If the goal of the genealogist is to collect as many records and images as possible, then the genealogist needs to talk to the keepers in the family.
And those keepers may not be genealogists. They may have an interest in their family’s history. They may not. But for one reason or another family photographs and other ephemera may have filtered through the generations into their hands. My great-aunt had the picture that illustrates this post-including her and my mother posing two family pets in 1949. Aunt Ruth wasn’t a genealogist, but she was the one who went through her mother’s effects when she (my great-grandmother) died in 1986. And so those items fell into her hands.
Another great-grandmother lived with her daughter for several years until that great-grandmother’s death in 1965. That daughter apparently retained her mother’s family pictures and those pictures passed to the daughter’s daughter when the daughter died.
Look for genealogical relatives for collaboration and networking. Look for any relative when looking for pictures and ephemera. Those items won’t necessarily land in the hands of a genealogist.
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