Photographing the scrapbook

My brother Charlie and my cousin Mary Ann at work photographing Maier Zunder's scrapbook in January 2013 at the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven.  In the previous trip in the fall, I had realized that Maier Zunder had kept his own scrapbook by noticing the strong similarity in the handwriting labeling the items in the scrapbook and a promissory note written by Maier Zunder in the files of the New Haven Historical Society.  Plus reflecting that nobody else could really have kept them.  Previously I had made images of pages that looked interesting.  I realized that I needed a comprehensive complete set of the pages of the scrapbooks. 

So, as I do, I signed up my brother to take the photos.  I've found, in my adult life, that men like missions.  If you present a task you want done (except house projects) as a well-defined mission, they can't resist.  I did it this summer when I assigned the mission of moving Naomi to Glendale AZ to my husband Dennis.  "Your mission, should you choose to accept it is...."  In fact, I had decided that Charl was doing this and was talking about it neglecting the fact that I hadn't asked him yet.  He heard about it from my sister and daughter on a trip to Lafayette.  He called me and said "What is it that I'm supposed to do?"  I described it as strictly an in and out mission.

Also, the scrapbooks, especially the second volume was in extremely poor shape and I knew we needed to photograph it soon or nobody would know about the contents.  Marv, the archivist allowed us to do it.  We did it over a period of two or three days.  My brother set up his tripod in a certain way and my cousin Mary Ann or I would position the page with identifying post it noting the volume and page.  Afterwards Marv tied up that second volume and I knew he wasn't going to let anybody else look at it.  Eventually I prepared a paper and digital volume of the images  for the collection so that other people could use the scrapbook content.

Here they are at work.  Later I got a contact who had a lot of the Board of Education materials.  Turns out that her material was after Maier's time so I wasn't so interested.  She mentioned that she had seen us working and she wished we would photograph her material.  Doubtful I could convince my brother.  Plus Charl has a demanding new job in California.

My cousin Mary Ann is my extremely competent and clever partner in crime in all this.  Now, I'm working on purchasing plots in Mishkan Israel Cemetery.  I'm slowly working through it, with Mary Ann's assistance, of course.  We have our eye on the plot next to our great grandmother Delia (1865-1910).  We're pretty darn sure that the plot next to her was supposed to be for her husband Charles Weil.  She died relatively young; he remarried and is buried next to his second wife in another part of the ceremony.  So, who's there?  Anybody?

My genealogy group has always been so jealous in that I have all this assistance.  Not only Mary Ann but I've assigned roles to my husband, brother, other cousin.Malcolm.  So far, they always do it.  Just lucky, I guess.