Family History & Safe Deposit Boxes: Preserving Our Donor’s Known Info

Well today our donor officially joined our family history via my putting the following documents in our safe deposit box: his bios (hard copy and on CD), toddler picture, and voice recording (CD). I finally made copies of the voice recording the other day and finally got to the bank. While there I cleaned up and better organized our files in our box. We actually have a larger box at about 18” depth by 10” width by 6” height.

I originally got the box as I have a number of family history documents that I did not feel comfortable keeping at home (I survived an apartment fire years ago – it wasn’t as dramatic as it sounds but it’s something I still worry about). The larger box was needed as some of these documents could not be folded. I also keep back up copies of all our family pictures on CD rom in the box.

For a while now I have been meaning to get the donor stuff into the box to theoretically ensure its safekeeping. I say theoretically as my office mate used to have her box in a bank branch that was on the concourse level of the World Trade Center, enough said on that. Anyhow I now have duplicate copies of everything and the original picture (the copy we were sent) and the voice recording interview are in the box.

While organizing the box better I had intended to put the donor stuff into it’s own folder but I ran out after assigning one each to the kids and one jointly to my wife and I. So I figured I’d just combine the family history stuff and the donor stuff into one folder. Jointly these documents make up my kid’s history as we know it so it made sense.