After my grandmother passed two years ago I inherited boxes of old family pictures, however almost none of them had names on the back. It had always been my intention to go through these boxes with my grandmother, but Covid and cancer had other plans. In my grief, I made it my mission to put a name to EVERY face in the box. Yes you read that right - EVERY face. The task has been a daunting one and had quite a few challenges, but at the same time it has been incredibly rewarding. Along the way I discovered a few tips and tricks.
Generating a list of names was an important first step. If I had no idea who the people could be, it would be near impossible to identify them. To do this, I established a FAN club using a series of records. In my case, the records included a memorial book, newspaper articles, and an a personal notebook.
1. Correlation of frequency and close relationships
One of the first things that I noticed while going through the box was that the same faces kept reappearing. Often times, these people were immediate or extended family, however in a few cases I knew that these people had to be close friends. I chose to start by focusing on the reoccurring people as they likely had a close relationship with my ancestors.
2. Documents with physical description
When possible, I collected FAN club documents that contained a physical description. I compared the heights in these records to the known heights of other people in the pictures. This allowed me to narrow down the number of possibilities. I took this a step further by colourizing a few pictures. This allowed me to identify people based on their hair and/or eye colour. Physical descriptions are often provided on several different types of documents. Military records often provide the most detail, however they are not applicable to everybody. Immigration and boarder crossing records are applicable to a much larger subset of the population but provide a slightly less detailed and less accurate description.
3. Check the date
Only a small handful of the pictures I was working with had descriptions on the back - this included dates. For the few pictures that this applied to, I was able to eliminate people based on their age. This proved especially helpful when identifying children.
4. Social Circles
When working with group shots I focused on who I had previously identified and if they had anything in common. For example, when looking at a picture of my great grandfather and a group of his friends I was able to note that all of the men had different employers. This told me that they were not colleagues, and instead were likely a group of his childhood friends (which I had previously established using FAN club records).
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