Audio treasures lost and found

Since our move into town about 5 years ago, I have been unable to find the cassette tapes that included my mother's mother talking and singing. I was forced to conclude that they were lost in the move.

But two weeks ago, I was using Filesearchex to search my back-up drive for photos of specific people, To my astonishment and delight I found some MP3 audio files of the missing tapes. I vaguely remembered trying to digitize some of the recordings 15 or 20 years ago (and 3 or 4 computers ago) but I did not remember having any significant success. I even found a copy of a tape letter home to my parents from Marseilles, France for Christmas in 1964, when I was briefly a missionary there. I felt that the existence of these recordings was a tender mercy from God.

I installed the free Audacity software and learned to do some minimal editing. My goal was to make MP3 files less than 15 MB in size, the maximum size that can be uploaded to FamilySearch Memories.

By tweaking a bit, I was able to further reduce the file size so that a recording that was nearly a half hour long was less than 15 MB in size. (When I make a recording using the Memories app on my phone, 15 MB works out to about 5 minutes.) Somehow I had accomplished the equivalent of putting a cupful of sugar into a teaspoon. I am nor sure exactly how it happened but I am very glad that it did.

The recording quality is poor, But at least future generations will be able to hear the voices of my grandmother and some other family members who are no longer living.

You should be able to listen to them (and a few other audio files) by clicking this link:
https://www.familysearch.org/photos/gallery/album/700294
The 90th birthday recording is quite good. It was recorded in 1974.


I encourage you to digitize any old photos, documents, or tape recordings that you may have of family members, and upload them to FamilySearch for preservation. FamilySearch.org was established as the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) in 1894 and has been preserving genealogies since that time. (The site and any software referred to above are free.)