COG- Scrapbooking Your Family History! Frances Lowe.

This edition of the Carnival of Genealogy is Scrapbooking Your Family History! Our mission, should we choose to accept it is to:

Create a scrapbook page on any theme that suits one or more of your vintage photos.

For this month’s Carnival of Genealogy, I decided to make a scrapbook page of my great grandmother Frances Lowe. I’ve been writing for the past couple of months about the small suitcase containing some of Frances' belongings. It was found in the family home and dubbed the Time Capsule. You can read the most recent post here. At the end of the article are links for the preceding posts.

I'm not much of a scrapbook person. I like to do photo albums more of the style of "Just the Facts Ma'am." But I'm always up for learning something new and thought a digital scrapbook page would be fun. I used Photoshop Elements and had a great time putting this together since I had never used any of these Photoshop features before.


I am proud to present to you Frances Lowe:

Starting in the upper left corner and going clockwise:

• Frances pictured with her oldest son, Milton and his wife Viola (my grandparents). Probably in the mid 1920's.
• Frances in the the early 1890's around the time her first Teacher's Certificate was issued.
• In their Sunday best at 16 years young, Frances is pictured on the left with her aunt, Lucinda Catherine Ballinger whom she refers to as Louie. Both girls were born in 1871. Louie is the youngest sister of Frances' mother Nancy Ballinger Robinson.
• Frances and her husband Milton Clark Lowe circa 1950 near Mt. Si, Washington State.
• Last, in the center, Frances is pictured with her chum, Carrie Hyde.

Frances made it really easy to write the above captions as she was good about identifying people in her pictures. I wish we were all so lucky!

I greatly admire my great grandmother and wish I could have known her. I do remember Frances but  was very young when she died so the memories are a bit fuzzy, warm, but fuzzy. She lived in 3 states during her life: Colorado, Montana, and Washington; witnessing huge changes in technology and how it affected our lives. Born 6 years before Colorado became a state, Frances experienced the arrival of the telegraph, telephone and a water system in her home town of Boulder, Colorado. Later she would have enjoyed the arrival of the automobile and electricity. All things we take for granted in our everyday lives.

I often wonder what she thought when JFK made his address to Congress in 1961 and said:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

And I wish I could have been with her to see her reaction when John Glenn orbited the earth aboard Friendship 7 in 1962. Oh, to have witnessed such societal changes from the eyes of a girl born in a small town where cows roamed the streets and one travelled by horse and buggy!

Hopefully you have enjoyed this edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. I certainly have. It's always fun to step out of the box and do something you enjoy in a different way.


Bibliography:
1. Schoolland, John B. A Pioneer Church. Johnson Publishing Company, Boulder, Colorado. 1972.
2. Kennedy, John F. "Man on the Moon Address." Home of the Heros. http://www.homeofheroes.com/presidents/speeches/kennedy_space.html : accessed 27 July 2010, para 5.
3. "John Glenn." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glenn : accessed 27 July 2010, para 1.

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum