Heritage Scrapbooking - Researching Your Family Tree Scrapbook

Heritage scrapbooking involves understanding your own family history. Because there are often gaps in that history or puzzles to be solved, knowing how to do a genealogy search is important. As part of your heritage scrapbooking album, learn where and how to find the family treasures you will want to remember to keep in it. Heritage scrapbooking pages are a beautiful way to display and honor your family lineage. Creating your heritage scrapbook could be one of the most important things you do for your family. It is also important to preserve your family memories while there is family still there to help identify photos and tell the stories behind them.

Family tree scrapbooking may sound like a new idea, but it is really the oldest and original family scrapbooking idea used to pull together our own family heritage.

Recently a new series hit the television airwaves. The series, entitled “Who Do You Think You Are?” takes a look at various celebrities lives, walking with them through each one’s personal discovery of his or her family heritage. So far, they have worked with Sarah Jessica Parker who with the help of genealogists and historians discovered the whereabouts of a couple relatives, one a woman who survived the Salem witch trials and lived into her eighties. Lisa Kudrow researched her Jewish ancestry to find a great grandmother who had been a victim of the holocaust and where it was she was buried, as well as a cousin thought dead but was actually still alive and had set up a meeting between him and her father through the Internet.

What would you put in your heritage scrapbooking album? What would the journaling aspect include? Here we will discuss what those steps are and what you might want to include as part of your heritage scrapbooking journey. As you consider heritage scrapbooking, it is good to get an idea of some genealogy basics. One person out of every seven is actively working on some aspect of family history. Many people begin their research out of curiosity about their family histories. They begin collecting names, dates and relationships, and find that they want to know more about their ancestor’s lives.

By definition, genealogy is a recorded history of the descent of a person or family from an ancestor or ancestors. It is the researching and the documenting of family history, as part of heritage scrapbooking in which you undergo the study of your ancestry. Having families of their own makes the heritage scrapbooking experience of even more importance to pass on. What can our heritage scrapbooking researcher get out of this quest? For many it is developing stronger self-esteem and a deeper sense of belonging as research progresses. Discover similar physical traits, persistent temperaments and consistent skills and talents that show the bonds connecting a family through generations scrapbooking their own stories.

From compiled sources, a.k.a. secondary sources, I have learned that on my father’s side of the family were several teachers and ministers. I have also come across various writing and craftwork which showed that I was not the only one with my particular interests or talents.

Genealogy research, as part of heritage scrapbooking, is like a big jigsaw puzzle. Like a puzzle you start with a few pieces and find that information connects to several facts and the puzzle begins to take shape.

One really cool scrapbooking tool, by the way, which can be used in your heritage scrapbooking layouts, is a Coluzzle Template. Coluzzle from Provo Craft is the original template cutting system. The templates, cutting mat, swivel knife, and scoring tool let any crafter cut precise shapes and designs quickly and accurately. Boxes, tags, alphabets, geometric shapes, frames, borders and themed kits are just a few of the designs available with Coluzzle.

Following are a couple videos to show what you can do and what you should not do with the Coluzzle.

A couple forms will be useful to you from the beginning as you prepare for your research that will go into your heritage scrapbooking layouts. Use an ancestral or pedigree chart and family group sheets. A family group sheet is a form that presents genealogical information about a family. This sheet usually includes birth, death, and marriage dates and the place each of those occurred. Fill out as much as you can first. Once you have that down, it’s time to begin gathering your genealogical research from other sources. Do interview your family relatives for any missing pieces to your puzzle. Take notes during these interviews and as an interesting aspect of your heritage scrapbooking project, include these notes in your album. Here are places to search as well in order to find some of that missing information to the puzzle.

• Adoption papers

• Announcements

• Awards/Plaques

• Baptism papers

• Bonds

• Bookplates

• Canceled checks

• Christening records

• Citations

• Citizenship papers

• Confirmations

• Death certificates

• Deeds

• Diaries

• Diplomas

• Disability papers

• Discharge papers

• Divorce papers

• Employment records

• Engagement announcements

• Engraved jewelry

• Estate records

• Family bibles

• Family histories

• Firearm registrations

• Friendship quilts

• Funeral books

• Greeting cards/lists

• Hospital or medical records

• Journals

• Jury summons

• Land grants

• Leases

• Letters

• Library cards

• Loan papers

• Membership records

• Memorial cards

• Motor vehicle registration

• Needlework samplers

• Newspapers

• Obituaries

• Passports

• Photographs

• School records (including yearbooks)

• Scrapbooks

As you can see, many resources are available to you in helping succeed in your heritage scrapbooking journey. Remember as you go to keep your own research log. It saves time and allows you to put your work down for awhile and come back to it later. A log can also help you get unstuck by way of showing information previously overlooked.

Two source types to gain information from are primary and compiled sources. Primary sources are original, factual records, such as birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, wills and land deeds, or photocopies of original documents or authentic government records.

Compiled sources, like what I shared previously, are records that have been copied or transcribed and are subject to errors such as oral histories from family members to published family histories. Another personal example of a compiled source is a note given me signed by my mother after she “interviewed” my grandmother about her side of the family and she wrote it down on a piece of paper she signed and handed to me.

As you dive into your research from a heritage scrapbooking perspective, no doubt you may dig even deeper into sources beyond what is hinted at here. In any case, allow your research to add a special dimension to your own heritage scrapbooking album.

For further reading, consider these titles:

Crafting Your Own Heritage Album

Reaching Back

Family Scrapbooks: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

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