In this bonus episode, I’m joined by Emma Kilburn-Smith, a mixed-media artist and graduate student who lives in Calgary. Emma made a controversial splash on the social media platform TikTok when she began sharing her work taking vintage photos and embroidering onto them. 

Her passion for her work is astounding, and while many were worried at the idea of embroidering onto these photos, Emma makes certain that they tell the stories of the people she finds and helps to bring attention to these orphan photos in order to give them new life. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 135: Stitch by Stitch Saving Historic Clothing a Piece at a time

Episode 155: Ancestral Handbag History with Curator Jessica Harpley

Links:

• Stitchography by Emma
• 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:

Emma is a mixed media artist and graduate student living in Calgary, Alberta. Her academic research into photo animation technologies (like DeepNostalgia) helps to inform her vibrant creative practice as an artist who embroiders on vintage found photos. With a background in journalism, her passion for the artistic medium is rooted in her curiosity for the people and the stories revealed in the photographs that she finds.

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 Bonus Episode: Stitching on Pictures Stitchography by Emma appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

Truths and Mysteries

I’ve owned this image of my great grandfather Harry for decades. He’s my family history man of mystery. Over the years I’ve discovered some truths about him, but it hasn’t been easy.

What’s the first thing you want to know about this picture? I bet it’s the story behind its condition. Getting broken into five pieces wasn’t an accident. It was a deliberate act. Someone later glued the picture to a heavy piece of card stock. But who did it and when? An encounter at a family funeral gave me a few clues.

Outside the Frame

The clues outside of the frame of a picture can pop up in all sorts of ways. They might be in a document that you’ve read and studied, but then a second glance reveals a bit you’d overlooked.

An artifact in the family might be a souvenir from a wedding trip or a daytime excursion to a resort. The place and details can suddenly make the pieces of your family history fall into place.

Or it could be a story told by a family member. I’m the oldest daughter of a son who married late. This is important. It means that my cousins are older and have memories of family that passed before I was born.

Harry was my paternal grandmother, Eliza’s, father. According to my mother, Nana loved her father and despised her mother. My Mom was an in-law, but she listened well. Every family has a storyteller, one who takes in all the information and passes it on to the next generation. That’s my Mom. She holds the key to family history both hers and my Dad’s.

Who’s the keeper of the stories in your family?

Researching the Past

When I was nine, I began researching my family history. My Nana was still alive then. I sat with her and asked her about her family. She deflected each question with a “they aren’t very interesting.” She only wanted to tell me what she knew about her husband’s family. As I’ve discovered, her family story wasn’t for young children.

I didn’t realize that this photo of her father existed. It was only after she died that I saw it. My parent’s told me that he was my great grandfather, but my Nana had kept her secrets well. That’s all they knew too.

Adding up the Clues

In this picture a man wears a wide lapeled jacket and a striped tie. He’s the epitome of a man in 1889-1892. All he lacks is the mustache that men favored in that period. By studying the family history, I learned that he married in 1889. This could be a wedding portrait.

This is where most people stop looking. There is now a date and a name for the image. It’s where I ask, “What else?” A photo is only one part of a person’s life. It captures a moment but not a lifetime.

He was still my man of mystery. I couldn’t find the rest of his story. I was stuck and couldn’t break free until a cousin told me about the man.

What Else? Funeral Facts

My uncle had died. I know now that he was the spitting image of the young Harry. Perhaps that’s why Harry’s story came to mind. My uncle reminded this cousin of her grandfather. That’s right. Grandfather. Harry was my great-grandfather.

My grandmother, Eliza, was the oldest of seven. One of her sisters married and had children later than the rest of her siblings. The woman who held the secret was my father’s first cousin. A woman I’d never met before.

According to Jeannette, Harry suffered an accident as a child. Harry had a disability. One that isn’t visible in a picture. He’d stood too close to a steamboat whistle and it affected his hearing. She related that he was mostly deaf.

“What else?” I asked leaning forward in my seat.

“He was a very difficult person to get along with. He had two sisters but he never saw them.”

“What!?” I didn’t know about the sisters.

Those tidbits changed my research and my understanding of this man. I dug around and found his sisters living with their husband’s blocks from their brother. To live so close and yet not talk, seemed a tragedy. Family stories are part fact mixed with fiction added in retelling. It appears that part of the story was true.

Outside the frame means many things. In this instance, it was family lore that filled in some missing information. I can’t prove his deafness but I do know that the family lived on the waterfront so it’s possible.

A New Discovery

When you research a picture or a document, you’re never done. In writing this post, I realized I’d overlooked a piece of family history. I knew that Harry died on December 8, 1910. While examining a census, I gasped. He not only left his wife with six children, he died leaving an expectant wife. His youngest son would never know his father.

This picture is the only one of him that exists. Did his wife break it after he died? Did it happen after an argument? I’m likely to never know the answer to the most curious part of the picture mystery.

What stories hide outside the frame of your family photos. Let’s discover them together. I love finding family history in photo mysteries.

The post Every Picture Tells a Story: Searching for Harry’s appeared first on Maureen Taylor.