We are now only 22 days away from Christmas 2024! Many of us are scrambling to get the grocery shopping done, present shopping completed and completing and mailing out those Christmas cards.
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| Vintage Postcard |
As I work here in the archives, I am reminded of the Christmas items I run across as I process records. The records that are donated to an archive can literally encompass anything and it makes me smile when I am processing a records collection and come across a piece of Christmas cheer!
So, how do you find Christmas in the Archives? Here are some examples:
Local Store Advertisements: Many local stores advertise their Christmas sales and offerings. They will also produce special brochures and advertisements at Christmas time to entice the local shoppers to come into their stores. These types of ephemera, as it is usually called, can be located in the Vertical Files Collection of an archives or in the Manuscript Collection. Your ancestor could have shopped at some of these stores in the community.
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| Mitchum Drug Co. Advertisement, Houston County, TN. Archives & Museum |
Scrapbooks: Many archives have scrapbooks as part of their records collections. These scrapbooks are personally put together by an individual and could contain any number of documents, photographs and ephemera. In a few of the scrapbooks we have here in the Houston County, Tennessee Archives & Museum, there are Christmas cards and postcards. Seeing the vintage cards really puts you in the Christmas Spirit! Many of our ancestors compiled scrapbooks that could be located in archives.
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| Christmas Postcard from Evelyn Ellis Scrapbook, Houston County, TN. Archives & Museum |
Correspondence: A lot of our families were not able to be with each other at Christmas for whatever reason. Maybe it was war time and members of the family were off to war in a foreign country. Maybe our ancestors just lived too far away from each other and couldn't make the trek to meet up with family members for Christmas. If your lucky, possibly you have Christmas letters in your genealogy collection. These types of correspondence exist in the archives too! Most of the time these types of correspondence will be found in specific Manuscript Collections.
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| Christmas Greeting Letter, Houston County, TN. Archives & Museum |
These are just a few ways you can Find Christmas and Your Ancestors in the Archives!
REMEMBER: IT'S NOT ALL ONLINE, CONTACT OR VISIT AN ARCHIVE TODAY!
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Old Family Letters! Do you have them? Are you preserving them properly? Find out how to preserve your old family letters from an archivist!
Preserving Old Family Letters: Tips from an Archivist
http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=1168
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