Trying to be organized: That National Pike Album

Got an email last week from a librarian in charge of digitizing documents and such inquiring about Mom's photo album of the National Pike. (You can see the images in the album on a tab at the top.) They would like loan of it and want to scan the images and put them on their web site, WHILBR, the Western Maryland Historical Library. Their holdings cover Garrett, Allegany, and Washington Counties in Western Maryland. WHILBR is a project of the Western Maryland Regional Library, and a very good one for anyone researching in any of those three counties. I've spent countless hours on the WHILBR web site looking at maps, reading up on slaves and free blacks in Western Maryland, and looking at historical photos and documents about the C&O Canal, one of the major transportation routes in this neck of the woods. So why wouldn't I want to help them?

I called Mom and told her about the project and what they want to do and she liked it. So I emailed the librarian and Mom went off to look for the album. Now as you might know, Mom is 95 and has at her disposal about 40 years or more of genealogy files, book collected, and family photos. And one beautiful old album of photos of the National Road taken about 1906. The photos are certainly out of copyright and in the Public Domain so we are free to share them in any way whatsoever. The project is a go.

Yes, and Mom went to look for the album. At 95 she's slowed down a tad but off she went with enthusiasm and excited about the project too! But as of now, she hasn't found the album. She did get sidetracked because in reorganizing her files and books (as long as she was sifting through everything) she found other stuff that tickled her fancy, so she had to go and take a moment and look at those items. Now I'm guessing here but knowing Mom I bet that once she did get sidetracked she took time to enjoy whatever she was looking at!

The point is that Mom has such a wonderful treasure trove of materials of all sorts and... that she still loves it all!

We younger folk can only hope for such a payoff to our endeavors: reaching 95 and loving our collection and delighting in every item as enthusiastically as we did when we first acquired it.

Has she found the National Pike Album yet? No, but soon.

Mom with her new camera on her birthday, 1942.

The URL for this post is: http://nutsfromthefamilytree.blogspot.com/2014/03/trying-to-be-organized-that-national.html