Calling All Romantics! Bring Out Yer Love Letters!!

I am fascinated by old letters. One of my websites PastVoices reflects my determination to bring these poignant old letters online. Now we have a very interesting call to genealogists to dig into their closets, their attics and their basements to look for love letters.

MyHeritage.com is calling upon the British public to delve into their attics and shoe boxes to find ancestral love letters, and submit them via www.myheritage.com/loveletters. Participants are also welcome to submit more recently-written love letters and messages for consideration.

The best submissions will be featured on the special competition webpage within MyHeritage.com, with the most romantic British love letter of all time – as chosen by Wendy Holden (author of The School For Husbands, Beautiful People and Gallery Girl) – being announced on Friday Feb. 25th 2011. Full competition terms and conditions online

To provide inspiration, MyHeritage.com has teamed-up with a number of leading UK museums and archives – including the British Library, The Royal Naval Museum, and The Imperial War Museum – to obtain scans (and transcripts) of significant British love letters from the past 500 years. These includes 17-year-old Margery Brews 500 year old love letter, and poignant missives penned by an unknown World War Two airman based in Yorkshire. The historical British love letters can be found in an online gallery at www.myheritage.com/loveletters

The initiative is part of a drive by MyHeritage.com to encourage people to collect and preserve their family memories online – past and present. Romances between older living relatives and ancestors, often illustrated in love letters, are a critical point in every family’s history. With over 54 million users around the world, MyHeritage.com has become the leading place online for creating and sharing a family tree.

Details may be found at
http://blog.myheritage.com/2011/02/oldest-love-letter-in-history/