Among the many photographs from my mother’s side of the family are a few negatives, including two of glass. A quick Google search and I found this website. Apparently, there are two principal kinds of glass plate negatives: Collodion Wet Plate and Gelatine Dry Plate. I’m almost certain the negatives
Now and again I pull out one of the large plastic tubs which house the memorabilia I brought from my parent’s house. Much of the memorabilia is letters, documents and various bits of paper, written in Russian or German. There is not very much in English. If I ever have
Last year, I wrote this post about four ways to research your family history. This week I discovered the limitations of research while I was writing an essay for my study. The task was to write a short narrative on a person, place, time or event, using techniques based on
Until today it didn’t dawn on me that I am writing a memoir which could be termed historical. In my mind, my manuscript could be memoir or biography or autobiography or even creative non-fiction, but more than that, I haven’t thought about. My manuscript begins with the death of my
The word “history” has its origins in the Greek language, from words which stood for “learned”, “wise man” and “finding out”. One could almost say it is a wise man who finds out and learns about his story. I believe it is important for all of us to find out
Today I celebrated my fifty-sixth birthday and have embarked on my fifty seventh year here on earth. It got me thinking of the many things which have happened since I was born. In the 1960’s Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. Construction began on the Berlin Wall. The