Merry Christmas to All, and Especially Mom and Aunt Betty

All the presents are wrapped and sent, all the cards are mailed. The potato latkes were really wonderful, if I do say so my own self;) Plans for Christmas Day are set and there's not much left to be busy with.

Have amused myself between holiday activities making an online album of historic photos by a photographer who worked in Frostburg, Maryland in the early years of last century, E. Gilbert Irwin. He put together a photo album of the National Pike being refined and it's a really important documentation of Western Maryland. Unfortunately, it's not been online as far as I know.

Fortunately, Mom has one of those albums. When I visited her last I took photos of the photos... OK, not the best way to proceed. I should have scanned then... that is the preferred practice for archiving. But I did what I could do in the time available with the equipment on hand.

I took each image into PhotoShop and sharpened the contrast, cropped to get rid of black edges, mostly. I know, it's not 100% pure to the artistic integrity of Mr. Irwin's work. But it's the best I can do now.

So click on the tab in the upper right that says "Album: Nat'l Pike". Or click here: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/p/album-natl-pike.html

If you want to know more about the National Pike, also called the National Road, go to WIKI at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Road