Do you have a family picture that no one knows who the guy in the back on the left is? While it may not be a guy or in the back row, we all have a picture or pictures where we have no idea who that one person is. Actually, have you ever had a picture where you only knew your relative? How do you go about trying to find out who is in the picture? You can start by using clues you are given such as the person or people you do know in the picture and something as simple as the clothes they are wearing.
The first step … Do you know who owned the picture in the past? What this means is who gave you the picture, and where did they get it from? An example is my paternal grandfather gave me a picture of his maternal grandpa and a lady that he didn’t know. He said he received the picture from his mother. So now we know what side of the family and which line. Knowing who has owned the picture helps you to be able to pinpoint the family and start looking through other family photos to see if you can find a match. Ask other family members to look through their pictures, too.
The next step is to use what you see in the picture as clues. In other words, use the cultural clues to establish a time frame. What kind of clothes are being worn in the picture? When did women wear long dresses and puffy sleeves? When was that ladies hair style fashionable? When did men wear handlebar mustaches? When was clean shaven in style? Use anything you can in the picture to narrow down the time frame the picture may have been taken.
Finally, once you have a time frame narrowed down use available records to see if you can figure out who the unknown person is. If my great grandpa was born in the late 1880’s and he looked to be in his 20’s and the fashion seems to be the early 1900’s start looking in census records to see who was living in the household where he was. Could the mystery lady be a sister or a cousin? Did any other family live close by? Maybe someone has posted the same picture on a genealogy site with the name of the person.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if every family had kindly labeled their pictures. Maybe they thought they would live long enough to go through all the pictures and explain who was who to someone who cared. Perhaps they assumed the family would continue to tell later family who was who in the family pictures. While it is not fool proof to be able to find the unknown people in family photographs, these are good steps to get you started. It also reminds me I should go label some photographs.
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