In honor of International Women’s Day, I want to celebrate a woman who never appeared in headlines and never sought attention—my Nana, my paternal grandmother. She lived what many might call an ordinary life. Yet to me, it was anything but ordinary. She is the only grandparent I truly remember. By the time I was born, both of my grandfathers were gone, and my maternal grandmother died when I was just a year old. Nana was my living link to the past.

Memory preserves her in small, vivid details. She called the living room the parlor, a word that felt like it belonged to another century. Every Sunday, the smell of pot roast filled the house. Her clam chowder was a family staple. She colored patiently, always in small, careful circles. A bright green parakeet named Birdie chirped in the background of her apartment. On summer days, we’d make lemonade together, rolling the lemons and oranges to squeeze the juice.

For seven years, my family lived downstairs from her in a three-tenement house my father owned. Her oldest daughter lived with her; sometimes her youngest son did too. She walked slowly in sturdy boots and wore her long hair pulled back in a hairnet well into her seventies. At Christmastime, she could look out her window and see the Tower in Jenks Park in Central Falls, Rhode Island—a landmark that anchored her to place and tradition.

But woven through those steady domestic rhythms was something quieter. She missed her family. She rarely spoke about her parents or her early life. My mother once remarked that Nana did not like her own mother. That silence should have told me something.

When I began looking for answers, the census offered clues. On the 1910 U.S. census for Pawtucket’s Fourth Ward, her mother, Sarah Jane Kelley, reported that she had given birth to nine children, but only five were still living. One of the children lost was from her mother’s disastrous, only days-long first marriage. Nana—born Eliza—entered the world in December of 1892. Earlier that same year, in February, her older brother James had died. For six years afterward, she was the only surviving child in the household. Suddenly, that childhood studio portrait takes on new meaning. There are no photographs of her siblings as young children, but why was she taken to a photographer, requiring a trip by public transportation? Perhaps she represented both hope and fragile survival in a family acquainted with loss.

The 1910 census also reveals her nickname—Liza—and that at seventeen she worked as a mill hand in a tag shop. The household was crowded: several of her mother’s siblings lived with them, four in addition to a cousin, making twelve people under one roof. That same year brought another blow. In December 1910, her father, Harry Wilson, died, leaving Sarah with four children under the age of twelve. Loss, responsibility, and crowded living conditions were part of Nana’s early landscape long before she became the woman I knew.

There was another tragedy she carried quietly. While babysitting her first grandson, he died of whooping cough. Grief visited her more than once.

A later photograph of her, printed on silk (shown above), shows a poised young woman. My father always said it was her wedding portrait. Not every early twentieth-century bride wore white; many married in their best dress, as she appears to have done. On September 30, 1912, she married James William Taylor at St. Paul’s Church in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Together, they would have six children and build the family that eventually included me.

As a genealogist, I have learned that what isn’t said can be as powerful as what is recorded. Nana did not talk about her parents. She did not share stories of crowded rooms or early bereavement. Instead, she offered pot roast on Sundays, careful coloring in small circles, and the steady reassurance of presence.

Her life was not famous. It was not headline-making. But it was marked by resilience, quiet endurance, and the ability to keep going after loss. On this International Women’s Day, I honor women like my Nana—women whose strength was not loud, but lasting.

The post A Quiet Life, A Lasting Legacy: Remembering My Nana appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week on the podcast, Maureen is joined by Elisabeth Smolarz, who created the Encyclopedia of Things. They discuss the items that define our lives and why we keep them. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 187: Building a Story with the Ancestry.com App

Episode 180: Photos, Memories, and English Genealogy with Emma Jolly

Links:

• Elisabeth Smolarz
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Elisabeth Smolarz was born in Poland and emigrated to Germany as a teenager. She creates photography, video, and social interactions investigating how consciousness, perception, identity, and value are formed by one’s cultural milieu.

Smolarz has exhibited her work nationally and internationally for two decades. Her most recent solo exhibition, the “Encyclopedia of Things,” was presented at the Morgan Lehman Gallery resulting from a multi-year project supported by National Endowment for the Arts; the Queens Council on the Arts; and the City Artist Corps Grants program, and featured on PBS on 03/14/20. The German publisher Spector Books published a monograph with a selection of 120 portraits from the “Encyclopedia of Things” in the summer of 2022. The monograph was reviewed by Brooklyn Rail this Spring. Additionally, her work has been presented in venues including The Bronx Museum of Art, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, EYEBEAM Center for Art + Technology, Lesley Heller Gallery, NARS Foundation, The Sculpture Center, Smack Mellon, The Queens Museum of Art, and Wave Hill, all New York City; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland; Oberwelt e.V Stuttgart, Germany; Baden Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; Photography Triennial Esslingen, Germany; Independent Museum of Contemporary Art, Cyprus; Reykjavik Photography Museum, Iceland; Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló, Spain; the Moscow Biennale, and others.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective^Òhelps clients with photo related genealogical problems. Her pioneering work in historic photo research has earned her the title “the nation’s foremost historical photo detective” by The Wall Street Journal and appearances on The View, The Today Show, Pawn Stars, and others.   Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 218:The Encyclopedia of Things with Creator Elisabeth Smolarz appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Jordan Lundskog, a Product Manager at Ancestry.com. The two discuss using the new story feature in the Ancestry.com app. A partnership with Photomyne allows users to add and edit photos within the app. Jordan explains how it all works and how easy it is to create a story.

Related Episodes:

Episode 177: Wild about Wildcards with Amy Johnson Crow

Episode 98: Collect Stories with StoryGlory

Links:

• Ancestry.com
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Jordan Lundskog is a Product Manager at Ancestry focused on finding ways to explore and build tools to help people protect, preserve and enhance memories before they fade away. Jordan has been part of the Ancestry team since 2018. He enjoys finding ways to solve human problems with technology and most recently he has been working on a free set of tools to help anyone upload, enhance, and share photos, stories and other types of media on Ancestry. Prior to Ancestry, Jordan held product management roles at Vivint Solar, PlanSource, and ApplicantPro.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 187: Building a Story with the Ancestry.com App appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Erin Waters, who has taken over the family business of FineDags.com, a website that’s dedicated to helping individuals purchase daguerreotypes and understand more about their history. 

Maureen and Erin talk about how to spot paper photocopies of daguerreotypes 

Related Episodes:

Episode 105:  Women in the Dark: Female Photographers in the US 1850-1900

Episode 122: Reproducing History and Protecting the Past: One Cased Image at a Time

Links:

• FineDags.com
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Erin Waters started collecting photographs at age eight, following in her father’s footsteps. Her focuses include pre-revolutionary Russian images, interiors, and unusual photo postcards. She has a degree in Russian Studies from Hamilton College, where she also minored in history. She spent her junior year in Yaroslavl, Russia. For her thesis, she researched the history of photography, typologies, and ideas of empire in Russia. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Russia, where she conducted an oral history and photography project with older Russian women. Waters has a Master of Arts in Museum Studies from New York University. While in New York, she interned in Sotheby’s Photographs department. Her master’s thesis explored vernacular photography’s place in art museums, utilizing interviews with collectors, curators, and dealers. 

Waters enjoys speaking about photography and has given papers at a number of international conferences on both copy photography and how people used photography in their personal spaces. Waters has been a full-time dealer since 2007, based in Lancaster, PA. She sells at shows around the country and Europe, as well as on eBay and her family’s website, https://www.finedags.com.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 169: How To Spot A Daguerreotype Copy appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Amberly Russell, the Preservations Services Manager for the Permanent Legacy Foundation. Permanent is a platform dedicated to allowing individual users to preserve their photos, just as a museum would, through a digital platform. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 95: How to Save Your Family Archive with Permanent.org

Episode 92: What You Need to Know About Metadata with Christopher Desmond of MemoryWeb.me

Links:

• Permanent.org
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Amberly Russell is a Texas-based archivist and is currently the Preservation Services Manager for Permanent Legacy Foundation.

Amberly brings her lifelong passion as a photographer, videographer, and archivist to her work with clients. She is a United States Army Veteran who earned her Master of Science in Information Studies, Libraries,and Archives from The University of Texas at Austin. Amberly loves hiking, listening to live music, and honing her photography skills in and around Austin, TX.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 161: Creating a Digital Archive with Permanent.org appeared first on Maureen Taylor.