Photo Detective: Candid Mystery Premium
Discovering clues in a candid of photo of family fun.
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Photo Detective: Crayon Portrait
William Poe owns a number of identified pictures of his ancestors. He's even posted an illustrated family tree online. Yet, this double portrait remains a mystery. Poe believes the photo depicts John Poe (1785 to 1859) and Sarah Threet (1794 to 1861), but he'd like to confirm that identification. It's...
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Photo Detective: What a Doll Premium
This photograph of two girls belonged to LaVonne Murray's great-grandparents Maitland Willits House and Louise Anna Gonion. The younger girl bears a resemblance to another relative, Lydia Lymburner (1867-1947); Murray wonders if the girl could be Penelope Lymburner (1897-1980), Lydia's niece. Assigning a date to this photograph would allow Murray...
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Photo Detective: Woman in Mourning Premium
Clues that indicate you have a Civil War-era carte de visite photo of a woman in mourning.
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Photo Detective: Western Mystery Premium
Front Back In this case study, three different people wrote captions on the back of a photograph. The earliest identifies the image as "My dady (sic) + half brother." Other individuals named the men as "Great Grandfather Pugh, Grandma Youngs father + her brother" and "...
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Photo Detective: Go West Premium
A single family photograph can serve as a valuable social history document. Take for example this group portrait (Figure 1), which provides a link to a violent chapter in American history: the settlement of the West. Phyllis King found this picture among her great-grandparents Arthur D. Barrows and Francis A...
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Photo Detective: Italian Family Premium
Do you have old photographs of ancestors in foreign lands? If so, identifying those images could help you uncover your family's immigrant origins—just as these two photographs connect the Raiola family in the United States to their Italian kin. The writing on the bottom of Figure 1 reveals that...
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Meet the Photo Detective, Online and at FGS
I'll be at the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Philadelphia Sept. 2-6, and I hope I'll see you there. You can visit with me in my booth, #304, in the conference exhibit hall. It's a great chance to chat with me about your family photos or just stop by...
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Sports in the Family
Like many of you, I'm glued to the TV and online news sources watching the Olympics. While I don't have any Olympic hopefuls in my house, there are plenty of athletes on the family tree: In one oft-told tale, my husband's grandfather had an opportunity to play for a major...
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Medical Conditions and Family History
Two weeks ago I put out a call for photos showing medical conditions. There are three images and one blog link in this post so be sure to read all the way to the end. The inspiration for that request was a photo that Elizabeth Vollrath emailed me in May...
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