Scan Those Old Photos and Documents - Old Bixenman Photos

Do you have old family photos and documents sitting around in a box in a closet somewhere? I guarantee that even if you're not interested in them, someone is! Please either scan them in to your computer or contact your family historian (If you're related to me, that would be me!) and get them scanned in.

Why do I feel it's important? I have two good reasons. First, to share the old family photos with others in the family! In the past, you'd have to worry about the price of duplicating a photo and physically sending a copy to whoever would like a copy. Now, the only cost is your time. The second reason is to preserve history. What would happen if tragedy happened and you lost your house to fire, flood or tornado? Those family photos would be gone!

Finally, once you get them scanned in, make certain to back them up! Write them to a CD or DVD and mail them to other family members! Put them on a blog or website! What I do is use Bittorrent Sync to automatically back up my family history documentation folder to relatives who volunteer to be the backup location in order to also have a copy of it. You can see my writeup about this program here.

I enjoy bringing my flat-bed scanner to relatives' houses and scanning in their old photos and documents. As I scan them in, I create a text file documenting who is in each photo. This way I can document who they are as I enter them into my family history database.

Old Newspapers

I was looking through a microfilm containing images of old Carthage, Illinois newspapers, hoping to find some information regarding my Doran family line. Unfortunately, all I could find was Fanny (Doran) Neason being listed on delinquent tax rolls. Given the size and frequency of these lists, it doesn't appear unusual for someone to be listed on them.

Searching through old newspapers on microfilm can be difficult. The small text, being not too dark on the paper and slightly out of focus for the imaging makes for strained eyes. Add to that ads mixed in with articles where you can't tell very well what is an article, what is opinion and what is an ad, very few headlines and wording that can be labored and it makes for a long night looking at these pages. However, sometimes you can find some good information.

Where can you find old newspaper articles? There are several newspaper archive web sites: