20th-Century Men’s Clothing
I'm trying something different this week and my fingers are crossed that it's going to work. I've tagged this week's photo so that you can spot the details I'm talking about. If you want to do this to your digitized photographs, you can download a bit of free software from...
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Photo Cards Redux
What type of holiday greeting do you send to friends and relatives? Four years ago I wrote Season's Greetings, a column about photo cards and shared an antique example from my collection. It's a beautiful New Year's card from a woman to her friends. As you can see, sending...
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Backgrounds and Furniture in Photos
In the last month or so, I've met (via e-mail) a lot of people who collect specific types of pictures or who know a lot about a photographic detail. I even corresponded with someone who collects photographers' fingerprints on daguerreotypes. Now that's a identification database I'd like to have!&...
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Dress Details Reveal Photo Dates
This week’s mystery photo comes all the way from New Zealand. Don’t you just love the way the Internet brings us all closer together! Janet Drinnan wrote of the picture below “We think it may be our great-great-grandmother, who was born in Buchanan, Stirlingshire, Scotland, in 1810...
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Gift-Giving Tips
If you're looking for a gift for the genealogists on your list, here are a few photo-related suggestions:A digital camera. There's a member of my family who still uses film. While there's nothing wrong with that, the holiday season is a good time to jump into digital. Manufacturers often bundle...
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Mourning Photograph?
This week's picture comes from the Photo Detective Forum. This is used by folks who want their pictures analyzed for this column, but you can also post a photo-related question. Alissa Booth wrote that someone crossed out the original caption, C.C. Smock's wife and wrote Mother. A little girl...
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Ancestral Vacations
Two things drew me to this picture. First, the owner sent me wonderful background information to tell the story. Second, it’s proof this blog has an international following: Kathryn Larcher submitted this photo from her home in France. There's no mystery about the relative depicted. Kathryn knows the last woman...
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The Plane Truth Revisited
Last year I wrote about Jacqui Marcella's photo of two couples standing in front of an airplane in The Plane Truth. I'm revisiting a few of my older columns to see if I can discover anything new about those pictures. When I looked at this 1920s image I thought, "Why...
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Hunting for Clues Part Two
For genealogists, it's easy to underestimate the power we yield. If you need proof, think about this: The recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article on The Photo Detective was the number one article read online at the WSJ for a week! This means thousands if not millions of...
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Old-Photo Reunions
I have a friend who has phenomenal family history luck. Around each genealogical corner is another discovery. She goes to libraries and finds new family in almost every book she picks up, posts online queries and actually gets an answer. A couple of years ago she used a...
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