Scrap Girls Digital Scrapbooking Forum: Viewing image Oct, Contest - Family History - Scrap Girls Digital Scrapbooking Forum

The photo on this page is of my great-great-uncle on my father's side. The text is a transcription of a family record written in complex calligraphy, and relates details of my great-great grandparents, John and Anna Mary Hartmann, and their seven children. Their son John is listed in the lower right paragraph; his information says:

"John Hartmann, son of John and Anna Mary Hartmann, drowned with the unfortunate boat "Sultana", on the Mississippi River, April 27th, AD 1865. His age was 24 years, 5 months, and 29 days. Funeral sermons were preached at home, June 18th, from 1st Peter, Chap. 1, v. 24 & 25."

The Sultana was carrying civil war soldiers who had been released from Cahaba prison in Alabama when its boiler exploded, about nine miles north of Memphis. There is a memorial in Central Park, Mansfield, Ohio, to all the local men who died as a result of the explosion.

This page was made before I discovered digital scrapbooking sources online; I sort of taught myself PSE techniques for a year or two. The patterned paper is scanned; I don't have a record of it's source, but I remember that I recolored it. The background is a fill layer with a texture (sandstone, I think) applied. The mat is a PSE shape, and the photo frame is a stroke. PSE drop shadows were applied to the family record and photo. The font is Cloister Black.