Family Historians

I inherited the historian gene.

It ran pretty strong in my dad's parents; with above-average strength in my dad; and seems to have quite a hold on my heart. (My mom's side of the family, at least in the thread that comes to me, doesn't seem to have had nearly the attraction for family history.) My uncle Jim, my father's brother and perhaps the most adept family historian, has even been a professional archivist for many years of his life. Is there a gene that jumps from uncle to nephew?

If there is, I got it. When my dad's estate was being doled out, I got all the memorabilia from my dad's house. And boy howdy was there a lot of it! In fact, since Sara and I were on the cusp of world travelling at that point, most of the notes, letters, and photographs that I inherited got boxed up and stored in Arizona. Now they're boxed up and stored in our loft in Harpursville.

I have recently begun to take my dad's photo albums (when I say "recently," I mean it's taken me four months to get to the middle of the second one) and scan them into digital images. Then I can play with them, send them out to interested parties, and perhaps record my own memories connected with them.

All right, it's mostly for the first and third reasons. No family members have yet come banging on my door asking, "What did you find in your dad's stuff?" It is the plight of historians to be ever interested in what bores the rest of the world to tears.

In spite of the slow speed with which I have begun my task of recording, however, the firehose continues to spew. My Uncle Jim came by with a shoebox full of old books and letters from the Tyler side of the family. Would I be interested?

That's the problem. 19th century ink spilled in a Tyler hand on crumbling books is like a drug to someone with my gene. Of course I'm interested. I'll just put them . . . up in the loft.

Well, these I did taste before I packed them away. Here's a snapshot of a couple of the book plates:
These are Church of England prayer and service books from the 1800s. The top book's inscription reads, "George Tyler, Bridgend [Wales], 1865." The lower book reads, "Geo. Tyler, July 17, 1841, Swansea [Wales]." 

One of the book plates actually has a street address that Google Maps can pinpoint. Ah, if only I had that free ticket to Wales . . . .

The picture below is what my Uncle Jim considers a family jewel:

"Geo & Jane Tyler 1818." These may have been my great-great-great-grandparents. I'm not sure yet. But as a Tyler family historian, I've got an adventure ahead to find out the details.

~emrys