No piece of family history lasts forever and our possession of it does not last forever either. At some point, we leave this earthly existence and our belongings are no longer ours. They become the property of those who come after us. Sometimes that possession is short-lived–items are discarded to the trash or given to someone else who may or may not want them. Sometimes those who end up with our family history items treasure them and keep them for the next generation.
I think it’s important to not place an undue burden on those that follow us and leave them with a mountain of material behind. That’s why giving away what you can is crucial.
Like this photograph of Anna (Schildmann) Trautvetter (1849-1920). Anna was the wife of George Trautvetter (1842-1930), brother to my great-great-grandfather.
It came into my possession because a reader of the Ancestry Daily News (for which I used to write years ago), saw one of my columns that mentioned the Trautvetter name. That reader was the child of one of Anna’s adopted grandchildren. The reader’s children were not interested in the history of their adopted grandmother and the reader was concerned the photograph would get thrown out. So on the way home from a seminar in the late 1990s I met the reader in the parking lot of a mall in the Chicago suburbs and got the picture.
The scene now sounds like most sales on Facebook marketplace, but no money changed hands and social media was not involved.
I decided my children probably would not want to be burdened with the original photograph. So I went through my DNA matches on Ancestry.com and found a descendant of Anna among them. I commnicated and asked if they would be interested in the picture. They were.
And so off it goes.
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