When I attended a family funeral yesterday both Mr GeniAus and I took a funeral booklet/order of service.
I have been sorting out my huge "to be sorted" pile of ephemera this week and I came across several duplicate funeral books for family members. I really only need one of each for my files. I then remembered the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet where I have a collection of funeral books for unrelated people. I have saved all of the funeral books for services I have attended over the years plus I have been given some by people who are aware of my hoardng and genealogy obsessions. I realised that these private publications can be a goldmine of genealogical information and wondered if I should I should share them with the geneacommunity. Some of the earliest booklets I have are quite simple while some of the newer ones are quite sophisticated publications but they all contain genealogical data. One would hope that the people compiling these publications provide accurate information.
The latest addition to my collection gives birth and death dates for the deceased, the name of the celebrant and the names of those taking part in the service. It is highly likely that some of these people are family members. The booklet also has two pages of photographs of the deceased covering his life span. Some of these booklets give other information like the date and time of the service and details of the burial or cremation.
I am going to gather up my collection of duplicate family booklets and those for unrelated persons and offer them to a genealogy society or library that I hope will index them. I may even offer to index them if the repository provides me with guidelines.
What do you do with the funeral booklets you collect? Please don't toss them - send them to me and I'll add them to my collection.
I have been sorting out my huge "to be sorted" pile of ephemera this week and I came across several duplicate funeral books for family members. I really only need one of each for my files. I then remembered the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet where I have a collection of funeral books for unrelated people. I have saved all of the funeral books for services I have attended over the years plus I have been given some by people who are aware of my hoardng and genealogy obsessions. I realised that these private publications can be a goldmine of genealogical information and wondered if I should I should share them with the geneacommunity. Some of the earliest booklets I have are quite simple while some of the newer ones are quite sophisticated publications but they all contain genealogical data. One would hope that the people compiling these publications provide accurate information.
The latest addition to my collection gives birth and death dates for the deceased, the name of the celebrant and the names of those taking part in the service. It is highly likely that some of these people are family members. The booklet also has two pages of photographs of the deceased covering his life span. Some of these booklets give other information like the date and time of the service and details of the burial or cremation.
I am going to gather up my collection of duplicate family booklets and those for unrelated persons and offer them to a genealogy society or library that I hope will index them. I may even offer to index them if the repository provides me with guidelines.
What do you do with the funeral booklets you collect? Please don't toss them - send them to me and I'll add them to my collection.
5 comments:
I also have a collection of them, over many years. I also keep Christmas letters, cards, invites, it's amazing the amount of information that are in them.
The other goldmine is old address books, especially if they are like mine, when I add BDM info to them as it happens... My mother in law's note books/address books are still answering heaps of questions, though they also pose a few...
I have a massive collection, from memorial cards dating from the 1800's to funeral service booklets from recent passings of family and friends. My mission is to write a blog on most of these wonderful people (if possible). I've started with my father, father-in-law and other family members. I hope that it will honour them in a very special way. I've started, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out.
Sounds like a great idea Jill.
The funereal service booklets. I'd scan them and upload to internet archive. A scanner such as the fujitsu scansnap ix500, makes it easy and fast.
Thanks for the suggestion Anonymous - I too love my fujitsu scansnap but unfortunately I don't want to pull these booklets apart - I will have to use my flatbed, flip-pal or camera. Unfortunately I have to give priority to scanning family documents.
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