Gathering Branches of My Family Tree: photos

Showing posts with label photos. Show all posts

52 Ancestors 2018 #2

Favorite Photo

Ok, so these probably aren't my most favorite photos of an ancestor, but I do like them a lot. My great-grandfather, Thomas Edwards, was a coal miner in Utah. He died fairly young, in a mining accident. I find these old photos of his life in that mining town very interesting. The area was in Spring Canyon, Utah. The city was names Storrs and people only lived there a short time. It's now just a few piles of stone foundations and wilderness. But when my family lived there it was a town full of life.

For comparison, here is what it looks like now (taken in 2016)

And some of my relatives who still live in the area helped put up this memorial. My grandfather's name is on the right-most column.

Cemetery Research

I have always liked going to cemeteries (when an actual funeral isn't involved). I like the peacefulness, and the quiet, and the scenery. I like reading the headstones and the inscriptions. I like when families are buried together for generations. When going to a cemetery for genealogy research, you should know where you are going, who you are looking for, and how to photograph the grave once you get there.

First let me start off by saying DO NOT clean the headstone with anything other than a soft brush and plain water. DO NOT use chalk, shaving cream, or other harsh things to make it easier to read.
The BEST thing to do is use a light spritz of water or light at different angles to make it readable.

Shining light at an angle can really help. Photo from wikihow

Wetting the stone can bring out the letters. Photo from rootsweb

Find A Grave

A free website with information on cemeteries and gravesites.

Each person has a memorial page with information such as who they are, when they lived, links to who their family is, and where they are buried. Some people have more information listed, such as an obituary or other biography.

You can save the memorial pages into your own personal ‘virtual cemetery’ to keep your relatives easy to find later.

If there is a memorial without a grave photo, you can make a request and a local volunteer will try and take that photo and upload it for you. You can become a volunteer and take headstone photos for others as well.

BillionGraves
A free website (with a paid option) to look up headstone photos from around the world. Volunteers use smartphones to take GPS tagged photos of headstones, which are then uploaded to the website and transcribed by other volunteers for easy online searches.

When you go to a cemetery with the BillionGraves app on your phone, you can find the exact location of the grave you are looking for within the cemetery. Anyone can join, download the app and take photos or transcribe photos of headstones.

Picturing Your Ancestral Village

When I do genealogy research, I often wonder what peoples lives were like, and what the places they lived were like. I made a display for our local Family History Fair about this very subject.

What Was There
WhatWasThere is a photo/map pinning site. On this site there are basically just two tags for a photo, the location and the date taken. While the focus is historic photos, there are current photos as well (since someday even they will be historic). The goal is to "weave together a photographic history of the world" Some of the photos can be overlaid onto Google street view.

HistoryPin

HistoryPin is a website where people can pin historic photos to a map where it was taken. They don't just have individual people posting photos, they have libraries, archives and museums posting as well.

They take a Goggle map, and pin photos to it. They even have some location photos overlaid right into a Google Street View photo. Some of the photos are historical, some are current photos of landmarks and historical plaques and monuments.

How to use HistoryPin

When you click on a photo it gives you a few options. First, is the basic information about the photo, where it is from, who posted it, and tags. You can click on the tags and find related photos.

The next tab on the photo page is 'Comments and Suggestions'. Here you can post your own comment, put additional information about the photo if you have any, ask questions, anything you want.

The App

Then comes 'repeats'. It's modern photo replicas of historic photos. These can be taken with the HistoryPin app. If you know where a photo was taken, you can go there and take a modern photo of the same place. It's kind of neat to see how things have changed over the years. And the last tab has copyright information.

Flickr

Flickr is a photo sharing site that anyone can upload photos to, including libraries, museums, and archives like the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, even Getty images.

There are lots of cool genealogy related groups. Some are families, some are places, some more general. You can join lots of groups and post to any or all of them, or just look through what others have posted. For example, there is a group for West Virginia Cemeteries. So if I have photos of my ancestors headstones buried in WV, I can post to that group. Or I can find other more artistic photos of the cemetery and monuments.

Many photos are also geotagged, so you can search a location on a map and find photos taken there.

Google Earth

How to Use Google Earth for Genealogy

Using geographic information found in deeds and addresses from sources such as census data, property where ancestors and neighbors once lived may be marked on historical maps, which can then be overlaid on modern Google maps.

Geographic features mentioned in property descriptions such as rivers and creeks will appear on topographical maps and in Google’s satellite imagery.

Using this information, it is possible to locate a family homestead on an historical map and compare the changes to those locations that have occurred over time as the area developed. In some instances, the old home may still be there or a family cemetery.