Old Photos

[Phoenix]

I have just got round to sorting out my aunt's old photos. All those unidentified views, all the undated family photos.

Two stick out: Audrey, sib, me and Grandma in bed, under the quilt in my parents' front bedroom. Nothing on the back.

Another, a stern elderly woman, seated outside and flanked by two vigorous, white haired men. It must have been important, but who on earth were they?

Of course, I'm just doing the first sift, and I don't have a pencil to hand :o


I know I'm preaching to the converted, but please, everyone, record date, place and names!

[Margaret in Burton]

I remember asking my mother in law why none of their photos had anything written on them. Her response was, “we know who they all are”.

Same as unmarked graves of her parents and grandmother. “We know where they are buried”.

Well, we don’t now.

[Olde Crone]

Marg

Even worse, my inherited photos have things on the back such as "Ada's garden" "Bill's wedding" etc, none of which have yielded any information despite endless research.

OC

[Merry]

After I'd suggested my aunt label her photos she showed me the results. Mother, father, Aunt G, The Americans, Our Garden etc etc. When I said in the future this wouldn't be helpful she said her handwriting was distictive!

[KiwiChris]

What do people end up doing with old unlabelled, or unhelpfully labelled photos? I have a huge box full that my mother had and for a large number of them, I have no idea who the people are. "Em and Fred" is not helpful when we don't appear to have either in the family lines.

Some I do know are of family friends from a generation or two back but we are no longer in contact with the descendants.

When I showed some of the older ones to Mum before she died, she did not know who they were either, so presumably they originally came from her mother.

At what point do I get ruthless and throw them out??

[Phoenix]

I know that sib will be far more ruthless than I, and that stage it won't matter. I do share some unknown photos with DNA matches, and a second cousin recognises an extraordinary photo of an elderly man with a pony outside a shop front - but she doesn't know who it is either!

I don't have many cousins, but my grandparents each had an average of six siblings, so there's a wide hinterland of people who might recognise relations.

[HarrysMum]

If anyone can tell me who the “Cummings Boys” are, I’d be grateful. A beautiful studio print of two gorgeous little boys. It was taken by a photographer in a country town.
I have no Cummings in any side of either family. I don’t even know where it came from. Could have been Dad’s or Mum’s. I even went through the electoral rolls of the streets we lived in to fine Cummings. Nuffin!

[Phoenix]

Best Mate had a "friend" who removed all the photos froma Victorian album to look at them, then put them back, but not in the same order.

She had two carte de visite of smartly dressed small children, that she assumed were relations. In one they wore boaters with the names Elspa and Lillo... it turned out, they were a music hall turn!

[Sue from Southend]

What do people end up doing with old unlabelled, or unhelpfully labelled photos? I have a huge box full that my mother had and for a large number of them, I have no idea who the people are. "Em and Fred" is not helpful when we don't appear to have either in the family lines.

Some I do know are of family friends from a generation or two back but we are no longer in contact with the descendants.

When I showed some of the older ones to Mum before she died, she did not know who they were either, so presumably they originally came from her mother.

At what point do I get ruthless and throw them out??

I reached that point when we moved house! I'd fortunately gone through some with Mum before she died and had written names on the back but I had to grit my teeth and chuck all the views and unknown neighbours, friends etc. If I don't know my children certainly won't and I've saved them a job in the hopefully distant future...

Whilst going through the photos with Mum we came across one of her on a beach with a cousin, Percy. She rather wistfully wondered what had become of him. I found out after she died that he had been living a few roads away from her and that they would have often unknowingly passed each in the street. It always make me sad that they never reconnected.

[Merry]

I made a huge mistake throwing out all the views and pictures of paving slabs in mum's old albums. I thought I was doing a great job reducing the size of the collection and putting them in new books. How wrong I was - I used to be able to lay my hands on any image from those old albums. Now I have to look in one book after another working out where we are in time to see if I need to go forward or backwards. Then if I still can't find something I imagine it's been thrown away whe in fact I've forgotten when it was taken! Shoud have just kept everything as it was. Also, as I realised the mistake before I'd finished the project I stopped at about 30 years ago and all the rest of the pics are in a shoebox! All this happened about ten years ago and I haven't the heart to do anything more. It's a shambles!

[Nell]

When my Mum died I found 2 drawers full of photos, loose or in those paper envelopes you used to get when you had your film developed. Some were labelled "Aunty Chat" etc and fortunately I know who Aunty Chat was! A lot weren't labelled but I did know what they were.

I scanned a lot of them, especially the old ones printed on card, and downloaded them to the relevant people on my Ancestry tree.

I've got the old card photos in a fireproof safe. The others I've now sorted into photos of my relatives, photos just of me, photos of my sons and I have 3 albums. I just need to put them in and write them up, but I've made a start.

My Mum never got that far. Below the two drawers of photos was a cupboard with half a dozen photo albums, all empty!

One of the old card photographs is of an elderly man, with side whiskers, wrapped in a shawl. No idea who he was, he doesn't look like any family member, but he could be my step-great grandfather. No way of knowing now and as my grandfather ran a photo enlarging and framing business it could be a random customer!