Oh, those old photographs without names
Brenda Kellow
June 9, 2013
Recently, friends of ours were blessed with their second
child. Although she was a beautiful baby girl with little tufts of blond hair,
she looked just like the infant pictures of her big brother, now two, who was
also born with little hair and who is also blond. I warned the mom that in
time, because the babies looked so much alike in infancy, she should identify
each picture now. I found this to be a bit of a problem with our children’s baby
pictures.
Other pictures difficult to identify are those found stored in boxes of the elderly. This happened to me just this week. My cousin Marie scanned and emailed me pictures she had found while going through her grandmother’s picture box. She identified a soldier’s picture as my dad in his World War I uniform. The picture was taken at a studio in San Antonio. It was not my dad for I have many pictures of him at that age and while he served in the Army. The other relative who served in the Army was my dad’s cousin. I have pictures of him and it does not look like him at all. Both Daddy’s picture and Uncle Albert’s picture were taken at a studio in New York City just before they were shipped overseas. I emailed the picture to Cousin Frances in another branch of the family to see if she could identify the soldier. She could not. Frances emailed it to still another person in the family but they could not identify the soldier either. No one identified the soldier in four branches of our family. So who is the handsome soldier in the picture? Will we ever know?
Cousin Marie and her son Mike did solve the puzzle of a picture taken around 1915 of a woman and child. The woman looked like my dad and his sister Aunt Bette, but Aunt Bette was only ten years old at that time. On the back of the ‘postcard photo’, Marie’s dad had written Betty Burns and Beulah Stibbens. We were familiar with the child named Beulah. We both jumped to the conclusion that it was our Aunt Bette Burns. Mike and Marie later determined the woman was Mary Elizabeth Swain Burns, Marie and my grandmother who died a few months before Marie and I were born. Grandmother is holding her granddaughter Beulah. After I compared the woman’s picture with a later one of Grandmother Burns, it was evident they identified her correctly. Sharing and collaboration solved her identity. Not using a relationship title such as aunt or uncle, checking for birth year and exploring possible nicknames is important when exploring photo identification.
However, we must all remember to think twice about putting a relationship with a name. There is no one alive who ever remembered her called anything except Grandma Burns. Luckily, Marie thought of the connection as referring to Grandmother Mary Elizabeth Burns.
The problem reminded me of something Diane Davies sent me awhile back about her thoughts on how to organize and identify old photographs handed down without any identification labels. Diane and I were fortunate to have our parents identify the majority of the old pictures, but both of us have some we cannot identify.
Diane and a friend discussed this problem at the dinner table. Her friend has such a box of old photos, but without her parents, aunts or uncles to help with identification, she may never know their identities. That started Diane to thinking about how to attack and solve this problem for her friend and others with similar problems. She thought the first step in identification was to establish the approximate dates of the photos and place these in individual according stacks. The known and unknown people were placed in one stack according to approximate decade, including those few with dates written on the backs.
From these stacks, she sorted according to clothes, then by parents and children. Diane commented that people took pictures then for the same reason we do today—for special occasions and to document children’s growth and family additions. With this in mind, it is necessary to try to contact relatives from other branches of the family so they can compare notes. Maybe someone has a person or two named in a group picture. If you can identify one person and someone else can identify another, this might lead to identifying a family by using the census.
Trying to identifying the individuals in old photos we inherit is a common problem most genealogists have, if they are that lucky. Sometimes sorting according to families, dates and even clothing period and hairstyles is necessary. Certainly passing the photos to other family members to help with identification and comparing notes is helpful. Whatever it takes, chipping away at the identities of the people in those old photographs certainly can be rewarding, or frustrating if you reach a dead end.
Brenda Kellow has a bachelor's degree in history, teaches, and lectures on genealogy. Before retiring to publish her family’s histories in 2007, Brenda held certificationas a Certified Genealogist and as a Certified Genealogical Instructor. Send reunion announcements, books to review, and genealogy queries to:
[email protected].
Other pictures difficult to identify are those found stored in boxes of the elderly. This happened to me just this week. My cousin Marie scanned and emailed me pictures she had found while going through her grandmother’s picture box. She identified a soldier’s picture as my dad in his World War I uniform. The picture was taken at a studio in San Antonio. It was not my dad for I have many pictures of him at that age and while he served in the Army. The other relative who served in the Army was my dad’s cousin. I have pictures of him and it does not look like him at all. Both Daddy’s picture and Uncle Albert’s picture were taken at a studio in New York City just before they were shipped overseas. I emailed the picture to Cousin Frances in another branch of the family to see if she could identify the soldier. She could not. Frances emailed it to still another person in the family but they could not identify the soldier either. No one identified the soldier in four branches of our family. So who is the handsome soldier in the picture? Will we ever know?
Cousin Marie and her son Mike did solve the puzzle of a picture taken around 1915 of a woman and child. The woman looked like my dad and his sister Aunt Bette, but Aunt Bette was only ten years old at that time. On the back of the ‘postcard photo’, Marie’s dad had written Betty Burns and Beulah Stibbens. We were familiar with the child named Beulah. We both jumped to the conclusion that it was our Aunt Bette Burns. Mike and Marie later determined the woman was Mary Elizabeth Swain Burns, Marie and my grandmother who died a few months before Marie and I were born. Grandmother is holding her granddaughter Beulah. After I compared the woman’s picture with a later one of Grandmother Burns, it was evident they identified her correctly. Sharing and collaboration solved her identity. Not using a relationship title such as aunt or uncle, checking for birth year and exploring possible nicknames is important when exploring photo identification.
However, we must all remember to think twice about putting a relationship with a name. There is no one alive who ever remembered her called anything except Grandma Burns. Luckily, Marie thought of the connection as referring to Grandmother Mary Elizabeth Burns.
The problem reminded me of something Diane Davies sent me awhile back about her thoughts on how to organize and identify old photographs handed down without any identification labels. Diane and I were fortunate to have our parents identify the majority of the old pictures, but both of us have some we cannot identify.
Diane and a friend discussed this problem at the dinner table. Her friend has such a box of old photos, but without her parents, aunts or uncles to help with identification, she may never know their identities. That started Diane to thinking about how to attack and solve this problem for her friend and others with similar problems. She thought the first step in identification was to establish the approximate dates of the photos and place these in individual according stacks. The known and unknown people were placed in one stack according to approximate decade, including those few with dates written on the backs.
From these stacks, she sorted according to clothes, then by parents and children. Diane commented that people took pictures then for the same reason we do today—for special occasions and to document children’s growth and family additions. With this in mind, it is necessary to try to contact relatives from other branches of the family so they can compare notes. Maybe someone has a person or two named in a group picture. If you can identify one person and someone else can identify another, this might lead to identifying a family by using the census.
Trying to identifying the individuals in old photos we inherit is a common problem most genealogists have, if they are that lucky. Sometimes sorting according to families, dates and even clothing period and hairstyles is necessary. Certainly passing the photos to other family members to help with identification and comparing notes is helpful. Whatever it takes, chipping away at the identities of the people in those old photographs certainly can be rewarding, or frustrating if you reach a dead end.
Brenda Kellow has a bachelor's degree in history, teaches, and lectures on genealogy. Before retiring to publish her family’s histories in 2007, Brenda held certificationas a Certified Genealogist and as a Certified Genealogical Instructor. Send reunion announcements, books to review, and genealogy queries to:
[email protected].
