 1999. It was so touching to handle these items and remember my grandmother. (Today is my grandmother’s birthday! She was born 24 Aug 1908.) Some of the photos were framed in paper folders or wood or metal frames and I created a second Picture Stuff folder to contain those.

In addition to photos, there were some newspaper articles, as well as some other written items, including my parents’ wedding vows. (Those went into Written Stuff folder.) There were a few books, including an illustrated edition of Aesop’s Fables that had been given to my grandfather, Crawford Brown (1906-1996) in 1914. It was a Christmas gift from his grandmother, Antoinette Garlock Brown (1855-1922).

There was also a collection of the embroidery pieces I created as a kid and gave to my grandmother. She had framed them and hung them on the wall of the apartment she shared with my grandfather in their retirement home. (How sweet is that?) That’s a photo of one of them at the top of the post. The Elfa file cart has two drawers on the bottom and I ended up using both of them to hold all the dimensional stuff.

I worked hard not to spend a lot of time on individual items. The goal was to simply sort them to make them accessible. And it felt great. I can’t wait to dig in to the individual pieces.

In the next step, I will take a closer look at each document and assess value and usefulness of each item, according to Stacy’s methodology, which is detailed in her post, How to BEGIN with the BOX, on StacyJulian.com. I’ll blog about step two as soon as I finish it!

Here’s my post on step two!