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It was almost fifty years ago that I spent an afternoon with my grandmother, looking at her daguerreotypes, family photos, and stereographic pictures and the old notebook which told of four brothers who fought on two sides of the American Revolution. Then those things were packed away, without my grandmother realizing how much they fascinated me. I did not see any them until after my father died, in 1992. He continued to live in the same house where I grew up, after my grandmother died in 1964, after I had left home in 1969, and after my my mother died in 1977.
The task of sorting through his possessions fell to me, his only offspring. I was amazed at what I found. Although he regularly donated old clothing and household goods to charity, he filed away and preserved almost every piece of paper he had ever thought important, from the mundane to the priceless. The old notebook was there, with the story of my revolutionary ancestor, and the diary of my great-grandfather. There were hundreds of letters. Some were as recent as the week before he died. Others were over one hundred years old. There were my grandmother's diaries from 1936-1964, and even more interesting, an autobiography she had written based on her earlier diaries and memories. The daguerrotypes that I remember were there, but without any identification. There were old family photographs, some identified, some not. The stereographic pictures had disappeared. There was an old family Bible, with records of births, deaths and marriages. It was like finding buried treasure after never having looked for it. I knew what I found was valuable, but I didn't know what to do with it. I began to sort it all out, but realized I had too much to do at the time, and stored it away in boxes.
Now I am retired after having worked 32 years for the City of Los Angeles. Perhaps I retired too soon and without enough money, but I am rich in the thing that is important to me: time. Now I can spend my time transcribing the documents, and weaving my little web of information into the larger web of the internet. I hope my paper heritage will have value for others as well as for myself.
Here is what I have so far:
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