John & Margaret McCann Bellew Family Scrapbook

I previously posted a few photos of this family scrapbook which I made for my Mother back in 2008, and another for my Uncle this year.  I wanted to share it again for the Carnival of Genealogy: Scrapbooking Your Family History.   The first book has been added to since it was first made, because of additional tidbits or photos found on any given person, and making changes and additions are easy enough to do with traditional paper scrapbooks.

When I began documenting my Bellew line, I was intrigued by the story of my Great-Grandparents, and their voyages to the US, the heartbreak of losing a son in WWII, and what became of the others. Armed with the information and a few photos, a scrapbook was born. The very first page was an introduction to the story, including a copy of the marriage certificate of John & Margaret McCann Bellew. The rest of the story just fell into place from there.




I started with their journey - passenger lists, photos of where they departed, a postcard of the ship and correspondence between John & Margaret during their time apart

Two pages followed, showing census records, photos from the mills, city directories, and churches where the family attended Mass.

I also created a page for each of them individually, giving information on their parents, their place of birth, death etc.

I then created pages for each of their sons.  Some had more than others, depending on the information available to put into the book.   My Grandfather, William Bellew had the most pages of course (9 in total), and I included all information I could find on each of his three brothers.

This was a very rewarding project in two ways;  it brought life to all the documents and the story they can tell, and it's something that can be passed down to later generations of the family.