Genealogists’ hearts ache when we see old photos discarded at estate sales, antique stores, or flea markets. We lament the unidentified photos in our own relatives’ albums and long to reunite photos we find far away from home with the families that lost them. Alas, that is not always easy.
Finding a family of origin of a photo with no identification is truly the old needle in a haystack cliché. We very often have people send photos to St. Louis Genealogical Society with nothing more than the name of a photographer and his address on the back, but there is little to no chance of ever discovering the subject's identity. There are people who collect photos from certain photographers, so that’s always a possibility, but ascertaining a family or descendants is virtually impossible, as there is no way to search for an unnamed person on a photo.
Occasionally, if there is enough information on the photo, we can track down family who will want the photo back. We have a hard-working volunteer who specializes in searching, and she has been able to make some connections over the years. However, most photos languish in a binder in our research room waiting to be claimed.
Did you know we have a “Lost and Found Photos” page on our website? If you think you might be able to identify any of our still-unclaimed pictures, you might want to have a look. We just recently added a lovely photo of three children, sent to us from Germany. We surmise that it was sent from St. Louis to a relative back home from an immigrant family. The children are Caroline, Ferdinand, and Emil (no surname), and the photo is from 1878. It is at the top of the “Lost and Found Photos” page.
We also added the Henderson family to the "Lost and Found Photos" page: Josephine and Sam and daughter Lou. One of our volunteers saw the stamp on the back of Josephine’s photo and is fairly certain that these photos are from the early 1860s, perhaps carried by a soldier who left St. Louis to join the war effort.
How You Can Help
Take a look at our “Lost and Found Photos” page and see if you recognize anyone. If you do, please contact us at publications@stlgs.org.
Why not also take out a photo-safe archival pen and start labelling your own photos so they don’t wind up lost and neglected? Don’t have that kind of pen? They are widely available anywhere scrapbooking supplies are sold and they make great inexpensive stocking stuffers!
We encourage you to use the internet if you find old photos that need a home. Here are just a few popular websites devoted to the subject:
- Dead Fred: https://deadfred.com
- AncientFaces: www.ancientfaces.com
- Cyndi’s List: Photographs and Memories/Lost and Found: https://www.cyndislist.com/photos/lost-and-found/
- Facebook Old Photo Project: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1154172177978712/
But please, do not send photos to StLGS unless there is enough identifying information on them for us to move forward. We are not an archive and have no way of retaining and keeping old photos safely. Thank you!
P. S. One More Thing . . .
If you are hoping to find old photos, take a peek at this article from Family Tree magazine called “13 Websites for Finding Old Family Photos.”
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