2 Easy Ways to Document Your Family’s Love Letters

Did your ancestor’s ever write love letters to each other? How about just regular letters? Do you have cards, postcards, or other paper correspondence that you want to document and share? It’s almost Valentine’s Day and I want to share with you two ways that can help you document those special letters.

The word “document” means to record something in written, photographic, or other form. I interpret this to mean that as family historians we document the lives of our ancestors. In addition, I document my family’s lives by taking pictures of them and putting them into a photo book. You can do this same process for your ancestor’s love letters or other correspondence.

I’m planning on doing this with my husband and I’s emails that we wrote each other when we were dating. You can also do this with snapshots of texts from your spouse or significant other. The possibilities are endless! I recommend two simple ways to record your or your ancestor’s love letters.

Project Life App

The first way that I love is to use the Project Life App. This app was developed by Becky Higgins and her team to make it easy to take our phone pictures and scrapbook them using our phone. The end goal is to make a photo book from your phone pictures. Then you send it to a manufacturer and you receive a printed photo book at the end. You can definitely learn more on her website at www.beckyhiggins.com.

I’ve used this app to make two family yearbooks and I’m currently working on a family cookbook. However, this app can be used to record your love letters. Since I don’t have any known ancestor love letters, I plan on using our emails when I make my love letter photo book in the near future. If you want to learn more about documenting your life with the app then check out my other post here.

Costco Photo Center

I’ve also created many family yearbooks using the Costco Photo Center. I still use my phone to take pictures of the love letters or texts. However, instead of scrapbooking them on my phone, I have to download them onto my computer. I then upload the pictures onto the Photo Center website and create a photo book from there.

The Photo Center does give you step by step instructions on how to create your photo book. I do recommend using this way when you have to make multiple books or if you have a tighter budget to work with. They also offer a variety of projects that you can do with the photo center. However, I prefer using the Project Life App because I can do it all from my phone. I guess I’m kind of lazy that way.

So those are the two simple ways you can document your ancestral love letters or other correspondence. With Valentine’s Day coming up, remember how your ancestors connected with one another. Maybe ask a living relative if they have any love stories about your ancestor that you could document with the love letters. It would make for a fantastic photo book.

Good luck and happy hunting

Tiffany

P.S. If you would like to learn more about how I document my ancestors lives or any other part of genealogy, then contact me for an outside perspective. In addition, you can follow me on my Facebook page and Instagram account under the name Savvy Genealogy.

P.P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for my free download of the major genealogy websites that I use for American and Scandinavian genealogy. Subscribers get a weekly email of more tips and tricks.