Schulteis/Siegl/Wolf/Ott Family Newsletter Heritage Background Information/Picture Gathering For Those Who Will Follow To summarize: For each person: Full name of person and full name of parents including mother's maiden name with birth dates and locations if possible. A portrait picture. Bear with me a bit as I try to explain. The book or CD that will be created is intended for your great-grandchildren and beyond. Your great-grandchildren will never remember or have had the pleasure of touching your hand and giving you a hug. For that matter, they will not see you. That is where the pictures come into play, they breach this gap. For a portrait picture, choose the image you would like for your great-grandchildren to remembered you by. I will use for sure, two portrait pictures, "the picture" and a contrasting picture. If "the picture" shows the person at the age of 20, the contrasting picture would show them later in life say when they are 60 or 70. On the other hand, if "the picture" shows the person at the age of 60, the contrasting picture would show them when they are say 18-25. Consider: high school graduation picture, wedding portrait picture. Birth - date, place, location. Such as, St. Mary Hospital, Mequon, Ozaukee County, Wisconsin. (consider time of delivery, weight, length, color of eyes and hair, the delivering physician) Marriage - date, place, location. Such as St. Boniface Catholic Church, Germantown, Washington County, Wisconsin. (consider identifying officiant, witnesses, wedding party-relationships) Death - date, place, location. Such as Community Memorial Hospital, Menomonee Falls, Waukesha County, Wisconsin (consider identifying time of death, attending physician, share their obituary) Burial - date, place, location. Such as Last Home Cemetery, Germantown, Washington County, Wisconsin (cremation?) Schooling - grade, high school, college/technical, other Military Service - date entered/discharged, branch of service, units served in, rank/grade, MOS Occupation - position/employer For each family: Family Picture. Year date the picture if possible If you have a choice of family pictures, chose one when your children are in their teens. If your children are married and have children, also chose one of "the family," that is, one showing you, your extended family including spouses and grandchildren. Your great-grandchildren will appreciate this. If more than ten other pictures are provided, an attempt will be made to include a "memories" page (collage). Consider the following for pictures: 6-10 years of age high school graduation When married or around 30 years 50 years of age 70-90 years of age if that lucky In essence your life history in pictures. From the book American Album by Oliver Jensen, Joan Paterson Kerr and Murray Belsky, 1968 and 1985: "A photograph is indeed the living past, as neither words nor art can ever be, however cunnungly contrived. There before you, frozen forever, is the light that fell on a human face-someone you loved, or someone you never new; an ancestor or a fameous man, or someone quite unknown-but there he is, true to the life: the odd hair, the unblinking eyes, the funny collar. The light that fell on that face reaches us a century later, bringing with it a precisely truthful image of what our eyes would have seen from the same vantage point, down to the last wrinkle." Background: This document is provided as a guide to saving pictures and documenting background information for an individual. First, let's discuss why we actually do this. Do we do this for our children? Not necessarily, for they already know you both for what you have done and what you look like now, but they may not know what you looked like before they can remember. Do we do it for our grandchildren? Yes, we do, although most were able to share with you a portion of their life. Do we do it for our great-grandchildren? Yes, we do it for them and for the generations that follow. It is these generations, who have never seen us, that we do it for. So when we record information about you, we do it for your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, and your great-grandnephews and great-grandnieces. Lets look at photographs. View this through your eyes as you focus on your great-grandparents. You would be interested in milestone photographs: when your great-grandparents were small, First Communion, high school graduation picture, a picture in their 20's, mid life, when they were elders. Most definitely of interest would be a wedding picture and a family picture. Other pictures of interest would be photographs when they were enjoying their favorite activity or hobby. A family photo when their children were in their teens, and a family photo including grandchildren completes a pictorial view of their lives. All these photographs allow us to mentally embrace our grandparents/great-grandparents even though they may no longer are with us. It allows us to compare ourselves to them as we progress through our lives. These "milestone photographs" allow our grandparents and great-grandparents, who have departed, to be with us today. Each of us may have hundreds of photographs that are important to us today. However, it is the "milestone photographs" that are important to our grandchildren and our grandchildrens children for them to cherish as part of their family heritage. Will also include a one or two page collage of pictures. Your choice of pictures; 10 for one page and 15 for two pages. These numbers give some room in organizing the page. Of these, possible six to twelve pictures will actually be used. It is important that you identify these pictures; year taken, who is pictured. The further back in time we go, the more difficult it is to pictorially embrace our ancestors. The reason for this is there are just not many photographs available. Photographs back in the late 1800s and early 1900s were either too expensive or families did not have a camera. While some of these photographs may have been destroyed, many still do exist. It is important for our heritage that these "old" photographs be shared with the family! The photographs being held by our grandparents, our granduncles, and grandaunts are important. They need to know that we are interested in our heritage and we would like for them to share their photos with us. To those of us who may be grandparents, granduncles or grandaunts, it is important that we identify whose images are on these photographs. We may be the only one in our family that can do so. It is important to date the photographs and identify where the photo was taken. Photographs are our mental road to the past. Words added to these photos provide us with a road map. This is an important part of our heritage and we need to take the time to pass this history on to those generations that follow us. Background Information Your great-grandchildren will be looking for role models and you can be one. But, if your great-grandchildren do not know about you, how can they be like you? Following is some information that will identify who you were. Some information identifies what you accomplished. Put it all together and it becomes your biography, which you will pass along. You personally may not be able to pass this information along to your great-grandchildren. Someone will have to do this for you. That is where I can help, if you wish, so keep me in mind and pass on to me that which I can pass on to them. It is by far the easiest for you to document who you are, or who your parents were, or who your grandparents were. If you think this effort is difficult, and it is, think of how others see the effort, and they have no incentive to do so. To put this into perspective, it took a week of effort over a several month period to develop a narrative on my grandparents. As my memory of the past is not that great, I collaborated with my siblings which helped greatly. The same for my parents, but in this case, my sister Judy sat down with my Father on several occasions to gather background information on he and our mom. Things of this nature do not happen by themselves, you have to take the initiative. Birth Date; Where; Location; Time Of Day: Weight; Length; Color of Eyes, Hair; Attending Physician; Child Number; Father, Birth Date, Where: Mother, Birth Date, Where: Marriage Date; Where; Location: Spouse: Officiant: Witnesses/Attendants-Relationships: Divorce - Date; Where; Location; By Whom: Death - Date; Where; Location (can you share an obituary?) Burial - Date; Where; Location: - Cremated? Education Grade School, Where, Location, Year Graduated: High School, Where, Location, Year Graduated: (you may wish to include the notes about you from your school year book) College/Technical, Other: Where, Location, Year Graduated, Course of Study, Degree: Hobbies/Interests Awards - Name, Year, Location, Who Conferred, Reason: Military Service Branch of Service: Date, Location Entered: Date, Location Discharged: Rank/Grade Upon Discharge: Units Served In, Locations, Dates: MOS: Military Occupation Speciality Occupation(s) Employment History - Company, Location, Position: Residence History Civic Positions Held - Year, Positions, Location, Background: Associations (such as Knights of Columbus, Rotary Club, Humane Society, ...) Name, Year Joined, How Long Associated, Positions Held, Location: Baptism - Date; Where; Location; By Whom; Godparents-Relationship: First Communion - Date; Where; Location: Confirmation - Date; Where; Location; By Whom; Sponsor-Relationship: Other Items of Interest - Religion; Family Church; Other: Adult Status - say in your 40s, Weight, Height; Color Hair, Eyes: Donald Schulteis 5707 Still Forest Drive Dallas, TX 75252-4916 genalogy@sbcglobal.net