Dear St. Nicholas

This post was written for the 62nd Carnival of Genealogy, 3 Wishes.  The topic suggests: Make a list of 3 gifts you would like to receive this holiday season from 3 of your ancestors. These have to be material things, not clues to your family history (we’re talking gifts here, not miracles!). Do you wish your great grandmother had gifted you a cameo broach? Or maybe you’d like to have the family bible from great great grandpa Joe? How about a baby doll that once belonged to your dear Aunt Sarah? This is a fantasy so you can dream up gift items. They don’t have to be actual items that you know your ancestors owned. However, they do have to be historically accurate to the time period in which your ancestor lived. Do your research. No asking for a new computer from your great grand aunt! Genea-Santa wouldn’t like that.

Dear Santa,

Could you please leave the following items under my tree:

1. The Amore photo/scrapbook.  My Uncle Gail began this book back in the late 1960s.  The last we knew, it was in the possession of my cousin, June, who hasn’t been communicative with any of the relatives in a long time.  I believe there are pictures in there of the first Amore-Werts reunion as well as the other Amore reunions and the siblings reunions of years past.  All I want to do is scan the photos and memorabilia and then June can have it back.
2. The box of “lost” photos.  When I was about 12, my mom and I went through a box that had lots of ancestor photos.  Some of those pictures were of “funeral” pictures (those who had died in their caskets laid out in the parlors).  When I finally had the nerve about 5 years later to look at them again, the box of photos went missing.  Try as I might, I can not locate them at my mom’s (we had moved in the mean time).  Again, if one of my relatives ended up with this box, all I want to do is scan the photos and they can have it back!
3. DVDs of all the slides my grandparents took (I believe one of my cousins has  the slides!) and a CD of all their reel-to-reel tapes (I’m sure there are more than what my brother had in his possession) so I can see the world through their eyes via their pictures and hear their voices on more than one CD.

I’ve tried to be a very good genealogist this year!  And, Santa, I will leave you a wonderful snack so you can keep up your stamina as you visit all the other houses in the world on Christmas Eve!

Thanks so much!