My Grandparents recently moved out of their home of forty-one years into a retirement home. Our family was the one who helped them with the move; being the only willing volunteers we also became storage for important antiques.

We now have a trailer filled with all of the stuff that came out of the house. Looking through the trailer when she was home yesterday my sister stumbled upon an old box of pictures. My Dad foolishly put the pictures in the trailer not realizing that the heat and humidity would damage the pictures. My sister(who wants to be a photo journalist) knows you can’t store photos like that so she brought the box in immediately.

Last night we spent an hour or so looking through pictures. There were pictures a hundred or more years old in the box. It was insane to see people that I am a descendant of and notice similarities of them and my living family members. It is interesting to see where you came from and where physical characteristics came from.

Looking through the box we found baby pictures of my Grandmother, baby pictures of my Great-Grandmother, and even pictures of my Great-Great-Grandmother. Two of the pictures were actually tin photos.

I realized how much my oldest sister looks like my Grandmother. It is cool to have an idea of how she will probably age.

I am glad my family has been diligent about keeping old photos, we have two encased pictures of my Great-Great-Grandmother and my Great-Great-Grandfather. They had photos of each other to keep on their person while he was away at war. He kept his over his heart, he was actually shot on the battlefeild right in the heart. Luckily he had the encased picture of his wife. It stopped the bullet and saved his life.