Several years ago I bought some old photos — which arrived with a huge packet of other snapshots I hadn’t expected. These black-and-white “bonus” pictures obviously came from a family album of the 1920s, and are now nearly a century old. And that was the start of trying to unlock their mystery! Most of these old photos were unlabeled, […]
Memoir Writing: Getting Unstuck
It happens to every would-be memoir writer: your words somehow just stop flowing. Or maybe, despite good intentions, they never get started. So you keep telling your kids you’ll get those family stories on paper. You ogle memoir books in the library and your local history museum. But when you sit down in front of […]
Spielvogel Mystery
The mystery of the Spielvogels has been bugging me for years now. This picture, one of about 50 old black-and-whites, arrived in an envelope courtesy of an eBay find. From the cryptic legends it was clear the family was from Northern Michigan or perhaps Ontario. They owned a farm. The old homestead was in Prescott, and Arley […]