I'm going to a family reunion this weekend. In anticipation, mum has had me scan some (many, many, many)old letters that she's had in storage (handed down from her mother and her grandmother). Its been an interesting experience putting them in order and getting some of the back story on bits of them. They were prolific letter writers.
It was an eye opener seeing how poor one side of my family was. I had been told, but seeing the letters saying that James was off looking for work or one of the children who are off working is sending money orders home, really emphasizes things.
Theres also a series of letters from an uncle who went off to Canada and then signed up for WW1 - he died in France. I was able to read about his life from 1906 to 1916 when he died & the letters afterwards from the military, informing his family of his death.
There are also a bunch of WW2 letters from several brothers. Wow, they are interesting (and some have bits cut out)Lots of "somewhere in France" addresses, or desert areas. There's also telegrams from the military with messages monitored from Japanese propaganda radio, purporting to be from them saying they were alive and well in POW camps, and similar from private individuals monitoring radio after the camps were liberated (they listed names and who to get the message to).
What I should do - if I could find some time - is collate them properly and find out some of the surrounding information & then epublish them. I could call it "The Chalmers Letters - snapshots of 3 generations of Australians"
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What I should do - if I could find some time - is collate them properly and find out some of the surrounding information & then epublish them.
Do that! *wants to read them*
It's also very easy to make bound trade paperbacks these days.
My biggest qualm is transcribing it to text - the reading can be slow going. Perhaps I could pay someone to do that bit. I should as Dot's mum if there's a going rate.
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