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Ancestry Daily News
11/14/2002 - Archive
Honoring Our Ancestors: Rescuing Orphan Photos
Orphan photos—those photos that stray from family hands and wind up
in some antiques store or flea market—are one of the saddest aspects of genealogy.
That's why I'm a big fan of efforts to reunite these wandering treasures with
their families of origin.
Fortunately, there are more and more people who not only feel this way, but
have taken action to do something about it. Marjorie Rice is one such person.
She had the rather unusual and admirable hobby of rescuing photos from antique
stores and using her genealogical skills to get them back into the hands of
family members. She does this by finding photos with names on the back and photographer
imprints on the front and then posting the names and locations on surname boards.
To date, she has restored 409 photos to family members.
As she explains, "It makes me so sad to see these great, old photos sit in dusty
baskets in antiques shops when there are people somewhere who would want them
and treasure them for what they are. I am retired and have a tight budget and
can only buy a few at a time, but I have hundreds of them sitting here in my
office unclaimed. This reuniting will continue on after I can no longer be the
direct conduit, for my plan is to send the 'leftovers' in years to come to the
genealogical societies of the counties where the photographer took the photo."
How meaningful is this to those folks who find a package from Marge in their
mailbox? Grateful recipients have sent her so many thank you notes that she
is now on her second scrapbook of them! Here's just a sampling of the remarks
they've made:
"I think what you do is wonderful . . . an invaluable service to people like
myself. All our old family photos were destroyed in a flood when my mother was
a girl."
"I have goose bumps I am so excited! (name removed for privacy) is my grandmother
(I am named after her!) . . . My dad is going to be so thrilled I can hardly
wait to call him. He is 78 now and still has vivid memories of his mom, but
never did have any photos."
"My children are 'relative poor.' My husband (grandson of the man in the picture)
died in 1967 at the age of 32. His mother died at age 28 giving birth to him.
To find a picture of their great-grandfather is better than winning the lottery!
Everyone had heard the expression 'you made my day.' Well, you, Marge, made
my life."
"Thank you very much for having such a wonderful hobby. When I next encounter
identified pictures in a flea market or antique shop, I just may open a franchise
and start a New York branch of your hobby."
This last comment may be the most significant of all. They say that imitation
is the sincerest form of flattery, but perhaps better than any compliment is
the prospect of Marge's impact being amplified because others were inspired
to follow her example. I followed her lead and had the pleasure of sitting across
the table from a woman as she explored a family album and spotted a photo of
her great-grandfather. Although the family in the album was Ohio-based, the
descendant I located turned out to live very close to me in the Washington,
D.C. area, so I received the unexpected bonus of watching the "reunion."
Back in December 2001, Marge received an Honoring Our Ancestors grant
(see http://www.honoringourancestors.com/grants.html
to learn more) to purchase another batch of orphan photos in need of rescue.
This month's grant goes to Dead Fred's Genealogy Photo Archive (http://www.deadfred.com),
which also rescues family photos, but in an entirely different way.
Dead Fred is a free website devoted to "helping you visualize your heritage"
and sending more "orphans" home. Their searchable database contains thousands
of identified photos as well as mystery photos-- currently over 7,000 surnames
representing more than 21,000 items-- for genealogists seeking long-lost relatives.
And should you be one of the many of us with a stash of old photos, the site
makes it easy to upload them. In a sense, Dead Fred operates as a clearinghouse,
providing a mechanism to bring together and find matches between seekers and
holders of family treasures.
But does it work? Isn't it awfully random uploading images and hoping the right
folks will happen across them? As I write these words, 64 testimonials on the
site furnish evidence of their success and I'm one of those lucky people. While
doing research for an article I wrote for the January/February 2002 issue of
Ancestry Magazine, I experimented by uploading a particular mystery photo
(circa 1920s) at various sites (Read a PDF version of this article at: http://honoringourancestors.com/1OrphanPhotos.pdf).
I didn't learn more about the picture, but instead found a long-sought branch
of my extended family. In providing what information I could about the photo,
I mentioned that it had belonged to my Reynolds grandmother who hailed from
Jersey City, New Jersey. A woman saw the image and e-mailed me saying that she
also had Reynolds kin from Jersey City and wondered if we could be related.
Given that Reynolds is such a common name, I wasn't optimistic, but it turned
out we were indeed distant cousins. She stemmed from the first family of our
shared immigrant ancestor, while I descended from the second family he had when
his first wife died and he remarried. She hadn't even been aware of his second
family and I had only recently learned about the first who accompanied him from
Ireland and then dispersed. The common ancestor was born in 1798, so posting
this photo helped make a connection some 200 years after the fact.
I, for one, am delighted that there are both individual photo rescuers such
as Marge and helpful websites such as Dead Fred. In fact, the two complement
each other very well and should multiply the number of orphan photos being returned
to their homes. If you'd like to learn more about Dead Fred and other wonderful,
photo-rescuing resources, please visit http://www.honoringourancestors.com/orphanphotos.html
Megan Smolenyak, author of Honoring Our Ancestors and In Search
of Our Ancestors, can be reached at: megan@honoringourancestors.com
Information about the grants she writes about in this monthly column can be
found at: http://www.honoringourancestors.com/grants.html
. If you'd like to contact Marge Rice, please e-mail: margerice@prodigy.net
Megan's Upcoming Engagements:
November 14, 2002—Philadelphia/Germantown—Borders Book Signing—7:30 p.m.
8701 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118
November 16, 2002—West Chester, PA—Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania and
Chester County Historical Society Conference: Back to the Boats: Immigrant and
Ethnic Genealogy. Topic—"Great Days for Ethnic Genealogists" 9:00-10:00 a.m.
December 4, 2002—Virtual Lecture—Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania—
"Maximizing Your Mileage from the Ellis Island Database"— 8:00 p.m. (ET)
December 7, 2002—Williamsburg, VA—Books-a-Million— Book signing from 11:00
a.m.—2:00 p.m., 1252 Richmond Road.
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