Our Visual Address History

As Amy Johnson Crow begins her 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks series this year, I finally decided to take the plunge and participate! The goal of the series is to do something with the genealogy research that I, and so many others, obsess about 🙂 ; to make it more interactive and dynamic than just names and dates in a genealogy program. I have been blogging about my genealogy for about 10 years, but have slacked off the past few years; it is my hope that participating in the series will help me pick that back up also.
This weeks prompt is “Start.” To that end, I’d like to share a project I’ve just started to document an aspect of my family history. Using Becky Higgins’ Project Life app, I started a scrapbook to document all the places my parents have lived, and all the places my siblings and I grew up.
The scrapbook starts with my maternal grandmother, Alice McNair Robinson, and where she lived when my mother’s oldest brother, Stanley, was born.  She lived on MacDonough Avenue in Bronx, NY and we even have family pictures taken outside the apartment.  I’ve put together some photos and stories from that time period to put the page together.

I recently shared an update on my photo organization project and I am reaping the benefits already! As I consider how to put these scrapbook pages together, I know what pictures I have to match the time frame and the location. It has been immensely helpful.
I have plenty to do as I build the scrapbook; growing up, we lived in a lot of places and my siblings and I went to many different schools. I will continue to move through the years and document various aspects of our lives. I am having regular conversations with my parents to gather information for the scrapbook and I am already learning so much family history that I did not know. I plan to include family memories and stories along the way so I know that doing this is going to be a wonderful experience! And, as a final outcome, I’ll have a book that I can gift to my parents and siblings; definitely will make the history tangible.
If you have done a family history scrapbook I would love to hear about it; I’m always on the lookout for inspiration.