Photos
Photos
“Reading” a Family Photo Album
I love a good story, don't you? Every photo album tells one if you know where to look. The arrangement of the images is a key part of unraveling the threads of the tale. If you're like Daniel Gwinn, you probably inherited a family photo album with few (if any)...
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More Ancestors at Work: Early 1900s Meat-Cutting Plant
If you've ever read The Jungle (available free on Project Gutenberg), author Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel describing Chicago's meatpacking industry, then you may have tried to imagine what it was like to work in that industry in the early 20th century. Roxanne Munn's photos provide an glimpse into how meat...
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Ancestral Occupational Portraits
Thank you for sending in your photographs of ancestors at work! I've got quite a selection to show you. This is going to be a two-part article. There are too many to show in one blog post. Wendy Negley owns this lovely picture (above) of her great-grandfather Frank Stefani with...
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Ancestral Occupations
Do you know what your ancestors did for work? My paternal grandfather painted houses and so did his father. My maternal grandmother worked in a cotton mill alongside the rest of her family. Their stories were passed down in the family and evidence in documents like city directories and census...
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Looking for a Pennsylvania Connection
Every week I search the submissions for this column looking for a mystery photo. Each photo is accompanied by some basic information and usually a story. My next steps are to contact the person who sent in the photo either by phone or email, then start digging for more information...
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Old Family Photos: Fraternal Organizations
Blanch Flanigan owns not one but two images of family in dress that identifies them as members of a fraternal organization. These secret societies were very popular in the 19th century. They offered men brotherhood, work opportunities and a shared mission. Symbolism varied. The three interconnecting rings of the Independent...
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A Family Portrait Photo Mystery
Lauren Hamilton submitted this photo with a few questions, but as soon as I saw it I thought, "uh oh, this might not be who Lauren and her cousin think it is."The cousins' great-great-grandfather John McCauley was a Mennonite minister in Ontario, and later an Evangelical minister in Iowa...
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A Multi-Mystery Historical Baby Photo
Jim Moses recently found himself with a perplexing family photo mystery. When going through a trunk from his great-grandfather Luther Abner Moses (1860-1905) , he found an intriguing photo. It's a wonderful photo of a baby laughing. Everything in the trunk is related to Abner, but this photo is a puzzle...
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Clues, Cousins and Contacts: Three Ways to Solve a Photo Mystery
What does it take to solve a picture mystery? In this case it's clues, cousins and contacts. June Thomazin is determined to solve this tintype mystery! I featured it in my Photo Detective column in the September 2010 Family Tree Magazine (you can get a download of that Photo Detective...
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Fathers and Sons from Readers
Last week I wrote about two famous fathers and asked you to submit photos of fathers and sons in your family album. Thank you very much for sending in your photos!Geraldine Rudloff emailed this photograph of her immigrant ancestor Hans Christian S. Hegsted holding one of his...
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