Photo Detective: New Zealand Mystery
There are compelling photographs in every family collection that contain a mystery. In New Zealander Dafanie Goldsmith's family, there is this portrait of a woman in mourning with a haunting expression on her face. She looks so lost that you want to know more about her. In 1904 her...
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Photo Detective: On the Job Premium
In your own collection there are probably images of individuals wearing clothing that puzzles you. Some may be recognizable as work outfits while others remain mysterious. You might have an occupational portrait and not know it because you don't associate the clothing worn in the picture with a particular...
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Photo Detective: Needle in a Haystack? Premium
Figure 1 Figure 2 As a genealogist you spend time trying to fit together the pieces of a person's life by locating vital records, evidence of activities and whatever else you can find. You hope to create a biography of that ancestor—part of the larger history of your...
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Photo Detective: A Little Help from Your Friends Premium
One of the best ways to identify an image is by making it available to others. This week, rather than telling you how I solved a picture puzzle, I'd like to show you how Family Tree Magazine reader Janet Meleney is solving her own photo mystery—with a little help...
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Photo Detective: Physical Evidence Premium
Gena Graddy is looking for a photograph of her Civil War ancestor William Joseph Taylor (1836 to 1895). She has a box of about a hundred unidentified tintypes and thinks one of them might be a picture of Taylor taken before the war. Graddy knows that Taylor was a married...
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Photo Detective: Between the Covers Premium
Figure 1 Figure 2 David Starr found a family album with about 80 photographs in it and could identify only 15. He randomly selected several images and submitted them to this column. His ancestors didn't take the time to write names on the backs of the images or underneath...
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Photo Detective: Picking Apart the Past Premium
Patti Sanda inherited about 100 photographs. Good news for any genealogist, except the majority are unidentified cabinet cards, cartes de visite and tintypes. Now, she must attempt to name the images' subjects by matching them up with the individuals in her family tree. She can succeed if she tackles one...
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Photo Detective: Men’s Clothing Premium
Only a small percentage of the photographs submitted to this column for identification purposes are of men. Is it possible that more of our male ancestral photographs are identified or did fewer men have their picture taken? Whatever the reason, assigning a date to a male portrait presents particular...
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Photo Detective: Marital Mystery Premium
Rikki Martin has a confusing family photograph. She can identify the posed group as her great-great-grandfather Orton Yaddow, his children and one of his wives. But is the woman with the child on her lap Yaddow's first or second wife? Before immigrating to the United States from Quebec, Canada, in...
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Photo Detective: Identifying an Illustration Premium
Sometimes things aren't quite what they appear. Maxine Leonard's aunt and uncle gave her this picture when she was 5 after she became upset they were moving away. Leonard has treasured the ornate framed illustration of a child in front of a Christmas tree because it reminds her of her...
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