Scanning Slides

My family has slides. Back in the good old days (70's & 80's), slides were popular and I really do not understand why! Film still had to be sent in since each picture has its own little holder. You had to have a projector and screen (or a blank wall). And you had to have a willing or captive audience. I know that we as a family watched the slides because we had a projector. But it seems like a labor intensive event. Plus my mother had to sort the slides into the holders, making sure they were facing the correct direction and label the back of the case for each picture.

So now the slides are in my possession and I have to scan each one into a digital format so that everyone in my family can enjoy the old pictures without having a projector. I actually love my scanner, a Epson Perfection V300, but it is time consuming. Plus I have to reorganize the pictures since they had been separated by who was in the picture at one point. This was in order to hand off the slides to the individuals but that really isn't very practical since some pictures have more than one person AND you would need a projector to view them! We have 11 holders which hold 100 pictures each. YOU do the math!

By the way, the picture is me at about 4 with my favorite animals! There are lots of pictures of me and kitties :) As you can see the scan came out pretty good and I only did a little color modification to brighten it up.

Prolific Fathers

Genea-Musings Saturday challenge is to find the most prolific dad in your tree. Well, I couldn't find a way for iFamily for Leopard to pull this out for me so I am going with two prolific brothers. These brothers are the bridge between my parents family tree.

The older brother, Jacob De Vries, is my father's Great-Great grandfather on his mother's side. Jacob and his wife Agnes produced 11 children, 2 of which didn't survive to adulthood. The second brother is Johannes, my mother's Great-Great grandfather on her mother's side. Johannes and his wife Gertrude (pictured above) produced 12 children, 2 of which didn't survive to adulthood.

Happy Father's Day!

Tombstone edition

Well, June started quickly and now is half way done! So I thought I had better post something before the month totally disappeared. I am still working on the information I mentioned in my last post. I was going to spend today doing more lookups but other things have come up. After this posting, I hope to get a little bit done.

Let's look at a tombstone today. Some of my favorites are in the East Holland Cemetery. I especially love the three large ones that mark Aaltje Hellenthal, her husband Jan J and one of their daughters, Cornelia. The picture above is for Aaltje. Not only do I love the size of this stone, but there is a lot of information. It gives her maiden name and her husband's along with her birth and death dates. We also know that her husband died before her and since everything is in Dutch, that shows her heritage as well!

Additionally, I know that Aaltje was my Great-Great Grandmother. She was born in Fillmore Township, Michigan in 1854, married Johannes Naber in 1876 and died in 1919 at the age of 64. She had 6 children. Her oldest Anna died at the age of 22, within a year of giving birth to her first child. Her 2nd child, Johannes lived into adulthood but I don't have an exact date for him. He is not buried in the East Holland Cemetery where most of the others are located. Gertrude is the 3rd child and again, I don't have a lot of information on her. I know that she had three children. The 4th & 5th children were both named Cornelia. The 1st Cornelia died when she was only 2 years old. The second Cornelia died at the age of 19. She is buried next to her parents. The youngest child was Walter, my great-grandfather. Walter lived to the ripe old age of 79 and ran the family farm, which passed to two of his sons.