When it comes to rescuing such items—getting them back into the hands of descendants of the original owners—there are two basic approaches. You can either seek the descendants out or make it easier for them to find you. I refer to these as seeking and broadcasting, respectively.

Broadcasting
Most of my articles have focused on seeking techniques—"reverse genealogy" tactics for working from a point in the past to the present. But broadcasting, essentially the equivalent of leaving a trail of crumbs on the Internet, can be just as effective. In fact, many orphan rescuers rely solely on a broadcasting strategy to help them find "rightful owners." And broadcasting can also be used to put names to some of those anonymous faces in that collection of mystery photos we all seem to have stashed away in a box somewhere.

Perhaps the easiest and most common way to leave this trail in places where the appropriate people might spot it is on surname and locality-based message boards and mailing lists. If there are any names associated with an old Bible, mystery photo, or other orphan heirloom, you can simply post the details on the Internet. There's a typical example of such a message on the Rootsweb message board for the surname Jackson.

If any places are indicated—such as a photography studio's city or address—posting to the relevant county-based boards and lists can also improve your chances of finding a fellow researcher who is part of the family you seek or can at least contribute a piece of information to help solve your puzzle.

Photobases
Another increasingly popular tool that works well for broadcasting purposes is the "photobase." As the hybrid word suggests, these are websites with databases of photos. Such sites make it easy for users to upload their mystery photos (or perhaps pictures of orphan heirlooms) and enter details such as names, dates, and places. Since they're searchable, others can come in, browse by surname (and sometimes by other factors), and contact you if something strikes them as familiar. In this way, these photobases serve as matchmakers, bringing together people with items and information of joint interest. And obviously, the more people who make use of photobases, the more matches that will eventually be made.

The two most significant photobases are Dead Fred and (www.ancientfaces.com) . Both contain thousands of photos representing thousands of surnames, and I can personally attest to their effectiveness. When I first learned of them about two years ago, I tested them by uploading a mystery photo of my own. My intent was just to familiarize myself with the process to write about it, so I popped up the image and forgot about it—until several months later when I received an interesting e-mail. The end result was not the identification of the unknown people in the photo, but a connection with a long-sought branch of my family tree—descendants from the first family of an immigrant great-great-grandfather (I descend from the family he had with his second wife).

This was possible because I had uploaded a remark that the photo was passed on to me by my grandmother, Beatrice Reynolds Shields, who had lived most of her life in Jersey City, N.J. The initial contact came because a browser also had Reynolds from Jersey City in her family. So the photo remains a mystery, but I'm more than content with the dozens of half-cousins I've found instead! And lest you think I'm the exception, Dead Fred alone has 191 success stories to date.

Other Heirloom Collection Sites
Message boards, mailing lists, and photobases all offer valuable means to rescue orphans and solve our mysteries, but there's one more broadcasting technique worthy of consideration. In addition to the major photobases, a number of Mom-and-Pop collection sites (mostly centered on photos) have been created by individuals who like playing middleman in these scenarios. In fact, some have been launched by heirloom rescuers who decided to go a step further and help others do the same.

It's true that these sites are not as sophisticated. They may have hundreds of images instead of thousands (although a few do have thousands). Some may only have text descriptions in lieu of images. And yes, it's less convenient to work through the webmaster, emailing him or her an image file and waiting for it to be posted.

But they still work. And they have one advantage over photobases: their content can usually be searched directly from Google.com and other search engines. In other words, it isn't necessary to search directly through the site, so the odds are improved that someone doing a vanity search at their favorite search engine site will happen across your posting.

New York to West Virginia to Oregon
I learned this recently when I received an e-mail about a collection of family photos I had purchased in a West Virginia antiques store. The photos featured a Briggs family from New York, and in an attempt to find the family's descendants, I uploaded them to photobase sites and e-mailed them to the webmasters of several of the smaller collection sites.

Time went by and I forgot about them until I received an e-mail from a woman in Oregon who was able to prove descent. I asked how she had managed to find me and learned that she had done a search on the name of one of her ancestors—Elijah Briggs—and had been intrigued when one of the listings mentioned "mystery photos." When she followed the link, she recognized one of the photos because she had a similar one of the same person. In fact, she found two of my postings—one at Photographs from the Past and one at Your Past Connections.

So the photos of a New York family have passed through the hands of a Virginian who found them in West Virginia, and they now reside with a family member in Oregon. It's hard to imagine how else they might have made it "home," were it not for these wonderful websites.

Broadcasting Works!
If you've got a mystery, a scanner, and a little patience, why not sprinkle a few crumbs across the Internet and see what happens? You can find some helpful articles and links online. The page of online resources is a handy starting point for your crumb tossing. If you have any success stories, let me know so I can broadcast them in a future article!