Last week I began a series on organizing your old photos. Let's recap!
We sorted our photos into piles and started with one that were already identified by what was on the back. What that means is someone at some time wrote a sort of ID on it. We then put them in sleeves, relabeled them, created a worksheet for them and then created a file folder for them. You can learn how to do this here. One note of caution, although your photos may have a name on the back or be identified as "my mother's wedding photo" mistakes and mis identification does happen. This post explains how we will better identify what we have when all we know is "Nana's cousin."
The materials I suggested in the last post allows for easy adjustments. (Easy to remove photos from sleeves and removable labels, for example.) To sort our ID'd photos further we must examine each photo closely. If your photo says something like "Betty Jean Oliver, age 6mos. 1895" then mostly likely the information is correct. You can sometimes check the age by looking at clues like type of photo (cabinet card, tin type, etc.), clothing, hairstyles, backdrop, etc. Even then errors can occur but unless you have reason to believe otherwise, the photos that look to be accurate with this information can be considered done and ready to be filed away. There is always more we can do of course, like research the story behind the photo or research what the family was doing at the time the photo was taken, but for now take a deep breath and hold your itchy fingers still. Today we are only organizing our mess of photos!
The next step is to turn our attention on photos that have identification but seem fishy. They just don't seem accurate or are confusing, using nicknames or were written by grandma and just say "auntie's children." Here is a good example...
Take a look at these two photos.
The first one is labeled "my mother's in her wedding dress" but is crossed out and underneath is written "MD Pease" in some completely different handwriting.
The second photo is labeled "Grandma Hubble in wedding dress".
Both photos were together in an album but not an album of the era. For awhile I believed what was written. They were added to my family tree as is. Photo 1 was M.D. Pease and photo 2 was Elizabeth "Grandma" Hubble in her wedding dress. I was wrong and so was the identification. How do I know? After working on the family tree the photos didn't seem right anymore. I decided to look at other clues.
Take photo #1. Is it "my mother" or "M.D. Pease?" The photos belonged to my father in law. They were members of his family and the album they were in was not an album of the era. You know the kind, black paper that has every photo glued down for life. Her aunt was M.D. Pease. For those who know Seattle history, MD Pease was a well known woman business owner. She sold hats in her popular millinery shop on Front St. in Seattle. Her shop burned down with many others in the Great Seattle Fire. I needed to find out if it was his mother in her wedding dress or his grandmother in her wedding dress or if it was Aunt Pease. I needed to use my genealogy skills for process elimination. Which one was married during this time and who was in Seattle? It was NOT Mrs. Pease. I did a quick search and M.D. Pease was a widow in 1880 and did not show up in Washington Territory until 1887.
So it was either my father in law's mother, Hazel, or her mother, Elizabeth aka "Grandma." Hazel was born in 1892 and married in 1917. Looking at the backround and dress style I googled "wedding dress in 1917 U.S."and clicked on the image button. I scrolled down and clicked on a link to one of my favorite sites for era clothing, Fashion-Era.com. The examples of styles in 1917 looked nothing like the picture. So I canceled out Hazel and looked at Elizabeth. Was this her? She was married in 1891 in Ohio. She was not married in Seattle either! I did the next logical thing, I looked up the photographer. "Braas." I didn't need to know much, just when this business was up and running. Thanks to google and University of Washington's digital collections, Braas was taking photos between 1889 and 1893. Most likely this photo was of Elizabeth. Hazel would have written "my mother's in her wedding dress" and someone else could have written M.D.Pease at a later date.
Now to confuse things. Let's look at photo #2. "Grandma Hubble." This was trickier except for 1 thing. The photographer's name and date. This took a trusty magnifier to see but I was able to identify "James Bushnell 1906" on the photo. I also compared the 2 photos since they were together in the same album. The person in each photo looked like the same person or extremely related. The eyes, eyebrows, chin and even the way the earring hung off her left ear as well as nostrils and lips and the tilt of her head. This could be Elizabeth. Now I had questions. I knew the picture was taken by a James Bushnell in 1906, but where and why? Back to google! That really didn't do much, so I went to Ancestry.com and went right to the Seattle city directory to find the name "Bushnell." Still not perfect. The closest I came up with was a Correy Bushnell who worked for "James & Bushnell". More sleuthing! For only 1 picture! So flip to James and find "James and Bushnell, photgrs." Bingo! I could also have gone straight to the back of the directory and looked under photographers. Either way I found what I had hoped for.
So, my conclusion about the photos is that #1 is almost definitely Elizabeth Hubbell and not M.D. Pease. It may be her wedding dress but it was not her wedding in 1892 Ohio. Photo #2 was taken by James & Bushnell in 1906 in Seattle and is likely to be Elizabeth based on photo comparisons and other clues i.e written "Grandma Hubble," but it is not her wedding photo. It is unknown why it was taken.
What does this all mean for photo organization? It gives you a good example of how slow going yet rewarding it can be. Each piece plays a part in the discovery of the family history stories. They are not just names and dates. You may never find out who "Honey and Bud" were exactly but investigating the most likely relative they were connected to will start the clue solving. Sometimes the picture is not of a relative at all. In case you were wondering, "Honey" was my grandmother's best friend. I made up Bud. My grandmother has dementia now and can't tell the stories any longer but the name "Honey" is on the back of a photo. Later I found a newspaper clipping in my grandmother's old album announcing the marriage of Violet. It was Honey.
How does this all fit in to organization? The goal is to identify as many of our photos as possible until we are left with (hopefully) just a small number of "who the heck are these people?" type photos. Now finish up your next group of identified photos so we can move on to the next topic: Unlabeled photos.
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