Scanning letters

I have close to 2000 letters that my mother sent to me over a period of almost 30 years and includes cut out of the newspaper that I might be interested in as well as family information. I have decided to scan all the letters and create a DVD. She often commented on the weather and other interesting area details. She passed away in 2002 at the age of 85.5 years still living in her own home and very independent. My father lived to be 94.5 and she was twelve years younger so had  thought she would be be with us for a longer period of time. I decided in her memory to create this DVD of her weekly/monthly letters to us after we moved away in April 1975.

Like her father who had experienced by the age of 14 the death of his beloved mother, his only sister and brother, my mother was only eight when her father passed away. Like him, she watched as her many relatives too passed on although she did have quite a few second cousins/third cousins that she knew well. She grew up though on stories of her Pincombe, Gray and Routledge families whilst her father was still living and also her Buller and Taylor families from her mother. She loved the history of her family and her death in 2002 was perhaps the first inkling in my mind that someone should really write down all of these stories and gradually as the years passed it became self-directed as I realized that I did have an interest in genealogy although well-hidden through the first 39 years of marriage. My husband has been an avid genealogist for as long as I have known him although active research did not begin until the early 1970s.

I think I will logically put all of these letters in by date and build a file system by year/month/day to be systematic. I can also include the many pictures that she also sent where I haven't yet separated them out from the letters. Because genealogy wasn't one of my interests during this time period I simply kept filing the letters away in a large container just as they came. I tend to be somewhat of a "pack rat" where some items are concerned and quite the reverse for other items.

This is something that I can work at whilst doing the gardening since I am finding it very difficult to set aside long stretches for genealogy this summer.