The Album That Started It All

    

Aunt Ephriam (Bea) in the early 1910s

Three years ago, I was cleaning out a cabinet in my grandparent's house when I stumbled upon something I had never seen before. It was a black photo album that belonged to my great-grandaunt, Ephriam Beaman. In my family, we always called her Aunt Bea. It was old, with a leather cover and strings holding the paper pages together.  

As I delicately opened it, I found a collection of black and white and sepia-toned photos pasted on the pages. Some were missing, some had rips, and some were starting to fade. 

   

The Album.

Who were these people? 

What stories did they have to tell? 

What were their daily lives like? 

   

Those questions flooded my mind, and from that moment, my fascination with family history began. I was curious and determined to learn more about my family and the faces in the photographs. I decided to join Ancestry and spent the summer taking the first steps into creating my family tree. 

Flash forward three years later, and I am even more passionate about family history. I'm still adding ancestors to the tree, uncovering new hints, reading books, and searching through documents and newspapers. Each discovery feels like a puzzle piece clicking into place, and there are so many things I have yet to discover. 

 I created this blog to look into the past and the lives of those who came before us in the 1800s and 1900s. My mission is to share their stories and photographs, so they will never be forgotten. If their stories are not shared, if their names are not spoken, it would be like they never existed. Future generations will never know about them. 

Thanks to that old photo album, I found a new hobby that I enjoy, and I couldn't be happier.