A few weeks ago, I was doing something and for some reason I decided to Google my grandmother's name. The expected things popped up; links to her obituary, the Find A Grave link, and some trees on Ancestry. What I didn't expect was to see her name connected to a weather forum chat link. Being the curious person that I am, I clicked on it and am so glad I did!
The person that had written the original post had been a student of my grandmother's when she was teaching first grade many years ago. The post was a nice tribute to her and included her obituary. What was even better was that someone else had commented on this post looking for members of the family because he had pictures of them that he would like to return! I tried to reply to the comment but I couldn't because I wasn't a member of the site. I set up an account asap but it took several days before I was able to comment. However, once I did, this kind gentleman answered me right back.
Several years earlier, he was helping to clean out a storage closet in his church and came across a box of old pictures, letters, and documents. Some of the pictures were labeled, some were not. As he put it, "being one of the more mature members of the church I was given the job of caretaker of this box". It had nothing to do with the church and no one recognized any of the names so they were going to throw it out. This church (and where the gentleman lives) is no where near anywhere my grandparents have ever lived. However, this gentleman is deep into genealogy and knew that there might be family members that would love to have these things. Turns out, he was right. It took him several years of just keeping his eyes out and searching the names on sites like Ancestry, Find A Grave, and Googling them occasionally, but he's found someone from almost all of the families that were happy to have what he had found. Mine was one of the last. Unfortunately, a lot of the photos weren't labeled and he has no way of knowing who to give them to. Thank goodness my grandmother was so very good about labeling her photos!! I'm sure she had sent these photos to friends (possibly family but I don't know who it could have been) back in the 1940's.
There were three photos, one of which I'd never seen. After looking through the box again to make sure he wasn't overlooking anything, he put them in the mail. I received them yesterday and was like a little kid in a candy store when I saw that envelope in my mailbox. Yes, I had seen two of them before. Yes, I knew what they looked like (he had emailed me copies). No, I'm not going to do anything spectacular with them. But the route they took to get to me absolutely amazes me. Technically, you could say it started with my grandmother mailing those photos 60 some odd years ago but for me, it started with a Google search!
Every family has skeletons in their closet and hidden treasures waiting to be found; I hope to discover all of mine!
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