I read an article recently about the quantity of family photos
we accumulate in our lifetime. I think it said somewhere around
1,200 in any given household, the majority of which are
unmarked. I can believe thatâ€"the unmarked part especially.
I'm horrible when it comes to jotting a note on the back of my
photos. "My photos" refer to the ones that were taken by me or a
living member of my family. I even have photos undeveloped from
the 1980s, but I intend to get them developed "sometime real
soonâ€"as soon I get a chance."
It's the same story with my hobby photo collection, which
contains tens of thousands of photos. Most of the photos are of
note-less, name-less faces. If it weren't for the photographers'
marks, they would be of nameless, placeless faces. I refer to
these nameless, placeless photos as "incredibly lost."
I wonder why many of our ancestors didn't put names on their
photos. Was it laziness? I originally blamed sloth, but then I
changed my mind. If you look on the back of c1900 onward
vacation snapshots, you can find notes like: "This is Uncle John
next to Harvey Johnson's Boat," "Those mountains behind me are
the High Sierras" and "That's an Esso station were we stopped to
fill'er up on our way to Lake Henry." It takes a lot more time
to jot down "where" and "what" notes than it does to jot down a
"John Hancock," and most vacation photos have something written
on them. Yes, I've concluded that it was not laziness.
After thinking for a while, it hit me. Why would we even bother
to write our names on the back? We all know who we are, so
there's no need to jot down a name when we already know what
that name is. Besides, if people we don't know look at the
photo, why would they even care to know who's in the photo?
Unless, of course, they're curious about that gas station, in
which case they could turn the photo over to find out that it
was somewhere on the road to Lake Henry.
So here they sit: all these photos from the 1800s and early
1900s with no clues as to who most of these people are.
Personally, I want to know who they are, as I'm sure many of you
do, too. Unfortunately, some people discard their nameless
photos. Fortunately, some people find them.
Even more fortunately, the Internet has opened a big, big door.
Now we can scan those found unknown "genealogy orphans" onto our
computers, post them onto DeadFred.com and increase the chances
that someone will help fill in the blanks. It happens every day
now. Who would have thought?
Anyway, I'm going to get those 1980s undeveloped film rolls
developed real soon and share them with you. I might need some
help identifying a few of the people in them.
Category : Spirituality
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