A Year’s Worth of Photos: 2015

This was another amazing year of photo columns. Thank you for sharing your family pictures and for re-posting your favorite photo detective blog posts on social media. Can’t wait to see what 2016 will bring!

Here’s a month by month overview of your favorites. Please click links to see the full stories.

Imagine moving and leaving photographs behind. It happens more often than you’d think possible. January’s first post featured a portrait of a man found in a house. He’s still a mystery.

February’s post on photo jewelry explained how you can read the clues both in the photos and the settings to discover when a piece of jewelry containing a picture was made and/or worn. Sometimes pictures were replaced in jewelry settings.

Comparing faces whether you do it using software or just using your eyes can be tricky. Family resemblances can lead to misidentified pictures. Here’s what you need to know to sort out the twenty plus points in a person’s face.

In April a Gold Rush town picture yielded clues for one family. If you had family living in Shaw’s Flats, California, you might spot a relative in this group picture.

DNA is this year’s most talked about genealogical topic but inherited traits can show up in pictures too. A six-fingered ancestor in one family collection was full of identification clues.

June brought clues to help you spot a blue-eyed ancestor in a picture. Try these tips with your photos.

It took Michael Boyce to make the right connections to solve his family photo mystery. Here’s how he did it.

One of the most challenging clues in a picture are military uniforms. There were no standardized uniforms in the nineteenth century, but August’s column lays out three techniques to sort through the evidence.

The clues in September’s graveside photo fit together to tell a story of one family’s funeral, just not the one the family was expecting. Read all about it.

Our ancestors dressed like their favorite popular icons from politicians to performers. See how this one young woman dressed like Annie Oakley and see if you can spot these clues in your own collection.

November focused on facial hair. Imagine writing today’s Presidential candidates to influence their facial hair fashions. That’s exactly what one little girl did. The true story of Abraham Lincoln’s beard is noteworthy.

Nineteenth century brides didn’t usually wear white. They wore nice clothes and so did their grooms which means that wedding pictures are often overlooked in family collections. In Wedding Clues: 1855 Peter Whitmer and his bride Lucy Jane McDonald dressed to the nines for their nuptials.