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I have linear feet of various family letters. I am scanning and indexing these letters and envelopes so I can share with other family members. Most of these letters are multiple pages written on both the front and back of the paper and date from the Civil War right through the 1970’s.
I am concerned about flatting these letters that have been stored in the envelopes for so long and vary in size.
Thank you for the interesting article.If the letter is multiple pages – do you put each page in it’s own sleeve? If they have written on the front and back side of the paper – where do you put the envelope?
I have hundreds of letters dating from WWII. My father’s penmanship was nearly impossible to read, so my first challenge, after organizing them by date, was to transcribe each one and print out the transcription, single-sided, on 8 1/2 by 11 archival card stock. I artfully arranged and color-copied the letter and its envelope (and sometimes a photograph, radiogram, or other enclosure) onto a second sheet of card stock. I then placed the two pieces of card stock back to back, tucked the original flattened letter, envelope and any enclosures in between, and slipped the packet into an archival sleeve which I then placed into a 3-ring binder. I ended up with three of these 6-inch-thick binders. Family members or other researchers can now browse through and read without mixing up or jeopardizing the original documents, which are fully protected from dirt, oil, and sunlight. It was a lengthy project, but the story that emerged was fascinating, prompting further research on my part and eventually, after a dozen years, resulted in a 500-page, fully sourced book about the guerrilla war in North Luzon in the Philippines: The Luckiest Guerrilla: A True Tale of Love, War and the Army.
Where do I purchase the various sizes of archive sleeves?
I wish your page was more printer friendly. Some webpages have a print friendly option in addition to the share/tweet/email/like options but I don’t see one here. When I print the page directly, several lines at the bottom of each page gets cut off, making the print out useless. Can you provide a print friendly option?
A couple years ago, I was doing research in a courthouse in Ohio. There was also a couple people in there who were microfilming records for a contract they had with FamilySearch. They showed me how they did all their work, which included how they dealt with folds in the old documents. They took a Q-Tip with a tiny amount of alcohol and swabbed the fold. They explained the alcohol caused the paper fibers in the fold to “release”. Then they placed the document on a flat surface, placed a cloth over the document, and then ironed the document. I think the iron was only warm. I was pretty amazed how nicely flattened the documents were.
Just a huge thank you. I am engaged in just such a project. Wise advice.
To the person asking about a printer-friendly option, I have a paperless option for you to consider. Pick up a program like “Evernote”, which will scrape just about any web page, including photos, and store them on your own computer. You can separate your articles into various “notebooks” and assign tags to each document, then sort and print those if you wish.
I have a letter from my that contained a random sentence about his father (my grandfather) using a nickname until he was married. This little clue was the secret to connecting that branch into the rest of the tree,
An important additional step that one can take with family letters is transcribing them. Not only will an accurate transcription help preserve the letters themselves by reducing the need to take the letters out of their protective sleeves, but it will also allow for the annotation of interesting details contained within the letters. Readers can then understand the letters itself without having to puzzle through the handwriting themselves and they can get the benefit of any additional research and comments you have made in your annotations.
I am 72 years old and have only six nephews and nieces. Is there any guidance as to how to choose the best child to receive all my letters and genealogical items? I think it would be helpful.
I have letters from the trenches in WWI, letters sent to family in Australia in the 1860s, military commissions on parchment (vellum?), and so on. I keep them flat in acid free bound books. Spiral spines may damage the letters. The books keep the letters flat and keep the light off them. I then keep the book closed with a piece of elastic, and note on the front that the book contains loose papers so it is opened with care.
Hi Esther,
Thanks for your article. Very informative.
You did not mention scanning them to a computer.
Wouldnt this be a good idea to proctect from fire?
Thanks again
SueieWhat is the next best thing from throwing everything in the recycling?
I began using acid-free archival paper and envelopes in the 1970’s, but have not gone beyond that.
Now i am at the end of my family line with no relationship with, or even knowledge of, anyone way out in almost all branches of my extended family. I’m still going through tens of thousands of photographs that ended up in jumbles in dozens of boxes I inherited. I have no interest, and absolutely no time, to try to locate people, historical societies, or others throughout the country that have no clue who I am and asking them if they want a pile of photos and a letter or two. No one I know in my personal life cares about their own family records that way, let alone my family’s records and piles of unidentified photographs from totally unrelated families thousands of miles away. Everyone who might have recognized who the people are in the photos from the 16+ ancestral branches of my family in the 1800’s, are long dead and gone.
I may go to some trouble to locate someone out there in one of the off-shoots who would like a huge family Bible, but from my perspective, no one is going to miss a thing if everything else goes in the recycling bin after I die.
I truly am curious and will be grateful if there are recommendations on something I can do that does require me to engage in an epic project!
~ ~ THANK YOU ALL!
My father died 3 months before I was born and I have a metal disc with a recording of his voice which needs to be played with a wooden record player needle! Is there any way I could have this transferred to either a CD or dvd?
Do you recommend using a de-acidifying spray, like Wei-To? It is pretty expensive, but all the wood acids continue to degrade the paper, even in a sleeve. Just interested in your thoughts.
I have newspapers and larger size magazines from May-Sept 1915. How can I preserve them?
I have letters written during the 1930s through 1950s from relatives in Hungary and Germany to my grandparents in America. The letters are written in German. And the penmanship is very difficult to even distinguish letters, much less words. Is there a translation program I can use or do I need to find perhaps a German teacher to translate for me?
Thanks for this information. I do have old family letters that I did not know what to do with and thought that no one else, including my children, would want them. Most of them are 50-55 years old and I had thought to destroy them so that my children would not have to when I am gone. I am 85 years old now so I had better get started preserving them. Thank you! I also have pictures of my mother from 18 months old and my grandmother as a young married. What to do with these other than leave them to my family? They are over 100 years old and I have my family bible from my parent’s wedding in 1928.
My sister threw away all my mothers letters and I don’t have them from the war and thing,
I have letter in Russian and or Ukranian, how Do I have them translated.
This is excellent advise. I had letters that my uncle received from his mother (my grandmother) when he was in the Army during WWII. I scanned each letter and envelopes b4 putting them in clear sleeves. I then made copies of the letters and had them put into book form by a copying place and sent the books to my first cousins. My grandmother had near perfect penmanship so there was no need for translations. I was 3 when she passed away, so it gave me insight into our family life in the early 1940’s.
so pleased you gave mention and info on preserving old letters. I have alot regarding distant family members with my surname collection.
I’m so glad I found your post. I was sorting through an old box of correspondence and found a handful of letters I’d like to archive. Your advice will be very handy today.
Linda
Roxie aka Roxanne Rodwell
March 14, 2019
I have letter from my grandfather whom I never knew. It is at least 100 years old by now.. I”m so glad that my mother saved it as well as her mother’s letter from her sister. I also have two little books that my father gave to my mother before they were married. The original leather covers are deteriorating and I don’t know what to do about that. They are inscribed by my father. I treasure them but I don’t know that my children will feel the same about them.
I appreciate your information concerning the preservation of these items.