Family Historian

I am the self appointed family historian. I want to know my family's roots. I have filled a book chronicling the arrival from Europe. I have documents and pictures to match. Yesterday at my parents house my sister found a red box. Inside it was a picture album that my mother meticulously put together. The pictures are from 1935 on. They show her family from teenage years until young adulthood. There are pictures of people I had never seen before. By putting together the stories I know, I can put names to the faces. I will place each photograph into my Family History book and clearly label who the people are. So many people have unlabeled pictures that are tossed away because no one knows who the people are. A cousin of mine from California sent me all of the pictures of her parents and our mutual grandparents and great-grand parents. She is a widow who never had children and for years worried that these precious pictures would be tossed in the garbage when she died. She now knows that they will be kept in a book to be passed on to my grandchildren. I feel a connection to my ancestors. I see my face in theirs. I will try to keep their memories alive.