This is the fourth post in my Family History Binder series. Click here to go back to part 1.

The first divider in my family history binder is labeled “maps, photos, etc”. I had originally planned on putting this section last in my binder, but I found that this was the section that people were most interested in looking at and I didn’t want to make them flip past the 200 pages of documents every time.

The maps I included were ones that didn’t necessarily pertain to a specific individual but would still be interesting to have. Here are a couple examples:

1880 Colden, New York: founded by an ancestor and home to a few generations of his descendents

1878 Winfield, Kansas: home to 3 generations of ancestors

My photo section includes copies of every photo I have of the 15 ancestors in my pedigree chart (see Part 3). I purchased Ultra Pro 5X7 Photo Pages to organize them before discovering that it is actually fairly expensive to have 5x7s printed. I could have used 4×6 but decided instead to have 5x7s printed on glossy cardstock at Staples. I put 2 on each page and then cut them out with my Fiskars Paper Trimmer.

What I love about the Ultra Pro 5X7 Photo Pages is the extra slot next to each photo where you can put a caption.

In my captions, I also included the number of each individual (refer to Part 3 to see my numbering system). My reason for not placing the photos of the individual in their specific section of the binder is that I would need to make multiple copies of many family portraits (the top photo shown here would need to be printed for Carl, Ada, and Aaron’s sections).

I added “etc” to my divider tab so that I can add other types documents in the future if I find that they don’t fit anywhere else, like a family crest or DNA data.

Click here to go to part 5 of the Family History Binder series.