Photo Detective: Paint a Family Picture Premium
Cousins Catherine Keele Woodard and Millie Zey are trying to date this cased image, which, according to family lore, is a painting completed on the day an ancestor graduated from an English university. The image was given to Zey by her father, who received it from his grandfather William...
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Photo Detective: Rescuing the Past Premium
Steven Barcomb often drove by the house his wife's family had owned for about 50 years. One day, he noticed that someone was cleaning out the house and had discarded a large box of unlabeled 19th-century photographs. Thinking they were probably abandoned family pictures, he rescued them from the trash...
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Photo Detective: Aging Well Premium
I've spent a lot of time this month cleaning out every nook and cranny in my house. All this tossing of goods made me think about the clothes people hang onto as they age. Dating a photograph of an older person presents a unique dilemma: Is the subject wearing...
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Photographic Jewelry Ideas Premium
Years ago when my children were little, I took them to a portrait studio to have their pictures taken. In addition to the standard 8 x 10-inch and 5 x 7-inch prints, the studio asked if I wanted a miniature portrait in a piece of jewelry. I selected a charm...
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Photo Detective: Long-Distance Call for Help Premium
Joanne Wallace owns copies of these undated portraits of her great-grandparents, Patrick Wallace and Sarah (Foley, or Folan) Wallace. She knows almost nothing about their lives in America and would like to learn more. Unfortunately, she lives in Hong Kong, which makes genealogical research possible only from a distance. All's...
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Photo Detective: Petal Pushers Premium
Every photo question is a little different. Take this one, for instance: Sonya Tootle's relatives told her the boy in the front is her great-grandfather Herbert Seymour Scholes (born in 1909). This is a likely identification, but what's curious about this picture is the flowers. All but one of...
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Photo Detective: Not in the Family Premium
Some of those unidentified photographs in your collection may not depict your family. Long before People magazine, our ancestors were fascinated by the famous and infamous of their generation, and they collected photographs of them. Sold by bookstores, stationery shops and individual photographers, these images often ended up in family...
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Photo Detective: Sibling Portrait Rivalry Premium
Irene Uffrecht-Peters knows the names of the boys, but not the girls, in this captivating photograph of the Schiff children taken in Germany. Family lore identifies the little boy left front as her great-grandfather Ludwig Schiff (born 1864). His other brothers Felix (1854) and Paul (1862) are most likely...
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Photo Detective: Weighty Accessory Premium
How an oversize necklace provides a date for these portraits
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Photo Detective: Petal Pushers 2 Premium
For my last column, I borrowed techniques from "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?": I asked the audience and phoned a friend. Several of you responded to my request for ideas about the blossoms on the ladies in this group portrait. Here's what I learned: A...
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