The photo above is Marguerite Page Furse — “Rita” (1893-1930). She is my wife, Lynn’s, grandmother. For the longest time Lynn and I believed no photos of her survived. Since she died quite young, long before Lynn was born, we could only imagine what she might have looked like. Then one day while sifting through some of my mother-in-law’s dusty boxes we found this…an identified photo of her grandmother, Rita. We were overjoyed! (We were also stunned because we initially thought a photo of my wife as a young woman had somehow found its way into the old dusty box…Lynn looks so much like her grandmother…it’s uncanny!)
That was 20 years ago. It was the first photo of Rita we found, but certainly not the last! We are blessed to have unearthed literally dozens more!
Photos and documents from our ancestors provide amazing tangible links to them. Many in my extended family have learned I will receive, value and protect their photos, documents and other valuable artifacts from generations past. As a result many have entrusted me with their precious family collections. I’ve digitized tens of thousands of photos and documents, archiving, organizing and preserving the originals. (One of the great prizes is a Family Bible, again from my wife’s side, with family records going all the back back to the Revolutionary War. It was believed to have been lost 50 years ago because no one had seen it in decades and the person last known to possess it had died in the mid-1980’s. Then one day, while cleaning out a old storage locker — thankfully climate controlled — guess what one of the cousins found buried in the farthest corner? Not only THE family Bible, but also TWO OTHERS! I’ve scanned and digitized important pages from those Bibles.) I could never present everything I’ve scanned on this site…but I’m going to get started, add a little bit at a time, and see how far I can get!
A few of the photos and documents on this site are actually on this site’s server. Those in the galleries and collections, however, are on a separate platform, Flickr.com. I’m creating albums and collections on Flickr, and will provide links to those. You are able to download those images, if you like…that’s one of the reasons I’ve uploaded them. I’ve reduced the file size of most of them so they work better on the internet, but they may not be optimal for printing. In most cases I can send higher resolution files…just contact me.