A Request...
 

If you have pictures of your ancestors, friends, family, please go and label them! Get Post-It notes and write who is in the pic and how they are related to you. Be specific! Don't assume anyone looking at your notes will understand and make connections.

Your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and beyond will thank you for making their family tree more complete!

My sisters and I spent a good deal of today trying to figure out who was who in the pics included in our mother's cedar chest. Rather sad when someone who was so important to our loved one becomes a voiceless name...

Yes, Amen to this! We had DH's mother do this on all the family pics she gave us. Not sure anyone will care down the line, but who knows, and at least it is done.

Not long ago I found a shoebox full of fabulous old photographs... of some people who I have NO IDEA wwho they are! I assume they're folks I'm related to but your guess is as good as mine. It makes me so sad! So, yes... LABEL YOUR PIX!

I did a Ancestry thing for both sides of my family . Found pictures I did not know, an to late to find out. but loved my journey of finding relatives I never knew. An where we came from . Thought my kids would love to know this . But they care less right now.Maybe some day they will sit an say that is where I began. joyce j

I decided to identify all the pictures that mom and dad had--lot's from dad's side of the family. I kept finding pictures of young women from the late 1800's and early 1900's. I asked dad who they were and he said he didn't know. I told him that I was going to find out. He looked at me, grinned and said, "Good luck. Your grandpa, Uncle Will, Uncle Ike and Uncle Marion joined a lonely hearts club and women from all over sent their pictures to them." lol You just never know.

I have done this. I also included the woman's maiden name along with her married name. Several branches of many great grandmother's family line is lost because we don't know their maiden name or who their parent were.

I agree. My mother had an armoire with a large drawer in the bottom that was simply full of black and white photos. I would sit looking though them at times. no notations on the backs of any of them.

I collected old wedding pics where ever I could find them for awhile. It was sad to see so many happy couples without names,dates.

Good advice! I am also glad to know I am not alone with the boxes of photos! I just wish I lived near my siblings so they could help me sort it out, and make some sort of digital collection for our children.

Some of you are right - the kids aren't interested---BUT neither was I when I was younger - just too busy to take the time to look at this stuff, but now, I so wish Mama had labeled the stuff. I have time and interest now. I hope to get all the photos put on cds or dvds. Maybe someday in the future, there will be good enough face recognition software that we can figure out some of the characters in the photos at least.

I totally agree!! I was soo happy when my cousin showed me a photo of my Greatgrandparents, & my grandparents..the best part?? My Grandmother was holding my Aunt Rebecca as a baby and she was pregnant with my Daddie!! That was just soooo neat!! And the picture was on the porch of the homestead!! Just Great!!

I agree about the younger generation being not interested.I have two sons, who barely know cousins who are ten years younger. My sister did family genealogy,so some day when they are interested, they'll have something available to look back on.They really aren't interested now, but I hope later in life they will appreciate this info. They really know nothing about their fathers family and really don't seem to care! You're so right, label pictures and other family memorbillia.

Yes, yes, yes, yes!!! My Mom was soooo good at this. Yes, kids aren't interested now but later on, they will be... But did find lots of pics with no name on back. Nowadays sooooo many pics are on computer, in cameras & phones. Need actually 'hands-on' pics, especially for older folks.....

My son has taken all of my pictures and while putting them on the computer had me tell him who -where-and when each pic was taken and he labelled each one.I still take and have my pics developed.Theres nothing like passing pictures around the room at family gatherings and seeing pictures in frames on the walls and table tops.And the week it took my son to computerize my collection brought us closer and we laughed at most and told stories we cherish of those who have passed.And he asked me to make sure that he gets all my pictures when my time comes.Michael said it felt good to be able to hold the actual pictures and he'd like to pass them down to his daughters.All of their pics are camera to computer and its just not the same.So I will continue to take and develop all my pics.

In addition to being a quilter I am also a scrapbooker. I have some pictures that my mother gave me of my grandmother's best friend. I do remember this lady. I made sure to make a nice page in a heritage scrapbook on her telling who she was and how she was important to my grandmother. Then I have some pictures of my aunt when she was a "show girl" in Chicago during the roaring 20's. I doubt my kids will be interested but at least I've done what I can to preserve the pictures....for somebody.

Great idea!

yes I think you are right. my son gave me some log books to write down some of the stories i know about my family which isn't to many but i should get around to it. and about the things i have left from them like the cups and saucers that were the only parts left from my stepmoms voyage from europe after the war and the story of her being the only female survivor from her military group and how she got saved. that would be a good thing to do with the pictures also since they never knew the people in them. thanks for the reminder.

This is very true.
When my Mom died we found a huge framed picture of a lady
wrapped in a blanket under the bed.
All Mom's sisters & brothers are gone and no one knows who she is.

I have her a spare bedroom hoping one day she will talk to me.

J J

My little hometown recently had its 150th birthday. Many people brought old photos with no idea of who was looking back at them. We displayed them all and learned the identity of some. Sadly we did not know many of the others. :(

That is exactly the point. How incredibly sad. Was she from SC? Lots and lots of my family (Sullivan side) come from that area. Jefferson, SC to be exact, in the 1750's on.

I truly hope some happy circumstance occurs where your lady can speak. Thank you for taking her out from under the bed!

I am going to say, don't give up on potentially learning who some of the "unknowns" are, I have found several of mine. I had one, of a family and was at one of the libraries going through their family files and found a couple of the couple (man and wife) in the photo made the same day. Same outfits, hair styles. I was able to add another photo into the family file and also concretely identify my photo. So, it does happen.

As a genealogist, I can surely second this! Label those pictures! A cousin and I were trying this weekend to figure out who the people were in some pictures he has of our family. All the older ones are gone now, and my mother has dementia, so she doesn't remember. How sad and how frustrating! It would have been so easy to label them when they were new.

You all do realize that not all people are interested in how our dead relatives looked, particularly the ones that we can't remember. I just threw away lots of photos of relatives that were unlabeled. I am the oldest left alive in my family and obviously if I don't know who they are, no one will know. Also I don't care and my children, whom I asked, did not care to have the photos, nor did the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren are too young to ask. So the pictures were thrown away. I did keep all the tin -types just because they weren't photos, but no one knows who they are. Just curious looking people from another time long, long ago.

I just pulled boxes and boxes of photos from my mom's closet. Don't know who most of them are and some of them are duplicates and triplicates as her siblings passed away and she kept those too.

I plan to scan those whom I know and can identify. However, I know lots of them were her friends and people I never met.

I once heard there was, please don't beat me up over this, a 'market' for old B & W photos. At least they'd be used. Anyone know of anyplace that might want or purchase old photos?

Your local antique stores are the best starting place. Perhaps they have something you love and can work out a trade?

I am the collector of stuff in my family. I have copied relatives picture albums and have names on most of them. I am doing something now that a lot of genealogists don't agree with. I am using Adobe Elements and putting names right on the face of the picture with dates if known. Some think that this ruins the picture. However, I would rather see the names rather than an unnamed picture. I put groups of pictures on DVD and family can enjoy watching them and they can identify them. "Oh look, there is Aunt Jane when she was a teenager". It is really fun to hear all the comments. Also, this sometimes gets the younger folks interested in the relatives from the past.