I was browsing through a folder of one tiny section of my family tree research (which I haven’t touched in months if not years) and re-read letters sent to my mother on the death of her mother in England in 1953. My birth was years afterwards so I never met my grandmother and judging from the letters she was well liked.
I pondered as I read the letters, what treasures they are as a glimpse into the past. I have letters from people who would have been my grandmother’s friends and work colleagues and neighbours and family. How marvelous it would be for relatives of the writers of those letters to read them and see the handwriting of their ancestors AND see where they lived (they all have addresses on them). It would be great to have a website of a list of names featured in such ephemera for researchers to browse and get copies of.
Then, I thought with sadness, what are we leaving our descendants? There will be no letters, no diaries, not even handwritten accounts or shopping lists. Everything has become computerised and with that, handwriting is lost and a glimpse on an ancestor’s personality is lost also. I treasure a letter that my great-grandfather in Scotland sent to his daughter in Australia on the eve of her marriage in the 1920s. Such personal correspondence can say so much about the letter writer and the person it’s being sent to – giving you a much better idea on what sort of person your ancestors were. It makes them human instead of just a name and a date.
I’m as guilty as anyone of not writing letters anymore. Even cards have become a chore. We’ve become lazy. It’s no wonder my handwriting has become an untidy scrawl. The only handwriting of mine my descendants are likely to come across are study notes (and boy are they untidy!) if I or someone else hasn’t destroyed them by then.
Reflections 