September 20, 2024
Like most family historians, I’m always on the lookout for pictures of my ancestors. Periodically, I review online family trees in my continuing search. Websites such as Family Search, Ancestry.com, My Heritage, and many others all allow users to post their own trees, including pictures and other documents.
Every time I search, I find new-to-me photos of my ancestors. It’s thrilling to see faces I’ve never seen before. However, finding new photos is not always an occasion for joy. Sometimes it’s an exercise in frustration to see photos purporting to be an ancestor when I know that they’re not.
Photos on online trees are seldom attributed to a source. It’s easy to copy them to your own tree, and that’s what many genealogists do. That’s why online trees are filled with photos that aren’t really of the people they claim to be.
If you find a photo of an ancestor, it’s important to contact the person who posted the tree. He/she may know where the photo came from and may even send you a better copy of the picture. If the answer to your question is that the poster got the tree from another online tree, it might mean that the photo has been floating around the internet. You may never find out who originally posted it. You may never get verification that the picture is the ancestor the trees claim it to be.
Before you accept that a given photo is your ancestor, there are a few simple things you can do to help you decide if it is. First, think about the time that the ancestor died. If he died before 1850, the chances that a photo of him exists are slim.
Although the earliest existing photographs were taken in 1826, the earliest photo of people was taken in 1838. Photos of average people are common from the Civil War era forward. Some more well-to-do families had them taken a decade or so earlier.
Another way to determine whether you’re looking at a photo of your ancestor is to look at the clothing he is wearing. If your great grandmother died in 1910, a photo purporting to be her where she is wearing an above-the-knees 1920’s style dress is not her. People sometimes wore clothing for decades so out-of-style clothing is not necessarily proof that the photo is wrong. Clothes from an era after your ancestor’s death means that the subject was not who it is claimed to be.
For example, my third great grandfather Stephen Hadlock died in Iowa on what was then the frontier in 1847. His family had spent the previous dozen years following the migrations of the Mormon Church from one place to another. After all these moves the family was poor. It is doubtful that he ever sat for a photograph. Despite this, online pictures of him are on numerous trees.
Most of the photos online are copies of the same photograph. I suspect that the picture is not my ancestor. The clothing of the man and woman in the photo is clearly of a later era than 1847. I’ve seen the same picture identified as a picture of Stephen’s son Oren and his wife Ann. The style of the photo and the clothing make this likely since Oren didn’t die until 1892.
The internet is filled with incorrect photos. Don’t add to the confusion by copying photos to your own tree unless you have verified that they are of your own ancestors.
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society