Do you have a treasure trove of old photos? I’ve recently come across several boxes of old slides and photos. Oh, the glee with which I descended upon that archival footage! Unfortunately, many of the slides were not annotated, so although a desert landscape shot looked spectacular, I have no way of knowing where in Australia it was taken, likewise, for many of the photos and slides of people. Luckily, I could identify many of the slides by sitting down with some relatives and going through each one. However, some may never be identified, especially the large family pictures from the early 1900s.
It does bring home that ephemeral quality of history. We can unearth so much about people’s lives and connections, but what isn’t recorded or not appropriately maintained eventually becomes lost, and as the people who hold the memories pass, so much is gone forever.
Photos to go alongside the names in our family trees or that match characters in treasured stories are so precious. Every single time I find a photo of someone who was just a name to me prior to the discovery, I am on cloud nine. My connection to that person just feels more solid. Although expressions don’t always give a glimpse of their personality, the picture setting and the clothes they wear allow me to imagine their life just that little bit easier.
That sense of connection is why I always add photos to the family trees I maintain on repositories like Ancestry.com. So others can also experience the connection. But what do you do when you have an old photo of someone not on your tree? Or no name to accompany the photo?
My first port of call is to try and identify other things about the person in the picture. Where they lived, their parents, and when the photo was taken. I then try to locate them on Ancestry.com in a family tree. Then, I try to find a close connection to the person or at least a tree with the correct information about them. If I do, then I offer to send the owner of that tree their photo with a brief explanation.
Oftentimes, however, I can find no close links or, if I have no name, no place to begin my search. It seems too sad to just let the photo become an unknown piece of history. There are many others in this wonderful world of ours who feel the same, and as a result, new sites are popping up all of the time with the aim of connecting names to photos and photos to family members.
A search on Facebook will offer up a plenitude of pages to search through, such as The Lost Portrait Archive and The Museum of Lost Memories. However, there are also web pages like Dead Fred and Ancestor Photos that can be searched and added to. Whatever you choose to do with those random photos you have stored in a box, I encourage you to share them. Make connections and prevent history from simply fading away.
