A little family history

So, I have been going through a couple of boxes of old Hamacher/Mathew family pictures and keepsakes to better organize it and scan them all so that we have multiple copies of everything. What an amazing experience it has been seeing all this stuff and learning details and "fun facts" about my family. I guess I am lucky to have had great-grandmothers and a grandparents who saved things like letters and report cards and newspaper clippings. So this means that my grandchildren will appreciate the bazillion cards I have saved over the years. Or that dried crumbling flower I still have from the freshman snowball dance. I know, priceless, right?

This picture is of my dad's parents, Pauline and Bart, in 1936 with their first born, Beverly. This one is of my grandfather, Bart, in 1909 as an infant. I think it's probably a baptism picture since there is also 2 other pictures of this siblings in the same gown. My grandpa had this exact same hairstyle for the rest of this life. Other than the hair, do you all see the Boothe resemblance? Notice the 1 droopy eyelid. Here are some of the postcards my great-grandmother saved. They were all sent to my grandpa during his childhood. There are probably 50-75 in all and cover about all of the holidays and birthdays. Most of them are in such great shape for being close to 100 years old.This one was sent in 1912.What does this even mean?An unopened bar of soap, probably from a hotel stay, in 1929 when his team went to the state basketball tournament in Indianapolis. Look closely and you can see the writing on the wrapper.Report cards. Good thing he did well. That's probably why they were kept and why my dad's probably were not kept.I liked that they needed a parent's signature. This picture and the next is the wedding invitation for my great-grandparents wedding in 1904 sent by my great-great-grandparents on my dad's dad side. Get that?This is the obituary for my great-grandpa Hamacher born in 1880. If you can read it it talks about how his family traveled by covered wagon to Indiana.

There are also some school notebooks of my grandpa's with handwritten school notes in them. When you look through it you imagine my grandpa as a grown man writing those words when actually, it was just a boy taking those notes. This boy back row, fourth from left.