Internal Clues

I’ve done presentations to various organizations over the years on the topic of identifying old photographs. I’ve been fortunate to have a nice collection of family photographs in various mediums used throughout the history of photography, so I’ve been able to share some good examples of most types of photos from different time periods. The one exception is the daguerreotype for which I have no personal examples of. I wonder if they were as popular down south as in the northern section of the country or was there another reason my ancestors didn’t seem to have ever sat for a daguerreotype? David Rudd Cycleback has a great website on how to date and identify old photographs at http://www.cycleback.com/photoguide/. I’ve used that website several times for help in dating an old photograph and was directed back there again recently when I googled “kodak velox” for help in determining a date of an old snapshot I have of my grandfather’s cousin.  
During my presentations, I often stress not only using “external” clues to help identify an old photograph such as the type of material it was made from, but also using “internal” clues as well. My favorite story to illustrate this is from my mother’s side of the family.
My grandmother passed away in Florida in 2007. My sister and I flew down for the funeral, but I was not able to stay for long. My aunt who lived there was taking care of the estate and my sister was able to fly back down just a few weeks afterwards for a planned vacation. I told her that I wanted any photos that our aunt would share. “I don’t care if it’s a photograph of a tree, I want it,” I told her. For all I knew, that tree might hold a clue to our family history, and I didn’t want to miss anything.
Well, my sister went through some of the photos with my aunt and brought back a box of them, many of them that auntie didn’t care to keep especially ones she didn’t recognize. Going through them, I didn’t find any tree photographs but there were many interesting ones nonetheless. There was an 8x10 one of an unidentified infant. Baby pictures are notoriously hard to identify. My sister told me she had asked our aunt but she couldn’t identify it. I rummaged around some more and found a nice snapshot of my grandmother with her two sisters and a sister-in-law. Four baby pictures could be seen mounted on the wall above them. I recognized the first baby picture on the far right as that of my mother. The copy I had was probably that very one. I wasn’t sure about the other three, but the third from the right was the same baby picture we were just trying to identify. Since my mother was the oldest child, I deduced that the next one was probably her brother John who was the second-born. The other two would have been auntie and another uncle. From this I was able to deduce that the baby picture that auntie couldn’t identify was her!
Grandma (far right), sisters & sister-in-law

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bannerman Family Mystery

Image
Among the many old photographs originally in my grandfather's possession, there is one that has haunted me and has remained a mystery all these years. The photograph is of three children with their names and ages typeset at the bottom of the photograph. “William, 10 years, Robert 8, and Maggie Bennerman, 4 Years Old.” Who were they? My grandfather was not able to identify them, though his memory was remarkably sharp and accurate until his death at the age of 96. I first noticed this picture and the others that my grandfather had in 1989 when I embarked on the adventure of genealogy. Since then I have traced all of my father's ancestors at least back to the early 1800s (and a lot beyond). But I never ran into the Bennerman name, anywhere. Not as ancestors of mine, not even as neighbors. I am lucky enough to even have a name to match the faces in the photograph in the first place. Early in my research, I visited the Tampa stake of the LDS church and I mentioned the Bennerman na
Read more

Friday Faces from the Past: Moorefield

Image
I am perusing through old photographs from my paternal grandparents side these days. In essence, I have been visiting Kentucky although really only in my mind. Things like this come and go in spurts. I have not looked at the research I have done on these lines in a number of years but every now and them something draws me back. What pulled me this time was an email from a gentleman who saw a photograph on my blog that was taken by Randolph in Cadiz, Kentucky (see the photo here ). This gentleman informed me that he and another local historian were doing research on this photographer who did work in Cadiz from about 1893 to 1913. He wanted to know if I would share an electronic copy of the photograph and also asked if I had anymore photographs taken by Randolph. I hunted around and found one more. This is a photograph identified by my grandfather as "My daddy's first cousin [John Willis Watts], Otis Moorefield." Otis Moorefield (1875-1958) Until I put the two tog
Read more

COG: The Love of Reading

Life is funny sometimes, wouldn’t you agree? I sit here this evening checking out my blogger dashboard and find Jasia’s post about reading for the Carnival Of Genealogy . Ah, reading! One of my absolute favorite pastimes. And Jasia wants to know my family’s history of reading? How ironic that on the third anniversary of my father’s death, I am asked that question, for he was influential in the development of my love of reading. Furthermore, I was in a training at work today and we were asked to discuss characteristics about our fathers that we would like to keep, toss, or add in reference to their values, beliefs, etc. One of the items I listed in the “keep” column was his emphasis on the importance of reading and education. My mother tells the story that my father had heard that reading to your child was a good thing, so he instructed my mother to read to me every night. (Until I was about eight, he was often away because of his Navy service.) He purchased several books for me,
Read more