Photo Detective
Decoration Day, 1868
History intersects at ironic moments that make the past very interesting. Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day, is one of those moments. All over the United States on this day, towns hold parades and locals decorate veterans' graves. This stereo image from the Library of Congress depicts the first...
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Photo Detective: Props in Family Photos Premium
Our Photo Detective points out how props can provide clues in family photos.
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The World War I Era in Color
May is the month of gardens and Memorial Day, so I thought I'd take a peek into gardens of the past. On the Library of Congress website, I discovered this gorgeous color image that depicts an important moment in the history of 20th-century gardening. While commercially successful color photography was...
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Part 2 of an Italian Photo Mystery
Last week I introduced Eileen Poulin's mysterious photos on tin and showed you one of the two images of her Italian relatives. Poulin's mother left her the pair with a note regarding the identity of the individuals in the photos—but the details are confusing: On the paper with the above...
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A Two-Part Italian Photo Mystery
How many of us have found a note in a box of family photos? I suspect that it's pretty common. Unfortunately, the person who left the note probably didn't realize that it could cause confusion about who's who. Eileen Poulin has a double mystery based on a set of notes...
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Further Clues in the Connecticut Photo Mystery
Last week I introduced a photo mystery from the Derby (CT) Public Library with links to archaeological excavations. The big question is: "Who's in this photo?"Let's look at some of the evidence in the picture. The shed is of unknown use. A higher-resolution image might reveal what's inside the...
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A Piece of Connecticut History
Photo courtesy of Derby (CT) Public Library Could this woman be Nancy Freeman, widow of Roswell Freeman, who was one of Connecticut's "Black Governors"? That's the big question, and this query has a lot of pieces. Janet Woodruff, an archaeologist with the Archaeology Laboratory for African & African...
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Old Photos: Are These Sisters or Family Friends?
A few weeks ago I featured Jim Cat's picture of women seated on the stoop in front of their house. He recently wrote to tell me more about the women in the picture. His grandmother Mary Florence Filichia Catanzaro was born in Chicago on Feb. 18, 1894. Mary...
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Mind-Bending Photo Mystery: Part 2
Last week I wrote about Pam and Art Crawford's family photo dilemma. With both the Crawford and Jones families claiming this couple as their relatives, it's a pixel puzzle. This week I'm tackling the costume clues in the image. Men's ties and collars can help pinpoint a date...
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Mind-Bending Photo Mystery
Isn't this a nice picture? It seems so innocuous. Yet this picture is BIG photo mystery that has a couple puzzled: I met Pam and Art Crawford at last month's RootsTech conference. Using my iPad as a voice recorder, I interviewed them about this picture. You can listen...
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