Have you ever cleaned out or gone through a parent’s or relative’s closet, basement or attic? Often when doing so, you can find a treasure trove of family history.

Stuffed into folders or boxes you might find photos, documents, mementos and newspapers that tell the story of your family from years gone by. You can learn about your ancestors from drawings they made, journals, pictures, letters, military papers–maybe even a program from the 1983 Seahawks-49ers game that your sisters danced at the halftime show. All of these events and more, recorded in souvenirs, certificates and scraps of torn and yellowing paper, tell a story. They tell the story of where your ancestors came from, who they were, and how they became who they are today. These mementos are truly underutilized and undervalued with the way we often treat them.

Proof it works! After scanning the missionary journals and pictures of a late great-grandfather and posting them on Family Search, an individual recently found out what a profound impact they had on others the ancestor knew. By searching for these individuals and tagging them in their great-grandfather’s pictures and journals on FamilySearch, these descendants got to see pictures of their ancestors they had never seen before. Some even saw a picture of them for the first time and added a great deal of information about their life. –Jason McDaniel