Merry Christmas!

Callie May Fenity Keats

Violet Greene Baker (far right) with daughter Judy Faye Baker (far left)

Judy Faye Baker Keats (back) with Darlene Keats (middle)

Violet Greene Phelps (remarried)

Callie May Fenity Keats

Callie May Fenity Keats

Click here to view her memorial on Find a Grave

I'm thankful that I have such a great family who is willing to share their photos with me. So many of the treasures I have now wouldn't exist if family wasn't so important to them. This is yet another gem from the geriatric fiesta I had at my great aunt Shirley's house.

Woolworth's

This is a Woolworth's postcard from my great grandmother's postcard collection. Callie Fenity Keats worked at Woolworth's, as did her son Moses Keats and my grandmother Judy. That was how they met, working together at a Baltimore area Woolworth's.

My Geriatric Fiesta

The great thing about the American South is they hold onto their history. If you hail from anywhere south of the Mason Dixon, you can be sure that someone in your family has a great stash of treasures just waiting for you to discover them.

That has been the case with my great aunt Shirley.

She gave me my first great start in doing genealogy. I was 17 and just starting to see some progress on my work. I was getting pretty discouraged that it wasn't going better. We went to Shirley's place, and she showed me a 20 page genealogy some distant cousin had sent her. I went from having a handful of names to hundreds of names.

Over time, I grew wiser and learned how to document and check someone else's work. And that was when I realized I probably didn't get everything Aunt Shirley had. She still had all of my great grandmother's stuff. There had to be answers to questions I still had somewhere in the ephemera of Callie's possessions.

So I called her up and made arrangements to go back. When I showed up, she had a dining room table full of boxes. Albums, stray documents, copies, envelopes, and stacks and stacks of pictures. At first I was like:

But it wasn't until I tried to reach for my first box that I realized this would take a long time, and it would take longer if I did it wrong. Then I was like:

Some helpful hints for any large-scale scanning opportunities you have this holiday season.

Don't get overwhelmed

Eventually I just decided to go by box, that way I could put it all back the way I found it. Several times I had to remember that I wasn't there to organize the boxes of stuff she has, especially since she doesn't ever plan on going through these things again. I'm here to digitize them. Just grab one and dig in. But don't go crazy and unpack the whole box all at once, or you'll skip stuff and scan things twice.

Or just make a mess.

Review first, copy second

Don't waste time unpacking a box or scanning things that have nothing to do with you. I don't need to scan pictures from the 2004 Disneyland vacation. It's important to be thorough and make sure you don't miss anything by accident. But if you're tight on time, focus your sights. Make a list of what you need to find so you search, not mosey through the boxes. It'll help you to keep your pace and not get distracted.

If you're there with other family members, be sure to include them in what you're doing. Looking at old photographs can help jog their memories so good stuff falls out. Ask them questions about the things you're looking at. In the process of asking about a newspaper article about my grandfather's death, I found out about an article for my grandmother's little sister I had no idea existed.

But if including them becomes problematic or distracting, like them telling you the same story for the third time in a row, taking a break to spend time with them doing something else is a good idea.

Budget your time

I gave myself three days. Any more than that, I knew it would be more polite to come back for another trip because I only live an hour away. Budget differently based on your likelihood of coming back and the present circumstances of your visit. Aunt Shirley was going in for surgery and I was helping to babysit her husband with Alzheimer's. I don't want to create more work for them. For the amount of work I had to do, three days was ideal. I was able to go at a comfortable pace.

When I got bored with scanning pictures I changed it up. I'd take a break for about 10 minutes, then do documents instead. When I couldn't deal with boxes anymore, I started organizing and labeling the files on my computer. I kept switching it up so I could keep working, and the change of pace made it possible for me to find everything that I did. I got more done switching things up than if I just had a scanning bonanza and waited to "do the rest later."

Small doses are better

Maybe it's because scanning is such a repetitious activity, but eventually you start to burn out.

So do your work in bite sizes. Make small piles of things to scan. Scan them. Put them back. Maybe sort and label the files on your computer. Set a start time or a stop time, or set a goal for the number of things you want to scan. Once you reach your goal, give yourself a present. I got myself some presents before, during AND after I finished.

Share the love

One of the greatest gifts you can give to your family is to share what you discover in small, but meaningful ways. Shirley loved hearing about Pomp Fenity's autograph album. I also shared pictures with my mom via Facebook. And be sure to send a thank you card to whoever has just allowed you to make a royal mess at their house. Be sure to include a picture, relatives love that sort of thing.

Scanning trips don't have to be difficult. They can be fun, meaningful, productive experiences. If you organize yourself and take your time, you can discover indispensable knowledge you never knew you couldn't live without!

Happy Holidays!
-Heather 

Pomp Fenity

Pomp Fenity of Pittsylvania County, Virginia
about 1900

Click here for his memorial on Find a Grave!

The Autograph Album of a Tobacco Farmer

Six years.

Hundreds of hours of researching and trying to uncover the remnants of a forgotten life.

She has been my challenge and my motivation.

And now I have a picture.

I can finally say I've seen her face.

I still don't know where she came from or who her parents were. But having a picture is a nice intermediate victory on the way to that knowledge. Now I have a face attached to my search. I feel like it gives me a clearer destination. I'm not looking for more information about Annie Fenity, born somewhere in Virginia in 1885 and buried in some approximate location in 1924. I'm looking for this woman.

She was married on December 28, 1904 to Pomp Fenity. They had a felicitous relationship worthy of love poetry. And I don't know that because of this (although it did finally give me the date I didn't have.)

I know it because of this.

This is my great great grandfather's personal memo book/autograph album. Autograph albums are a Victorian custom, similar to a yearbook. A person would keep a small notebook, which they would pass to dear friends or new acquaintances to sign their name. The friend would also accompany their signature with a proverbial sayings or a verse of poetry. After some research, I also discovered that newspapers and periodicals would publish small columns of sayings specifically to aid the masses with things to write in autograph albums.

Pomp's has a lot of blank pages, and is also interspersed with personal brief entries on the weather or appointments he had. He also has sums written on a page or two, no doubt for the leaf tobacco he sold to wholesalers throughout Virginia. He also appears to have copied quite a few phrases and poems to use, because they don't have signatures at the bottom.

One is quite clever, and I liked it a lot.

The Rose

I sent a white Rose

and a Red to her I

Loved and wrote if I

may hope I pray you wear

tonight the Rose that

pure and sweet and white

an' if you wish my Love

to die and if you Love

another Wear the

Red Rose that I send

and Let me know my

Sorrow and forget

and try to Love again

Somewhere that night 

she smiled I hoped

to see the white

Rose I had called my

own and Looked as she

was passing me she

wore a yellow Rose alone

But it wasn't until I had been looking at the copied pages for some time that I started to recognize what I was seeing. Many of these pages are dated between 1900 and 1902. It's just before Pomp and Annie get married in 1904. How long have they known each other? When did Pomp meet her? Is one of these from her?

And I start to see evidence that their interaction with each other has already begun because there's a note of some kind dated January 1st, 1901 regarding Mr. Nance, who was Annie's uncle and guardian. And recognizing this, I was able to see one of the longest entries for what it was: Annie's signature.

When years and months

Have glided by and

On this page you change

to look perhaps in some

successful year then

stop and kindly think

of the one

Who in Friendship

wrote this here

When in this Book you

Look to see close the

Book and think of me

Remember I say and

Bear in mind a good

true friend is hard to find

But when you find

one good and true

Don't forsake the old

one for the new

When you get married

and washing dishes

Think of me with your

Best wishes

June 9, 1901

A. L. G. R.

Remember me when

life is sweet Remember

me and if my grave

is first bed

Remember when I am

dead

A. L. G. R. is for Annie Gertrude Rorer, and this is her autograph in Pomp's book.

When you recall that Annie did die in 1924 at the age of 38, this signature takes on an eerily prophetic tone. Her husband lived for many more decades after her and never remarried. How often did he look back on these words with tender affection? How many times throughout his life did he do exactly as his love had asked, and remembered her?

If you think about it, this custom is the original Facebook--leaving notes and pithy sayings on people's walls. There must be something inherent in us that feels a need for that connection. Today we have social media, back then they had autograph albums.

There truly is nothing new under the sun.