Another couple of oldies from my quest to scan a large collection of personal snapshots.
Somewhere around 1980-82, give or take a few years, we were visiting friends in Troy, New York. During our visit, they took us to see the grave of Uncle Sam.
Not “Uncle Sam” the U.S. government, but the “original” Uncle Sam, who it turns out had been a meat packer whose name was associated with his meat products purchased by the government to feed troops during the War of 1812. The barrels of meat would be marked “U.S.”, and people from the area knew it was from Uncle Sam Wilson of Troy. Over time, Uncle Sam became a a reference to the U.S. government.
Uncle Sam is buried in a modest grave in Troy.
Meda and I had never heard the tale of Uncle Sam, so this was one of those unexpected voyages of discovery.
Click either photo to see a larger version.
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I lived in Troy for 3 years whilst my husband attended RPI. It was a rather dreary place, although it was home to another excellent college, Russell Sage, which was founded by Mrs. Sage, in honor of her husband, in 1916. She was a suffragist, and supported education for women. At the weekends we drove to Vermont to buy alcohol or visited nearby places made famous in the Revolution. Long ago memories …
I went to college near Troy, and we were warned to avoid it. Decades later on a Hudson River Cruise I learned how historical a place it was. For example, the Civil War ironclad Monitor’s iron plates were forged there. And it had been a center for the manufacture of detachable collars and cuffs which were once highly popular. It was good to see various historic preservation projects underway.
I hope you’ve reconsidered your intention to discard the original printed photos. Redundancy is the key, especially for photos with high sentimental or historical value. Check out the Reddit comment from birdpix:
https://www.reddit.com/r/declutter/comments/ezdi5h/photographs_scan_then_discard/
As a pro photog for 40 years, my advice is scan but keep the very important ones.
I’ve had too many hard drives, jump drives, and archived cds fail over the years, so cloud + local file + physical is best for really important images.
Still see original b\w prints that are 100+ years old and look new, but Color images will fail and ones from 60’s to 80’s are at risk of fastest fading. The old sticky backed albums are super non-archival and the cheap paper and rubber cement glue will kill photos, so make scanning those albums a priority.