Hi, I’m Liz, and I have quite a lot of dead folks.
The preservation of family photos and ephemera is quite important in my strange worldview. Whenever possible, names must be named, or as much information as possible must be gathered. Unfortunately, this gets difficult as time passes and the oral histories disappear. The links among family get weakened or even broken, and things fall away.
A lot of this is self-serving – I’m trying to strengthen and (in places) rebuild a network of family history I feel has been lacking. But i’m really doing this for any future children I have. I want to send something with them into the future, give them some feeling of connection.
But enough poetic rambling! This is also a cool trove of 20th c life – snapshots, letters, even mundane things like envelopes can tell us so much. There’s a lot of vernacular images here – birthdays, cars, front lawns – that could be useful or at least inspiring to others. So why let them sit in a closet? Get them all out there!
This is the first draft of a long, long project of preserving my family history. Letters, photos, and other ephemera can’t last forever, so I’m using the technology at my disposal to keep these archives safe.
It’s my ambition to scan and categorize my collection of photos and papers from both sides of my family. Since I’m now married, I’ll scan in any in-laws I come across, too. The photos are legion (at least it felt so when we moved them!). Very few of the images are in albums, dated, or otherwise taken care of. Some are truly lost,thanks to water damage and general neglect. But the bulk are ok and I’m proud to work with them,
The action on this blog is in the pages, arrayed up top, below the main image. These pages will hold transcripts of family trees, and links to info on specific persons, and general info on the times they lived in. I’m working without any current access to family oral history (for the moment), but I’m going to record what little I’ve been able to glean over the years. Who knows, more might come out of the woodwork!
Links and pages will be labeled accordingly. Most of the photos will be stored in the Archives’ dedicated Dropbox, which is a seperate website from this blog (see the Scanned Images link on the sidebar to the right.
This will be updated when I can, because it’s quite the undertaking. But I’m working against time here, so these images and memories need to get into a safe format for future years.
If someone stumbles into here with questions or other info (especially military history), please feel free to email me:
The Reilly-Milans Archives 
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