With only six months to live Dad started jotting on the backs of photos, tagging notes to articles he’d published and putting prized paper keepsakes in envelopes with a note on the front. He didn’t have a family classification scheme and for months after his death I’d come across keepsake envelopes within his business papers, or in tins with other mementos and even in his workshop.
Finding a message in a bottle would stop me in my tracks and send me off looking for other related information, or go searching through photos for other evidence. Dad’s time was well spent as the envelopes he’d written on brought a sense of who I was and an appreciation of how time had passed in bringing these keepsakes into my eternal care.
Imagine then how this person felt discovering this external document neatly kept in an envelope.
It would have taken my breath away for the rest of the day.
Granted Dad never left an envelope as exciting as the one featured above, but for our own sense of family belonging the items he did document are priceless for my family. Having the Family Knowledge Process to scan and keep a virtual copy has removed my anxiety of having all Dad’s envelopes scattered throughout the house.
What have your past ancestors left your family in an envelope that your family discovered after they had passed away?
1918 Archibald McLean sending a silk handkerchief to his daughter.