Thursday, October 28, 2010

If I Had a Genealogy Time Machine, Thanks Lorine

Thank you Lorine over at Olive Tree Genealogy Blog for your post If I Had a Genealogy Time Machine....



This sounded like such a fun game, it may become a regular post here at Genealogy Fun, hope you don't mind. The following was copied from Olive Tree Genealogy Blog
 We call it "If I had a Time Machine..." and it requires you to say what you would do (genealogy-wise only) if you could travel back in time.
The rules are that you can't save a life, and you can't ask questions of your ancestors. In other words, no interaction with the people in the past. You also cannot bring a camera or scanner with you!


But you *can* rescue objects (a family bible, church records, trunk full of family documents....) and you *can* bring one item back with you to study in the present. http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/10/if-i-had-genealogy-time-machine.html
The first thing that came to my mind was a scrapbook my Aunt showed me about a year before she died. I'm not sure if she or my Grandmother put the book together. I'm not sure how much genealogy information could be gained from the scrapbook. I thought of this book because it was such a special scrapbook of pictures of my Uncle Eugene who died in World War II. There was a newspaper clipping saying that Eugene had been killed and a church program from the Memorial service which they had for all the young men who died during the War.
To follow the rules of the game, I can't ask questions, so I can't go back and ask my Aunt for the scrapbook. I can't take a camera or scanner to copy the book. I can rescue objects (scrapbook) and bring it back to the present. Here's my problem, I wouldn't want to go back to the day my Aunt showed it to me and just take it.
Wow! So maybe go back to the day the scrapbook was completed and "rescue" it, bring it to the present.

To be honest I would be happy with copies of the things in the scrapbook, but no one knows anything about the book. It would be a genealogy treasure to have this book or the information in it as a tribute to Uncle Eugene to pass down to future generations. I just hope that where ever the book is now it is seen as a treasure.

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