04/02/2020
I have been working on a new workshop I intend to offer when possible. It will be a Family Heritage Shadowbox/Collage workshop. As a family historian who also offers collage workshops, this sounds like fun to me. I look forward to assisting others in their creation of a shadowbox/collage that portrays one or more of their family members.
Here is an example shadowbox/collage that I recently created, featuring my great-great-aunt, Alice Johnston. The cut-out photo of her is likely her graduation photo. She was a Missouri country girl who grew up to be a newspaper journalist in Chicago and New York City, from 1896 to 1903. This was a time that very few women worked in the newspaper business. Alas, her life was cut short by the scourge of the day, tuberculosis.
She wrote many letters to her father (which I am fortunate to have), and always began them with "Dear Pa". So I've included a photo of him (my greag-great-grandfather, John W. Johnston) along with photos of her mother, brother, and sister. A photo of Alice when she was a newspaper reporter in New York overlays the two major newspapers she worked for.
I have no actual possessions of Alice's, other than her letters. So I found a simple fountain pen that I mounted, and a cutout of an early typewriter that the New York World newsroom used — to represent what she would have used to write with.
Sadly, we've only been able to locate a few of Alice's writings. Older family members have said there was once a trunk full of her writings, but it had been burned because mice had gotten into it. And many newspapers of the day did not give credit to the reporter who had written the story.
The house at the lower right of the green background is where she spent her last three years, in Monett, Missouri. Her sister, Josephine, took care of her through that time, until her passing.
There is much more I could share about Alice... she had a rich and interesting life. I shall do that at a later time.
