I've been working on a research project that's led me to wander through newspaper archives from the 1920s. The front page articles and writing styles have distracted more than I care to admit and I've found a few things our modern newspapers are tragically missing-birth announcements.
As important as our current obituaries, in the past, birth announcements received just as much ink. The birth of babies of prominent and regular families alike were celebrated with hundreds of words, or sometimes, just a few endearing ones.
Today, we are hard pressed to find birth announcements at all. Parents at our local hospital can chose whether or not to have their baby's birth announcement in the paper and many are declining for the sake of privacy, I assume. One OB nurse I interviewed estimated that only one in five new mothers are choosing to have the vitals of their baby submitted to our hometown paper. Even then, if printed, the information is not archived online.
So for the sake of our posterity and those invested in family history, genealogy or any research project, let's up the importance of publishing and digitally archiving birth announcements along with obituaries and everthing else on the front page on a newspaper.
Another revelation I've had while researching this year is the importance of safe, yet accessible space for historical documents and especially personal histories that memorialize history like no other.
Last summer, I visited several small town libraries in Utah and was impressed to find a treasure trove of personal histories written by hand, photocopied in rudimentary books or professionally bound like novels that were all protected with white gloves and glass walls. Most volumes seemed to be a retirement project or holiday gift to extended family with an extra copy donated to the local library. Even as an outsider, history came alive in colorful fashion when written by the hand of one who lived it.
Recently, a friend let me borrow an original typewritten family history where one of seven sisters with writing talents wrote 200 pages on her family's adventures. Each long chapter was from the perspective of each sibling.
Her writing was vivid enough that I could imagine the details of baby births, house burnings, road building, weekend dances and marriage ceremonies from the early 1900s. Her tales were more telling than any textbook and helped me appreciate the past and present. I wish the stories were available to others, especially school age children. But sady, the solitary version of the book with duct tape as binding sits gathering dust on my friend's shelf.
So, here are a few suggestions for those needing a project while the snow flies:
Record your family's history or create an electronic copy of one previously written.
Put the text on a family website or blog so that the stories will be digitally accessible. (Your middle school aged granddaughter can help you with that, if you have one.)Submit a copy of your work to your local library, the LDS Church's Family History Library, museum or to the Daughter's of Utah Pioneers or Sons of Utah Pioneers.
Do the same with photographs. Buy a scanner for Christmas and have techno-savvy relatives help you scan family photos and publish them online. Or if you don't know what to do with family photographs of local importance, label each one the best you can and donate them to a local organization with safe storage.
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