Treasure on a Crinkled Page

I'm sure when my great-great grandmother, Susan Lime, wrote down the names and birth dates of her family she thought it somewhat insignificant. Had she known it would become a cherished family record perhaps she would have looked for a pen and written the names and dates in her best manuscript on beautiful stationary. Even without the fancy, this document lives on. It not only provides the proof of family names and birth dates. Somehow it's a window into my gg grandmother's life - practical and ordinary.

Had I come across this as her daughter or even her granddaughter (with little interest or knowledge of family record keeping) I would have quickly checked to make sure I had those dates correct and thrown it away (gasp!). . . after all with four children and plenty of homework and junk mail piling around my house I try and cut the clutter wherever possible.  Luckily, my grandmother thought better of it (she's as clutter free of a housekeeper as you can get). She saved it and preserved it in a plastic page protector.

Removing it from that plastic is problematic as the paper has worn so thin in the creases that it would come out in sections. At least the content is still legible . . . barely. The zeroes look like sixes and the month "august" is hard to decipher. And, after comparing these dates to the ones I already had I find that some are off by a year or two, and the marriage date is completely off? Does anyone know of secret family stories about running off and marrying at age 16? I'm sure there isn't one!  If you are interested in the information on this record you can find it on my Lime Family History page.

Now, to have my grandmother do the same thing for her family, and you bet I will make sure to put it in a page protector as well! You should have your parents or grandparents do the same thing too! In this age of computers having our family's handwriting is a treasure!