Episode 130: Ask Maureen May 2021

Each month Maureen answers questions from listeners. 

  • When scanning cabinet cards, do you only do one scan of the entire front of the card which would include the border & photographer logo, or do you also make a 2nd scan of just the photo itself?
  • Carol asked: I have a picture of my GG grandmother (1829-1901).  She is elderly in the picture & wearing small hoop earrings.  It appears that her ears are pierced.  Was it common in the 1800s for an older woman to have pierced ears?  Did they go out of fashion in the twentieth century?
  • Does MyHeritage own my photos when I upload them?
  • What archival safe pen/pencils do you recommend for labeling heritage images? 

It’s important to download documents or sync them to your tree when you locate them online.  What’s on a genealogy site today doesn’t mean it will be there tomorrow.   

  • Do Ambrotypes fade when exposed to light?
  • Karen asks: My great-grandmother in a professional photo with her husband and oldest child has rings on her left middle finger. Was that common in 1910? 

It’s important to download documents or sync them to your tree when you locate them online.  What’s on a genealogy site today doesn’t mean it will be there tomorrow?  Thank goodness I saved what I needed. 

I’ve been working on my family tree again. My Dad’s line. Two cousins are asking me to write up what I know.  So to do that I’m creating a time line of what I know for branches of the family..adding images and putting unsolved questions in the document in red. It becomes a research log as well. 

Do Ambrotypes fade when exposed to light?

Episode 125: Ask Maureen April 2021

Episode 117: Ask Maureen February 2021

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

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