Archives for Maureen A. Taylor
1890s Fashion in Color
It's so easy to look at a vintage photograph and image that our ancestors dressed in drab colors. If you're as curious as I am about fabrics and colors then watch my new video on hand-colored images. These two women wear cotton dresses from the circa-1890 period. Their sleeves and...
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Mother and Daughters
Family photographs are endlessly fascinating. There is the life story of the individuals in a picture and then there is the story of the person who took the image. I've looked a thousands of photographs over the years so I can spot a talented studio photographer just by looking at...
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Foreign Intrigue
Each photo has a life story. Who took it, why was it taken, and if it's in this column, who is it. This picture from Maureen Ballantine's collection has an additional issue—how did it get so damaged?The scan she sent me was so faded that I enhanced it using...
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What is Crowdsourcing?
Crowdsourcing has been in the news lately relating to photo identification. According to Wikipedia, the term refers to the outsourcing of tasks to a community. The Library of Congress (LOC) is using the historical, photographic and genealogical community to help identify their photo mysteries. In its Flickr collection...
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Supreme Streams Premium
Check out these free collections of historical photos on Flickr.
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Photo Detective: Bridging the Past Premium
Pinpointing the location of a New York street scene.
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Oral History and Family Photos
Behind every family photo is a story. It might be a simple tale of how your ancestor visited a photo studio or a complex story interwoven with local, national and family history. Bonnie Farver, Farver family historian for Pennsylvania, sent me this great portrait. The Farvers have an oral tradition...
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Friendship, Love and Truth in the Family Album
Pam Rolland is working her way through family albums in the possession of her aunt. She reports that she's been able to date and identify many of the pictures in them, but still has a few mysteries. This is one of them. It was in an...
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Images of Ancestors at Work
Happy Labor Day! It's a day that honors work so why not take a trip into the past to find pictures of your laboring ancestors. Some of my favorite images on the Library of Congress website are the pictures that show individuals in their...
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Hurricane of 1938: Before and After
I grew up on the Rhode Island shore and spent summers on the beach. In Rhode Island (and New England), we measure storms like this weekend's hurricane/tropical storm against the grandaddy of all New England hurricanes: the Hurricane of 1938. In the late 19th and early...
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