family history Archives - Social Correspondence

Roots

Taking stock of one’s roots can be much more than a hobby or pastime. Thanks to multiple resources for genealogical research, it is possible today to trace ancestry, connect with distant relations, and explore your own identity. For decades, I have been the owner of boxes and drawers full of family photos. They range from formal portraits of elders and ancestors, taken from the late 1800s to the turn of the century, to mid-century snapshots of my early nuclear family, circa 1940s through 1960s. Due to faulty color film and sticky photo albums of the 1970s…

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October 3, 2018

email / Handwriting / Letter writing / Mail / Mailboxes / Typing

Letters from Wisconsin

Kay Christensen Roberts and her sister Jane grew up in Cumberland, Wisconsin, a rural town with a population of slightly over 2,000, then and now. Growing up in Cumberland in the 1950s, Kay became a devotee of the public library and especially of the town librarian, Katherine Robinson, who may have been her namesake. Katherine the librarian and Kay’s mother Aleda Christensen were good friends. The Christensens lived fairly near to Katherine’s mother and, as Kay recalls, “when I was very little I would toddle up to Engesether’s, where I think I spent as much time as…

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December 23, 2015