Recovered image lets me see my grandfather’s face for the first time.
[1 minute read]
For the first time in my life, I can see my grandfather, Darryl Ervin Cravey. He died 28 years ago today. Whoever you were, RIP.
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Secret Boxes explores genealogy research, storytelling, and family secrets for the purpose of digitizing, preserving, archiving, and sharing cultural and family histories for future generations.
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Vicki Entreken, Juls Buckman, and the local community work to preserve and return this album to its family. READ MORE
You did it WNC! The Swannanoa Wedding Album will soon be back with its family!! 🩷🩷
I was ready to search through 40,000 photographs for wedding shots. Juls Buckman was prepared to map out addresses in a 5-mile up-river area to match a house number from one of the photos. When Juls called me yesterday, I was cropping close-ups of the bride and groom from scans to post in another round…
Keep readingShared more than 1.4K times on social media, WNC wants this muddy wedding album returned to its owners.
The neighborhood is unrecognizable from one residence to the next. A surviving street sign marks where a road used to be. We walked down a mud-covered path, making sure to step within the tracks of the large trucks, past a tent city where volunteers unloaded two sheds from a flatbed truck.
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Pulling Photos from a Flood
One heartbreaking loss during major floods and storms is that of photographs and memories. Of course family albums and pictures become an afterthought when our lives are interrupted by having no power, waiting in long lines for fuel, staring at the cell phone in hopes of getting a signal or better, an actual text. In…
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Preserving a Photographer’s Family Collection
Dad can take one look at a picture tube and in seconds say, “The color is off.” He’d fiddle with the knobs and fix it within minutes. I can’t see what he sees. I’d suck at that job. Maybe that’s why he had me sorting tubes in the back hallway.
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A Forgotten Galveston Home: Memoir Excerpt
There’s no way to know what went on in the Cravey family by looking at internet pictures of the front of a house. Technology doesn’t provide that information for us.
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10 Steps to hanging your family history wall
A project like this can be overwhelming and easy to put off. I broke it into stages so you can at least start on the first stage and immediately earn bragging rights.
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Orphan heirloom Bible makes its way home.
I was beginning to take a liking to fostering this heirloom with its once gold-trimmed cover and beautiful full-page depictions of the Bible stories inside…
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A battle in the forest and then, we make contact!
I was deep in the middle of the forest dumping limbs and cuttings when my cell phone rang in my pocket. I moved quickly to remove my garden gloves – very carefully tugging as to not get poison ivy oil on my hands.
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Vicki Entreken, MFA
I’m a researcher, editor, and creative writing coach specializing in memoir and family history narratives at VickiEntreken.com. I write about genealogy, orphaned heirlooms, and preserving family history stories here at SecretBoxes.org.