The Quarantine Quests story was written by CGS member Nancy Cork.
I took advantage of this social distancing time by working on, and finally finishing, a personal project. This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of my mother, Evalyn Biddle. When she passed away in 1995, I promised my sisters that we would have a special celebration of our mother’s life in 2020… little knowing what form that celebration would take.
I took advantage of this social distancing time by working on, and finally finishing, a personal project. This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of my mother, Evalyn Biddle. When she passed away in 1995, I promised my sisters that we would have a special celebration of our mother’s life in 2020… little knowing what form that celebration would take.
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| Evalyn Biddle at 6 months, in 1920 Minneapolis |
I inherited boxes of family photographs from my mother. My
curiosity about those photos of people I knew little about drove me to begin
researching my family history, and I have loved pursuing genealogy for the last
25 years. I have learned so much about my ancestors, three, four, ten… even twelve
generations back. Genealogy has been my passion. But as I turned to think of
how to commemorate my mother, I realized that there was so much that I didn’t
know about her life. Not that my parents were secretive, or didn’t enjoy
reminiscing about the past. Rather, I just didn’t think to ask questions, to
get the conversations started. Like so many people, I always assumed that there
would be plenty of time to talk tomorrow,
and I prioritized my own present over other people’s past. So now I found
myself trying to understand my mother’s life in order to pay tribute to her.
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| Two historic floods, in 1978 and 1987, engulfed Minneapolis during Evalyn's lifetime |
Thankfully, I’ve learned a lot doing genealogical research,
and there are so many resources available today that aid in tracking down
information of the most surprising kind. I used my research skills to build a
timeline for my mother’s life. And, through DNA matches, I was able to connect
with “long-lost” relatives, and get answers to lingering questions.
I decided to make a multimedia presentation based on the old
family photographs. I gathered every picture that I could find and scanned them
all; then I got family members across the country to scan and email more photos
to me. That was actually the easy part. Much more difficult was identifying
each photo. I labeled each picture starting with the year (using “circa” when I
was just guessing) and then the names of the people in the photo, adding a
location or description or sometimes just a number, to help keep track of the
hundreds of photographs. Putting the date first allowed me to easily sort the
photographs chronologically.
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| Pages from the 1938 Centralian high school yearbook |
My genealogical research skills came into play as I fleshed out the story the photographs told. I dug up census, birth, marriage records, school report cards, employment records, church records, military files, etc. I traced down “FAN” (friends, associates, and neighbors) names, addresses and even phone numbers to find a more complete understanding of what was happening and when. Most of all, I used old family letters to tell my mother’s story. I am very fortunate to have a large collection of letters from and to her, and being able to use excerpts of her own words in my tribute meant a lot.
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| Seven-year-old Evalyn with her mother, 1927 |
My slideshow tribute was further personalized with a musical soundtrack. I had asked my sisters to suggest songs that were reminiscent of our mother. That was a lot of fun for all of us. After several months of searching, singing and selecting, I had to overcome the challenges of converting old LPs and cassette tapes to MP3 files. I finally amassed a digital collection of almost 70 songs – all songs that my mother loved. In the end, I included snippets of 37 songs in the slideshow, as well as a recording of my mother singing, and an excerpt of a reading that she did. It was amazing to me how much the music enhanced the experience of looking at the family photographs. No surprise, I guess… can you imagine watching, say, Casablanca or Sleepless in Seattle without the soundtracks? I could evaluate and arrange the photos for hours and feel detached from the images, and then as soon as I played the slideshow with the “perfect” song, emotions would soar.
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| A soundtrack of favorite songs added emotion to the slideshow |
Before finishing the slideshow, I asked immediate family members to contribute memories of my mother. Everyone chose to send me audio files, and hearing each story – funny, respectful, poignant, or loving – was terrific. The final production ran for 90 minutes and included more than 600 photographs, documents and other images. Despite the quarantine stay-at-home orders, I was able to share the tribute to my mother with my family, near and far, by screen-sharing on Zoom. We chose to view the show on Mother’s Day, of course.
Copyright © 2020 by California Genealogical Society
