'Photos of the Unknown.' Sounds like a creepy psychological thriller - appropriate for this time of year, I guess. But today, I literally am talking about what I like to call 'phantom photos.' Every family has them - old photos in perhaps an old shoebox or yellowing photo album with NO LABELS. No dates, no names, no locations. Here is one from my mom's side of the family:
Now, this photo actually DOES have the name 'Parrazzini' written on the back, so we know it's from my mom's grandmother's side of the family. (Honestly, we probably would have figured that part out anyway, because the woman pictured looks a LOT like my great-grandmother.) But that's all we know. There isn't a date, and it's difficult to tell when it was taken just by the clothing they are wearing or their hairstyles. I like to assume that these are her parents, but we have no idea what their first names were, which is unfortunate because that information would have helped me find records of the family in Italy.
So the point of today's post is: Go through old photo albums with an older family member and WRITE DOWN anything they can remember - names, places, dates, stories...anything! I WISH I would have sat down with my Italian grandmother before she passed away and asked her who these people were and if she had any knowledge of where they had lived, but I was only a teenager then and hadn't been bitted yet by the genealogy bug. And even if you are somebody MY age, go through your parents' old photo albums/shoeboxes from the 70s and 80s and do the same thing. Those photos may not seem 'old' to us, but they will be to our children and grandchildren someday. (And, accept it people, 1972 was FORTY years ago.) And now, with digital photos, be sure to have an adequate data backup system for your hard drive, arrange the photo files in chronological folders, and try to include names in each individual photo file name. Your great-grandchildren will thank you some day.
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
So the point of today's post is: Go through old photo albums with an older family member and WRITE DOWN anything they can remember - names, places, dates, stories...anything! I WISH I would have sat down with my Italian grandmother before she passed away and asked her who these people were and if she had any knowledge of where they had lived, but I was only a teenager then and hadn't been bitted yet by the genealogy bug. And even if you are somebody MY age, go through your parents' old photo albums/shoeboxes from the 70s and 80s and do the same thing. Those photos may not seem 'old' to us, but they will be to our children and grandchildren someday. (And, accept it people, 1972 was FORTY years ago.) And now, with digital photos, be sure to have an adequate data backup system for your hard drive, arrange the photo files in chronological folders, and try to include names in each individual photo file name. Your great-grandchildren will thank you some day.
©2012, copyright Emily Kowalski Schroeder
