The Importance of Old Photographs

[Alastair]

I was just creating an article for a newsletter I help with and just thought I'd copy it in here...

I remember when I was a lot younger I was going through a lot of old black and white pictures of family snap shots. I remember saying to my father at the time that as I hardly knew who any of the people were in the photographs I'd likely just throw them out.

Well he must have taken this to heart as after his death and when I was preparing to move from Scotland to Canada I came across a number of photo albums. And lo and behold there were all those black and white pictures all neatly put into these albums with notes about where they were taken and the names of the people in the pictures. I can only conclude that he was going to present these to me as there were very few left to add to the albums but of course he died before he could complete the task.

I very much appreciated his efforts to document the family in this way as if he hadn't done that then I would have just thrown them out.

There are photographs from his time in Aden, Iran, Malta, Kuwait, Italy and Australia as well as pictures from Scotland.

Should your family have old pictures like these this would be a great time for you seniors to make sure you have documented where they were taken and who are in the pictures.

I have in fact scanned them in and added them to my own web page.

Here is one of me at 4 months old...



Alastair

[1938 Observer]

Alastair,

As you stated it really is very important to put name to faces,even if the original location cannot be remembered.

My parents were overseas for about six months in 1966 and spent a lot of time with family in Falkirk, I have a small collection of coloured photographs taken at the time,however as I only discovered them after my mothers death in '98 I can only recognize certain people. I think I still have 1st cousins alive in Falkirk, and certainly their children but at this stage i have not been able to make contact except with a couple of more distant ones who have been generous with their own family ties with ours.

I think sometimes we leave our investigations into our family history too late in life and some of the threads are broken/lost; i only started in 2000 with prompting from my daughter who did the initial investigations on "The Web" and achieved great success by having a 1st cousin 'downunder' contact us (this was really great as she is a family history guru and being a retired teacher/librarian she has all the skills) which greatly broadened our written and photographic records.

Gordon.

[Alastair]

I've had hundreds of emails over the years saying that they wished they'd been interested enough while their grand parents and parents were still alive to ask them about their own history. There are some oral history projects going on where folk are taping 90+ year olds taking about the old days and also what they remember of stories told to them by their parents and grand parents. That's valuable but a lot of that is still hidden away in universities as it seems it's too costly to get those recordings written up. And even when they are they're still hidden away in those self same universities.

At the end of the day that's what Electric Scotland is all about. In the days prior to having an Internet archive I was hunting up books in antiquarian book shops and ocr'ing them up on the web. At the time these books were very hard to find and being antiquarian you couldn't borrow them and so they had to be read in the reading rooms of libraries.

Alastair

[Glesgalass]

I'm the matriach of my family now and the only one who can identify a lot of people in old photos. After my Dad died my sister sent me a lot of old photos so I could identify the people in them. Some of them I wasn't sure of but my 1st cousin here in Oz was still alive at the time and could tell me who they were. My cousin was a lot older than me...my mother's age.
The oldest photo I have is my great grandparents in Ireland taken around the 1920's I think. Maybe earlier.

Elda

[Alastair]

Well it's great that you are documenting them Elda as so many people simply don't find the time to do it and it's usually too late for many as they pass away. You also need to mention the collection in your will. I heard of one family where the mother died and 2 brothers and a sister were clearing out the house. The sister suddenly remembered about all her mothers genealogy notes and told her brothers to watch out for them. It was apparent in their faces that something was wrong... and you guessed it.. they had thrown out most of her papers and so her research had all been lost.

Alastair

[Ranald]

Gordon, don't forget I live in Falkirk, so just shout if you think I can help.....

With the help of the family, the loft has been nearly cleared this weekend, and YES, we found old photos taken since the 1050's !

Ranald

[Alastair]

The 1050's Ranald... you mean your family actually invented photography way back then??? WOW!!!

Alastair

[Ranald]

Blast, I didn't want you to know that I am 960 years old.... lol

Ranald

[1938 Observer]

I've just added fifteen (15) old family photographs to the album gallery,they reproduce quite well on the system.

Gordon.

[Alastair]

Great photographs Gordon.... and with the comments system with each photo you can if you want add wee stories to each of them if you wanted to.