Author Topic: Looking for old family photos - Help :)  (Read 1307 times)

Offline FairlyPuzzled

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Looking for old family photos - Help :)
« on: Monday 18 October 21 11:42 BST (UK) »
Greetings all, hope you are all swell!

So I would like to know how I go about finding photos of ancestors. There are so many great / great great / great great great.... etc. grandparents and uncles and aunts - but i dont know what they look like!

They were alive in a time where photographs were a thing and I'm sure - I hope - that there are some somewhere.... as for example I have 3X Great grandad that died in 1947... so a picture of him has to be around....

But i don't know how or where to look, I've looked at other peoples trees on Ancestry and contacted relatives... but with no luck. I thought about taking an Ad out in the paper listing names and dates and asking... but that would cost a lot... so I would like some help.

Is it possible to do it on here? or is there a website specifically for finding family photos?

Any help will be appreciated!

Cheerio  8)

X

Offline aghadowey

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Re: Looking for old family photos - Help :)
« Reply #1 on: Monday 18 October 21 15:35 BST (UK) »
Sometimes it depends on location and social status as well as inclination. We would have loved to see photos of my father-in-law's uncle and aunts who grew up in our house but apparently they never went to the local photographer and such pictures don't exist. On the other hand, I have one of my grandfather's great-grandmother born 1790, married 4 times and a very renowned quiltmaker.

Have you asked all possible relatives especially distant ones? That's usually the first step.
Newspaper articles? Local histories and archives?
Group school photos or other organisations?
Sometimes copies of photos were given to friends (we have quite a few old ones belonging to friends rather than relatives).

Rootschat can help with research but isn't an archive of old photos and documents.

Have you tried Google? Keep using different terms and you never know what will turn up. Here's an example of some local (to me) photos that can be see online- most of the families were labourers but appeared in school pictures, etc.
https://www.lennonwylie.co.uk/RobertThompsonAghadowey.htm
Away sorting out DNA matches... I may be gone for some time many years!

Offline Gadget

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Re: Looking for old family photos - Help :)
« Reply #2 on: Monday 18 October 21 15:42 BST (UK) »
I only have  a few family photos from the 19th century. However, what I've done is to go to areas where I I know that they lived and taken photos of the place - local feature like the church or the house were they lived (or the replacement).

Some people use photos from online family trees but I wouldn't do that without permission.


Gadget

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Online sonofthom

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Re: Looking for old family photos - Help :)
« Reply #3 on: Monday 18 October 21 15:57 BST (UK) »
Ebay is a great resource of early photographs. If your ancestors were from, say Sunderland, put Sunderland cdv in the search box and you should get several pages of early Victorian photographs; forlater Victorian photographs search for Sunderland cabinet cards.

The problem is that generally in older photos it is relatively rare to have the sitter's name on the photo; also as photography was very expensive most people could either not afford to have their photo taken or had it taken only once or twice.

Although you are close to searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack I did find a photo of my great aunt on Ebay and have managed to identify sitters in a couple of other photos on sale.

The other great source of early family photos is this forum! I have obtained several early family photos from contacts made on RootsChat, and had the pleasure of contacting a distant relative whose existence I was unaware of so if you say what families you are looking for and keep your fingers crossed you never know, you might be lucky.
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Offline JGDavies

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Re: Looking for old family photos - Help :)
« Reply #4 on: Monday 18 October 21 19:48 BST (UK) »
Hi,
I started with an Aunt with a box of photos collected at a Great Aunts house. Then from writing up what I could find out from these and taking copies of my writeup including identified pictures went tracking down cousins etc: another box of old photos from one 2nd cousin and a glimplse of a WW1 service medal from the same second cousin who annotated the photos and even a "been wondering what to do with these two 1886 to 1960 family photo albums, do you want them?" from a 2nd cousin over 4000 miles away that I vaguely remember from 50 years ago. Also got given my Grandfathers WW1 ervice medals "as you knew him best". Also visited pubs  and even chapels and churches at service time in relevant areas, explained what I was doing and got directed to someone who new someone who made a call etc. resulting in more info and photos from a distant relation.

Even got photos and info from associations for retired policemen re a family of policemen c.1900 - 1950. Also found a farmer who pointed me to a photographer who'd given a slideshow in the local pub of old photos who had photos of properties and my relatives c. 1940 . Also contacted people online who had common ancestors, visited churches, wrote to schools etc. Apart from being lucky I find the key is knocking on doors and talking to people, I wrote an article on the above activities published in a small local paper including asking for contact but got no reply.

The pinnacle was identifying a great aunt in a very large WW1 group photo taken in 1918 of staff at a large military hospital having been given a named photo of her that had travelled from the UK to the Pacific coast!

I wish you luck.
Jon
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Online Rena

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Re: Looking for old family photos - Help :)
« Reply #5 on: Monday 18 October 21 22:12 BST (UK) »
I belong to three groups on Facebook and I've found old photos of people I knew on all of them.  One of the groups is the factory with 900 employees where my late father worked - and he's often on photos.   You might be lucky  to see him in one of the 1945 street parties after WWII.  Many companies in days gone by organised coach trips to the seaside/countryside, so if you know where he worked you might find him on such a photo.  Postal Workers and Railway  workers were often photographed by their company.

Good luck
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Offline Gadget

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Re: Looking for old family photos - Help :)
« Reply #6 on: Monday 18 October 21 22:47 BST (UK) »
The Facebook group that covers the area that my ancestors lived in after the introduction of photography have already shown all the photos that I have - supplied by me or close relatives  :-\

I do enjoy looking at the other photos that are put up as I usually remember them or knew their descendants.

add - over the years, I've also made contact  with relatives from other countries/areas of UK who had photos of their ancestors.
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Offline Erato

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Re: Looking for old family photos - Help :)
« Reply #7 on: Monday 18 October 21 23:21 BST (UK) »
I've had good luck with university and high school yearbooks - as far back as the 1870s.  Also passports.  And check the newspapers - the photos are poor quality, of course, but better than nothing.
Wiltshire:  Banks, Taylor
Somerset:  Duddridge, Richards, Barnard, Pillinger
Gloucestershire:  Barnard, Marsh, Crossman
Bristol:  Banks, Duddridge, Barnard
Down:  Ennis, McGee
Wicklow:  Chapman, Pepper
Wigtownshire:  Logan, Conning
Wisconsin:  Ennis, Chapman, Logan, Ware
Maine:  Ware, Mitchell, Tarr, Davis

Offline chris_49

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Re: Looking for old family photos - Help :)
« Reply #8 on: Tuesday 19 October 21 11:31 BST (UK) »
I've done well with school and college yearbooks too - but only in the US and Canada. They've not really ever been a thing over here.
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