Martin T. Ingham’s quest to identify and reunite photos with family
Entry 01: The Quest: Reuniting Photos with Family
Genealogy research has long been a passion of mine. Ever since my mother left me a pile of old family photos and I built my own family tree, I have been fascinated by the endeavor to identify family members and their pictures when available. While I have done extensive research on my own line, and have quite a number of photos from different lines, there are still a few relatives whose photos I am missing, and of course once you get back in the early 1800’s, you have people who were never photographed at all. Still, I am always looking for more.
So, a few months ago, I was contacted by Kate Brian Kelly, a woman who has a most fascinating and altruistic hobby of reuniting old photos with family members. She basically buys old photos in antique stores and the like, then does research to identify descendants. What she does is truly amazing and inspiring, and she provides the photos free of charge, even though she spends her own money to acquire these lost family treasures. She reached out to me on Ancestry.com because she had found a photograph of my cousin, Elizabeth “Bessie” Tucker. Bessie married a Canadian, Lorne Alexander Rapley, and I don’t know if she had any children. While the original print went to another cousin, I was grateful to see a digital copy.
Shortly thereafter, Kate contacted me again, having found a photo of Elizabeth’s father, William Newton Tucker, who was my great-great grandmother, Mertie Gamble Count’s, first cousin on both sides of her family. Her father was the brother of William’s mother, and her mother was the sister of William’s father. Therefore, they had nearly the same genetic similarities as full siblings. It was amazing to get a picture of William in his youth.
Kate runs a facebook group, The Photo Angel, which highlights success stories of reuniting photos with family. Among her finds, she also discovered baby photos of my great-grandfather, George Sylvester Count’s, sister Florella and Brother Hugh. I suspect these pictures may have once belonged to my Aunt Martha Counts who died in 2012, as they turned up in Connecticut where she lived, but I honestly don’t know. Anyway, it was great to see these.
Following these experiences, I have decided it is time that I did my part to bring lost family photos to life. I have already purchased a few batches of old photos with identifying writing on them, and using online resources like Ancestry and Familysearch, I will see who I can find. I know I am always grateful when someone brings a new family picture to light, and I am expecting that others will be equally pleased to reclaim a little bit of their own personal heritage that might otherwise be lost forever.
Therefore, I’ve started this new blog, to detail my research. Following this post, the photos and individuals highlighted here will not be my own family. Anyone is free to copy and share the pictures I find and share on this blog. I think posting them here will be the easiest way to disseminate them to as many relatives as possible.
I am not seeking renumeration for my work, though that means I may not be able to afford to do as much as I would like. It can get expensive buying photos that are 100+ years old. Different people have different reasons for wanting them, and antique stores can drive prices up based on demand. I’ll buy what I can, and research when I have the time. Either way, it is one of my many passions, and I feel it is good work well worth doing.
Martin T. Ingham is a Maine science-fiction and fantasy writer and editor.
This blog chronicles Martin’s endeavor to identify the family members of old photos and reunite these long-lost images with their descendants.
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Martin T. Ingham’s Genealogy Quest 