Somebody snooping around in an old hut in Antarctica discovered some century-old negatives that were snapped during the Shackleton Expedition in 1915-17.
First of all, I’m surprised there is a little-used hut in Antarctica. It was built by Robert Falcon Scott and served as the jumping-off place for his unsuccessful 1910 expedition. It also was a life-saver for the Shackleton party when they were stranded. And much of the rest of the time it has just been sitting there.
The photos are interesting, I suppose, if you like looking at black-and-white images of grey water and bright white. Faded landscapes leave me cold, especially when the landscape in question is a glacier. Only a couple of the images feature people, and faces (for me) are the thing that can make an old photograph compelling.
I just spent the day going through boxes of crinkly old papers that had been pushed to the back of a closet, including several ancient photo albums featuring relatives I’ve never met and, I fear, will never be able to identify. Most of the images have no accompanying notes, not even a name scribbled on the back. For all I know they are members of the Shackleton expedition, stranded on some distant featureless iceberg. I guess it was expected that no one would look at these pictures without the guidance of a knowledgeable companion. I suppose that’s what we imagine when we catalog such shots in family albums – that they will be inter-generational conversation starters. But photographs can easily outlast everyone who has direct knowledge of those pictured, so when the older generation is gone and no one has taken the time to jot down a few notes, only mystery remains.
How legible is your family story?
Trail Baboon 
Good morning. I don’t even know where I have stored most of the old family pictures that have been passed down to me. Some relatives of one of my grandmothers did give me a ring binder that has some pictures that they labeled. My dad and mother told me some stories about our history that I treasurer. For the most part my family history is not very legible and is a mystery to me similar to the mysterious pictures of old relatives that you found, Dale.
LikeLike
My sister has the family collection and resists sharing. It is not that old a set. I only care about the 30 or so pictures which cover my mother’s generation and mine. I was going to do a guest blog on one of the pix of myself. Maybe if my health allows (I have barely eaten the last four days.), I will get it off to Dale this morning.
The slides my mother took during my childhood I preserved years a go with captions. My two children and my sister’s three all have a digital set. I doubt anyone of the five have looked at them.
LikeLike
I also have some pictures of my own childhood that are preserved. Most of those picture were taken by my dad and some were given to us by relatives who took pictures at family events. My mother put them into an album.
LikeLike
sorry to hear your health is getting you clyde.
the picture or two of you as a ked we have seen are great.
feel bettter and write a guest blog when you can
LikeLike
I’ve told my own story so often I shouldn’t do it again. The short version is that in 1984 I was telling family legends to my daughter in her crib one night when I had a panicky sense that the story I was telling could not be true. How could it possibly be true that my sweet little Iowa grandmother was a witness to the execution behind a movie theater of arch criminal John Dillinger? That made no sense at all. That made me doubt everything I thought I knew about my family history. I became a nag at that point, insisting that my parents document the family history. As my sister mentioned last week, that led my father to create two volumes of personal memoir. And that process ultimately led me to write my own version of my parents’ story. I spent about four years writing that book, which I look back upon as a romantic and fascinating time for me, with one retrieved memory triggering another and another. That will always remain one of the most satisfying experiences of my life.
Now that I’m cleaning out my home, I am encountering boxes and boxes of old photos. A small number will go to Portland when I leave Minnesota. Most of them will go to my sister for safekeeping.
And, by the way, it turned out that my grandmother had gone to Chicago to do a charity project. Seeking relief from the steamy heat of a July night in 1934, she went to the Biopic theater, one of the few air-conditioned buildings. My grandmother spotted Dillinger and his date before the movie began. They seemed glamorous to her, “not normal people.”
LikeLike
was forrest gump there too?
LikeLike
A serious critic of literature once told me that I have a “Forrest Gump problem” with my book. Our family has intersected lives with many well known folks: John Dillinger, FDR, Truman, Ronald Reagan, Nick Nolte, Clayton Moore, Elizabeth Taylor and others.
LikeLike
im just giving you flack steve. i think its very cool that your grandma and john dillanger went to the movies together all the time and played cards at johns house on tuesday nights . she must habve been one heck of a gal.
is that why molly is the character forest gump pursued in his story. he changed her name to jenny to hide the obvious but we all know….
LikeLike
LikeLike
My mother and aunt put together a 3-ring binder several years ago with the basic stories of my grandmother and grandfather’s lives through early marriage. This includes information about siblings (which is good, because I often get siblings swapped between the two of them). The only downside is that it starts with family in the U.S. and doesn’t have much about the family back in Norway, though I don’t think much is known there, so not too surprising. The binder includes labeled photos, also a help. There is a box of slides taken by one great aunt, most of which are not marked. We can identify her and her sister (and the odd photos that include my grandfather and grandmother), but there are many with unidentified men…almost more fun to dream up our own stories about who those men are. 🙂
My father’s side of the family is documented, at least in terms of lineages of the Bliss family, back to the 17th century. His mother’s side quickly runs to ground (as it were) – the Norwegian information starts with arrival in the U.S. and the Scots-Irish (we suspect no Scots – just snobby Protestant Irish, given the last name and attitudes towards the Irish in the 19th century) we can trace back into the 18th century, though that also requires a certain amount of supposition. Identifiable pictures past my grandparents generation are all but non-existent. Ditto any stories, save a handful.
LikeLike
my family box of pictures came into my hands about two years ago and sat on a shelf where i had intentions to do something with it but failed. my cousin the painter who just suffered an anurism that almost killed him and definately changed his brain askd for the photos to use as studies for an upcomong series of paintings. i sent the whol box and am regretting it seeing as his brain is a bit off these days it may be i just sent them off to la la land and they will never be heard of again. i grabbed a picture of my grandfather and one of his workmates who had moved to texas in the depression to find work as bricklayers. the picture is of them in beautiful suits, with great fedoras standing by a little decorative pond in fornt of their boarding house. its an odd moment in time. most of tjhe pictures in the box i sent had notes ont he back as to who was photographed. my mom does a great job of keeping track of the old photos of our family and at a recent get together to celebrate my dads birthday she borught out a box of pictures my kids had not seen before. it was great. their reaction to seeing my dad downhill skiing in his boxer shorts with his college buddies out in montana in the 40s wa exactly the same as mine the first time i saw them many years ago. pictures and the time to tell or hear the stories that go with them are magic. my dad used to love to tell the family stories and i loved to listen. my mom tells the stories of her family and i cringe. her storytelling skills are ok, her family stinks. watch out what you wish for.
LikeLike
Ironic, Dale 🙂 That’s exactly how Bill and I spent our day — on the floor surrounded by boxes of dusty old family photos and genealogical charts. Bill and I are the repository of family history for our generation and so far our two girls and their cousins have shown little interest. Too busy starting and living their lives and families, I guess.
For the most part, conversation starters they are not 🙂 Most people’s eyes glaze over when confronted with the web of family names and dates. But photos do bring life back to dry old census data. And if we are lucky enough to have letters or other personal stories and accounts, that’s treasure!
I have two 3-ring binders full of onion skin copies of letters written back and forth between my mother and grandmother between 1949 and 1966. Also handwritten character sketches of older relatives written by my paternal grandfather. I’d like to transcribe these stories and combine them with photos, to bring the photos to life again. Like Bill says — everyone in these old photos looks so dour and serious, it’s hard to reconcile those faces with an account of how Uncle So and So used to do handstands on the ridgepole of the barn!
LikeLike
Robin, I wonder how you and Bill have managed to maintain your interest in taking care of the records of your family histories? With most families scattered all over the country in places far from each other and the places where they started life, I think it has become more difficult to maintain an interest family history.
LikeLike
This blog is where Bill and I figured out we’re distant cousins. 🙂
LikeLike
seriously?
LikeLike
It’s true! Ben mentioned at some point on the trail that some ancestors had been buried in Mormon Coulee Cemetery near La Crosse, Wisconsin. I knew that that cemetery had at one point been known as Kienholz Cemetery, because of the preponderance of Kienholz family members buried there. The Kienholz clan were Swiss, from the Berne Canton. One of my great grandmothers was a Kienholz. I asked Ben if he had any Kienholz surnames in his genealogy and he did. I was able to track his back to a common relative. I think we are cousins about four times removed.
LikeLike
Correction: we are approximately fourth cousins. Possibly once removed.
LikeLike
Very cool.
LikeLike
100 miles?
LikeLike
My dad’s side of the family story is pretty good. Dad and his brother completed a family history back to the early 1800s with the first ancestors to arrive in America from England. They settled in Naperville, IL. Dad published an e-book which he sent to us kids, and I’m sure his brother and sister’s families all got a copy, too.
Mom’s side is still rather cloudy, though. No formal genealogy has been done to date, and her father I believe was born in Sweden (or Norway) and her mother’s American roots only go back maybe one more generation.
Chris in Owatonna
LikeLike
isnt it funny how the value of the pictures ahs changed. back in the days of kodachrome you tried to sit nicely for a family photo and you did your best to shoot a good wildlife scene and still life for artistic preservation. today you snap off enough to maybe get 1 or 2 good ones out of and the impromptu shots are fantastic but no one thinks anything of it. i remember seeing a documentary on football years ago and they talked about how back when the news was shown on the nwewsreels at the movie theaters in the 40s and 50s thye had highlights of the football games they would film for the highlight reels. well the head of the film crew was disgusted with all the wasted film of plays that were no big deal that never got used. dollar after dollar on the cutting room floor so he sent out an edict that only the good plays be filmed. no more of this wasteful filming of all the boring stuff. needless to say they missed all the good plays. how do you know when one is coming. that is kind of the way it is with pictures. back in the day there was so little room for catching a magic moment it was more of a bookmark in history than a celebration of life. today we have the freedom to do a gig or tow of screwing around. how many picture on a gig? is it a thousand or only a coulple hundred? i remember traveling around in that old vw van shooting roll after roll of slide film because the good ones could be transferred over. today it is kind of like that. take a few thousand shots and see if there is one you like. it can kind of be like my mos family… watch out what you wish for
LikeLike
Oh, the things of the past which I had on film. All the pictures from my childhood, few show the daily life of the farm and family.
LikeLike
Which I WISH I had on film.
LikeLike
You’re absolutely right, Clyde. People tend to bring out cameras to record “special” events rather than day-to-day reality. So we have boxes of photos of birthday parties, but there might be no pictures to reflect the lives we really led.
LikeLike
Like a lot of Baboons, my family history mostly starts with the ancestors landing in the US, in our case, when so many other Germans came to the Minnesota River Valley, around the 1870s. There is some work that has been done by one of my dad’s cousins, but even she has not been able to go back more than a generation in Germany. Someday, I would love to go to what is now Poland and see if I can find some old church records. Being from that part of the world, there is every chance that there is nothing left to find.
One of my sainted aunts took the big box of old pictures from my grandparents’ house, sorted what was confirmed and posted the whole works on Picasa. This is where my picture of my great-grandmother Tillie comes from. There is also a picture of my grandfather and a bunch of guys tapping a keg at Union Hill. I asked Dad if he thought that picture was taken before or after he was born-he figures it has to be before, which places it neatly during Prohibition :).
My mother’s side is even cloudier, although I find the oral tradition is a bit richer. I’ve done a bit of research at the Historical Society newspaper archives and have filled in some gaps here and there. I’ve also discovered a fair amount of, ahem, tidying-up has been done to some stories and some of the official census records have certain relationships just plain wrong.
LikeLike
LikeLike
Perfect.
LikeLike
I am fortunate to have two parents alive in their 90’s with most of their wits about them. I am also fortunate that my mom and other relatives always wrote on the back of photos the identity of the subjects.
LikeLike
pass it on.
LikeLike
A quirky thing has happened very recently.
My father’s ancestry is mostly unknown. I have said on here before how his birth certificate from Marathon County WI lists only a mother with “illegitimate” printed in red diagonally across it. His last name on the certificate is the same as his mother’s and not Birkholz. But in the last few months ancestry.com lists a father’s name and the name of five siblings with that last name. The last name is I suspect about as rare/common as the name Birkholz. Several people with that last name still live in the Waseau area.
Interesting, is it not, how suddenly a father’s name appears? How? Someone in that family fill it in on Ancestry.com?
But Ancestry.com has errors about him, such as listing his name as Louis on the birth certificate and all census records until 1940 when it has it as Lewis, the spelling on his certificate. It, like other family history sites, incorrectly lists my father as adopted by the father of his siblings. It misidentifies his grave location.
My brother-in-law to whom all this stuff is the defining element in is own life and seems to demand it be in mine and mys sister’s, has filled in all sorts of things for my father, like photos and military records. So I wonder if at some point he will start trying to chase this down.
LikeLike
that is quirky. you should be able to go to ansestory .com and demand to know who has been filling in all this information. they cant just create a past out of someone imagination or at leat if they do we should be made aware of it and they should be aware that we are aware.
LikeLike
OT – Wikipedia informed me that today is Christine Lavin’s birthday. Seems to call for a song…
LikeLike
Darn it, apparently Vimeo doesn’t embed like YouTube. Bah. Well, follow the link if you like. It takes you to “Bald Headed Men.”
LikeLike
I have a similar amount of ancient black and white photographs with little or no information written on the back. I ended up with another large box of these photographs during my mom’s move last September. I’ve learned to recognize some individuals in the photos, but not all. Most of them are a mystery to me. I had good intentions when I received a box of photographs after my dad passed away but I never got around to creating books or identifying all of the people portrayed. I’m wiser now. I might get around to a project like that after I have retired – which will be awhile.
My mom gave me a little book with wooden covers and onion skin paper with photos of herself as a young girl in it. She made this book when she was still very young. She wrote a simple story about her life, including the names of horses, dogs and friends. There was one picture of her younger sister, my Aunt Judy, but she didn’t identify her at all. I think it’s still much like that between them to this day. It’s a lovely little book and I’m glad to have it.
I tried to post last evening to wish all of you a happy, healthy, peaceful and joyful new year but my internet connection crashed and wouldn’t allow me to connect. This is a frequent problem here and it seems to be getting worse. I need to remember to type my posts in MS Word so that they don’t vanish permanently into cyberspace. Anyway, I hope you are all well and happy and that life is much as you like it, today and for the coming year. I will try to be here more often.
LikeLike
welcome back krista
happy new year to you
LikeLike
P.S. Welcome back, Blevins!
LikeLike
Blevins looks like he has some serious periodontal issues.
LikeLike
I find it somewhat haunting to view the many sepia-toned photos of my 3-year old mother praying over the bassinet of her newborn brother as well as countless other images of the now deceased ancestors from the family line. My grandfather was the small town Manchester, Iowa’s primary photographer, so there are tons of black & white pictures of me and Steve as mostly young children. I’d love to share a couple of these with the Baboons if only I knew how (does emailing them to Dale allow this to happen?).
My grandfather (mother’s side) was notorious for many things, one of which was being the first on the scene of grissly car accidents, taking pictures of dead people in coffins, and publishing photos of dying children. Well, I guess somebody had to do it? Apparently, during that period of history, the whole town wanted to view such sad events.
I can still recall the day my grandfather was forced to resign as Manchester’s only photographer. It was during my annual two-week visit with my grandparents. He’d retreated into their basement to develop more prints when we heard loud noises. He’d had a major stroke and just couldn’t function any longer. This was so sad, yet inevitable.
I personally have had the luxury of my brother being the family historian. This is good because my few memories of childhood were, according to him, quite inaccurate! All I know for sure is that whatever I’ve recalled was indeed that which I experienced as a child and, unfortunately, those experiences were flooded with emotions. This has left me with “emotional memories” rather than contextual memories.
LikeLike
yes cb dale can get your pictures on the blog. write a couple of guest blogs to go with them. go ahead and write a couple of stories where steve and president truman are pitching horseshoes out behingd the gas station when john dillanger and your grandmother pull up and set up the card table i love the terms contextual memories and emotional memories.
LikeLike
My mom has been into genealogy for many years and periodically passes on information to her children. I’m pretty sure she has a boatload of genealogical papers. I feel bad (well, maybe not that bad – maybe I feel bad that I dont feel bad) that I don’t care too much about it, but there are some cool stories about my ancestors. My dad did some genealogy stuff, too, but not as much as my mom.
LikeLike
i didnt care about it at all until i went to ireland and found out that my people came form specific places and everyone in ireland knew my family histories better than i did. got me looking now 25 years later i am ready to go back
LikeLike
Don’t feel bad, Edith! I’m just getting back to this for the first time since 1990. It’s interesting, but frankly, not as important as living your own life fully. For myself, I kind of burned out on it after two years of non-stop research. Now I’m back into the flow, mostly interested in the stories I’ll uncover in my grandmother’s letters and personal notes which I’ve never read.
LikeLike
Hi–
While I haven’t had much time for contributing lately I am still trying to read. Although it may be several days after the fact. Next week I’ll be back in the regular work schedule and should be a little more regular again. (And thanks for including me in the predictions. I’ll do my best to hold up my end of the deal.)
Regarding family, I remember Mom and Dad getting the box of old black and white photos out of the store room every now and then and spreading them out on the kitchen table. Imagine our kids gathered around the hologram trying to read the floppy disk… … … ?? And they still won’t have any labels on them.
Dad’s side of the family never did talk. Mom’s side of the family has a pretty good history back to Switzerland in the 1800’s.
Kelly’s family doesn’t have much. But her uncle’s mother was a Fuller and could trace other Fullers back to the Mayflower I think. I’ve got a file downstairs of her records.
My mom and Dad both wrote their personal histories and gave them to us as Christmas gifts a few years ago. Updates come occasionally. This past Christmas my brother conducted some interviews with Dad. But at 88 with some health issues his facts are starting to shift. We have always said our farm was founded in 1895 (and I have the abstract to prove it) but in his latest version we settled in 1896. Well, what’s a year among family.
He also told a story I’d never heard before about Great Grandpa’s brother coming over too; Grandpa became ‘Hain’ while the brother remained ‘Hein’. Hmmmm, never heard that story before…
But I could make some thing up if you like.
LikeLike
We had an old house in North Mankato. It had a long yellowed abstract. It however did not agree with itself on dates.
LikeLike
i screwed up and did not get on the ball when the historians were alive but i may be able to pick up a few peices because my great grandfather was a guy of note sort of. he is as close as i come to forrest gump. he discovered and named jim thorp at the indian school the us government shipp all those damned indians off to. he was a damned indian himself and had made a very conscious decision to do a great job of making the most his opportunities because a good job would not be enough to get him over the bumps in the trail caused by being an indian at the turn of the last century. he ended up becoming the county attourney p at leach lake in order to help look after the troubled indian population up there. he lived an exemplary life and i would like to put it in order and document it for my own gratification and as a story of inspiration
LikeLike
When I did genealogy research I learned that most of my ancestors were totally boring or maybe just skilled at passing for boring. But my daughter had a friend, Leah, whose family was apparently more colorful.
Once Leah was standing in a checkout line at Target with her dad. Her dad said, “That guy ahead of us, the one in the blue shirt, that’s your grandfather.” Leah was stunned. No grandfather had ever been mentioned. The man ahead of them looked back with a feral expression and said nothing. Leah’s dad explained that this grandfather had done things during Prohibition that were unforgivable, so he was in effect removed from the family.
LikeLike
i have a sister like that
LikeLike
I will be forever grateful to my grandmother’s sister, my Great Aunt Ellen, who wrote a little biography that included my grandma’s arrival in America. Other than that, there are a couple of tapes of my grandma and my aunt telling their memories, but <I can't find them! I imagine they will surface when I’ve gone through all my mom’s things that are in our basement since her last move.
LikeLike
We are rather dependent on the honesty of our forebears when we repeat the family stories, aren’t we?
My father’s family history doesn’t go back very far at all. His parents, my grandparents, always said that they met in the orphanage where they were both raised. My grandfather also had a brother, and the brother and his wife always said that they met in the orphanage where they were both raised. This could have been entirely true. Or it could have been entirely invention. The town where the orphanage was alleged to have been (in Germany) no longer exists, so there’s no way to verify anything. We don’t, in fact, know for sure whether my grandfather and his “brother” were really related by blood, or whether they chose to adopt each other as family, or whether they were told by their caregivers that they were related, and accepted that as fact.
Children who were brought up in orphanages during my grandparents’ time were often born out of wedlock. They may not have known anything about their true parentage. But I don’t suppose it really matters that much.
LikeLike
Families used to keep secrets better than they do now. Scandals were considered more scandalous, less forgivable. People knew dark stuff that they just never talked about. In my erstwife’s conservative Catholic family (her dad’s side) there was an unmarried aunt who raised an adopted child. Only the child wasn’t adopted; he was her own son, fathered by a mysterious fellow whose name was known by just a few family members. And they weren’t talking.
LikeLike
“Like!”
LikeLike
i had a family friend who i grew up with who was an adopted kid along with his brother. his parents gave them up and they were old enough to be able to ask the adoptive family if they could keep their last name as a middle name. the family who adopted them were a stoic clan who didnt show a lot of love and emotion and though the boys were appreciative at being able to grow up together they had some weird baggage from being raised as other than family people. my firend ended up adopting his own history and saying that he and his family had always been nebraska backers and followers of the cornhuskers. he wa a model railroading guy who loved theater and jazz, he was the most opinionated sob you would ever want to meet. i think part of his issue was that he was obviously of jewish decent and raised luthern married catholic and he just made it up as he went along. he had no way to go back and learn about his past. he was funny as anyone i have ever met but emotionally a basket case. he was the kid in the family even as or especially as the parent in his household. as a kid it never occurred to me family issues or lack thereof had anything to do with it but as i look back i think he was so devastated by being sent away as the family was dismantled in his youth that he had a hard time. im sure there could have been other reasons but he was such a fun guy, but totally made up individual it was hard to understand as a kid and hard to identify as a young adult and none of my damn business as he did his death spiral 15 or 20 years ago. being frm a screwed up family can take its toll. but as my office/work partner says, we are all form screwed up families its just a matter of how and in what way. your job is to deal with it.
LikeLike