This lovely black photo album was created by my great-grandmother, Blanche Octavia Huband. It is one of four albums she created that I inherited from my Grandma’s collection. This album is the earliest album of the four.
Scanning the entire album was fairly easy because the binding was secured using that shoelace style ribbon and metal eyelets. All that was required was untying the bow and gently sliding each page off the ribbon. Reassembling was slower, but still very easy and safe. Nothing was damaged or lost in that process. Generally, I would not recommend disassembling an old album. However, disassembling, in this case, was safer than trying to scan each page while the album was still assembled.
Last year I scanned and shared a different album put together by Great-Grandma Blanche. That was such a fun and rewarding project! One of her daughters, many of her grandchildren, and many of her nieces and nephews are living so I got lots of family interaction and insights as I shared.
This album is different in that it contains primarily snapshots instead of portraits. Because of that, I will be sharing it differently. I anticipate sharing one or two pages at a time with the accompanying photos. Additionally, I won’t likely edit every single photo to clean up dust and scratches. I will most likely save those efforts for the best images.
I look forward to, and hope for, lots of family interaction again as I share this treasured album that contains photos that are more than 100 years old.
If you are a descendant of Blanche or her ancestors, please feel free to leave comments or send me an email (amberlysfamilyhistory [at] yahoo [dot] com). I will be adding all of the scans to a Flickr photo album. That will be the place to find the largest image files. It will also allow you to view the album and its contents in order as a digital replica of the physical album.
Great-Grandma Blanche appears in many of the photos throughout this album along with her husband Claude Albert Ellis, her family members, and friends.
Here are a few photos of Great-Grandma Blanche that I have shared in the past:
