A Tribute To Those Who Have Come Before Us
For our wedding, I knew I wanted to include some of our old family photos. After rattling my brain for ideas on how I wanted to do this, I had seen something similar to a display of photos like this, and used it to display our family photos.
It was one of my favorite pieces of decor at the wedding, because it felt like a part of us, and where we come from.
"Family history" used to be two words I used to hear all the time that would bring a dull ring to my ears. It was almost like I felt like I was aging 30 years every time I heard it, seriously. I used to think that family history had to be coming in second to watching an internet explorer page try to load in terms of how boring and slow it could be. I knew it was important to do and learn about, and it took the inner 80 year old woman in me to muster any kind of desire to even try to learn, but I did. And guess what, I LOVED IT. I could shout it from the rooftops every day that I LOVE FAMILY HISTORY. I soon realized that hey, maybe this whole family history isn't for the 80 year old ladies, but maybe I have a part to contribute. The more I learned how to do it, and the more of a groove I got of it, it started to go so rapidly, I couldn't keep up with with it. There are so many gosh darn people on this planet who have ever lived, and I literally cannot even add every single person to my family tree that I'm related to, because it never ends.
I have had so much fun not only finding who's related to who and all that, but finding cool stories about them. One of the weirdest things ever was, I was going through a bunch of old family photos I had taken pictures and uploaded and found this photo, taken by the Denver Post in 1909:
The two people on the right are my great-great-great grandparents on my Dad's side, Douglas Titus and Angeline Richards. Douglas was one of the first licensed pharmacists in Colorado, and opened up a drug store in Deer Trail. Luckily on the back of the picture, there were names and information about when each of them were born. The two people on the right were Harry Rhoads and Julia Knapp. I was unsure if they were cousins, or friends or whatever. So for fun I just searched them on family search, and sure enough there they were. This, along with the other photos, were the first pictures ever uploaded of them on there. There's an option to "show my relationship to this person" which shows your family tree linking you to a person, and how you're related to someone, and sure enough I was related to Julia. But it wasn't that they were related to the Titus', but to my MOM's side. She was like a second cousin to my great great grandmother. It's weird to me to think that these friends would one day be related many generations down by my parents getting married.
See, this is the cool thing about family history. You get a look into your past, where you come from, cool stories about your family, etc. I love it so much, and guess what, ya'll can do it for FREENINETYNINE on www.familysearch.org. So no more excuses, go do it.