Until recently I have been working in tourist information, spending my days advising visiting tourists how best to spend their time in our wonderful country. Many of those are not only coming to see Northern Ireland for the first time, but as it turns out have been on a bit of a fact-finding mission about their ancestors – and more to the point where exactly they lived, schooled, married or indeed died. It occurred to me that whilst there are quite a few genealogy websites from which they can compile family trees and ancestry, there was a missing element that linked all these discoveries together, photographs!
With this in mind I began thinking about those who never
get a chance to return to these shores or many second or
third generation children who through the years have
heard so many stories about where their great grandfather
or mother grew up, but never got to see their homeland
first hand. As we all know, taking photos back in
those days was a rarity reserved for the more auspicious
occasions. When do we ever take photographs of the
street where we grew up, or the school we attended, and
yet we carry these memories around with us - often
trying to describe the vision to those close to us?
Our service can bridge that gap and make the image real
for you!
With
all the effort we put into researching our ancestry,
wouldn’t it be great to be able to add an interesting
dimension with the addition of photographs of places that
featured in our ancestors’ lives. It may be a
school they attended, the church in which they married or
the street where they lived – or perhaps their
tombstone..
It
is my hope that my endeavours will bring a little bit of
home back to you and your families.
Best
wishes
Liz