Maureen Taylor Archives - Maureen Taylor The Photo Detective Tue, 24 May 2022 23:31:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.1 https://maureentaylor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/cropped-site-icon-32x32.png Maureen Taylor Archives - Maureen Taylor 32 32 99869351 Episode 134: Unlocking the Shoebox: Digitize, Identify, and Organize Family Photos https://maureentaylor.com/episode-134-unlocking-the-shoebox-digitize-identify-and-organize-family-photos/ Sun, 27 Jun 2021 04:00:00 +0000 https://maureentaylor.com/?p=67870 At Rootstech 2021 myself, Nancy and Christopher Desmond of MemoryWeb.me presented a three-part class on unlocking the shoebox of photos.  I love partnering with those two. They have a passion for genealogy and photography.  Thousands of people watched our class and asked questions about the topic. There were so many queries we decided to do […]

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At Rootstech 2021 myself, Nancy and Christopher Desmond of MemoryWeb.me presented a three-part class on unlocking the shoebox of photos.  I love partnering with those two. They have a passion for genealogy and photography. 

Thousands of people watched our class and asked questions about the topic. There were so many queries we decided to do a dedicated Q & A webinar. This is a recording of that event. 

 By the way…the class is still live and will be until 2022. We offered a show special that is still live as well. An opportunity to watch Getting Started with Digital Photo Organizing and subscribe to MemoryWeb. The Links are in the show notes. 

Recap of Unlocking the Shoebox. 

  • Would you rather have me scan the actual eight by 10 photo or the negative of that photo?
  • How to scan slides
  • What should we do with black paper albums?
  • How can I tell cased images apart?
  • How can I research a photographer?
  • I have multiple backups of my photos organized and stored on my computer and external drives. Why would I put these on the cloud?
  • What’s the best way to digitize and include metadata?
  • What type of portable, external hard drive would you recommend for a Mac book pro

Episode 69: Digital Photo Organizing with MemoryWeb 

Episode 92: What You Need to Know About Metadata with Christopher Desmond

About My Guest:

Nancy and Christopher Desmond are the founders and creators of MemoryWeb.me a digital photo organizer

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.

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]]> 67870 Episode 133: Loving: Images of Men in Love 1850-1950 https://maureentaylor.com/episode-133-loving-images-of-men-in-love-1850-1950/ Sun, 20 Jun 2021 04:00:00 +0000 https://maureentaylor.com/?p=68494 Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850-1950 portrays the history of romantic love between men in hundreds of moving and tender vernacular photographs taken between the years 1850 and 1950. This visual narrative of astonishing sensitivity brings to light an until-now-unpublished collection of hundreds of snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the […]

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Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850-1950 portrays the history of romantic love between men in hundreds of moving and tender vernacular photographs taken between the years 1850 and 1950. This visual narrative of astonishing sensitivity brings to light an until-now-unpublished collection of hundreds of snapshots, portraits, and group photos taken in the most varied of contexts, both private and public.

Included are ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, glass negatives, tin types, cabinet cards, photo postcards, photo strips, photomatics, and snapshots – over 100 years of social history and the development of photography.

Episode 116: America and the Tintype with Steven Kasher

Episode 99: Finding Photographs on the Smithsonian Learning Lab

About My Guest:

Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell are the authors of LOVING A Photographic History and the owners of the Nini-Treadwell Collection which consists of over 3000 photographs of men in love. The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, CNN, and Vogue featured reviews of their book. 

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.

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]]> 68494 Episode 129: Using Photos to Create Heirlooms With GenerationStory https://maureentaylor.com/episode-129-using-photos-to-create-heirlooms-with-generationstory/ Sun, 23 May 2021 04:00:00 +0000 https://maureentaylor.com/?p=67930 Two and a half years ago, Shannon Uschold of GenerationStory app was a guest on this podcast.  Listeners rocketed it to one of the top ten episodes where it stayed for a couple of years. I know you have heirlooms you don’t know what to do with and items you’d like to share. Two years […]

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Two and a half years ago, Shannon Uschold of GenerationStory app was a guest on this podcast.  Listeners rocketed it to one of the top ten episodes where it stayed for a couple of years. I know you have heirlooms you don’t know what to do with and items you’d like to share. Two years ago, Shannon had a dream and worked tirelessly to find solutions. She did it. GenerationStory app gives us a way to preserve the stories of heirlooms large and small as well as providing a way for us to share our history by creating new items from pillows to wall coverings.  

Episode 19: GenerationStory App

Episode 86: Every Thing Tells a Story

About My Guest:

Shannon Uschold is the Founder & CEO of GenerationStory, a free app that provides anyone a quick and easy way to archive, and tell the story of your most treasured family keepsakes and heirlooms.  In addition to the app, GenerationStory has a Shopify site offering on-demand, customizable products using images of your most treasured items. 

The mission is to capture memories before they are lost and to help people organize and share their family story. 

For Shannon, Every object has a story.  Like many things, GS had a history even before it was created. Compelled by childhood memories, objects, and family stories that surrounded her –  Shannon was inspired to create a solution for organizing and capturing memories before they were lost.  Each time she visited her grandmother’s house, she could be found sitting on a carpet in front of a bookcase full of old family treasures.  Her grandmother would tell little stories about the strips of paper that were rolled inside or attached to the back of an item. 

Coming from a long line of family preservationists, a grandmother, her mother, it’s no wonder Shannon found herself captivated by family stories.  She is a storyteller with a mission to preserve those significant objects in our lives and personal histories.  For Shannon, objects possess the power to captivate and inspire.

The GenerationStory approach that every object has a story – creates a pathway to connect all generations providing the capability to bring together all ages across all cultures.  They are focused on preserving stories before they are lost through the unique lens of sharing our family treasures.  Sharing the story of …… Who We Are, Who We Were and Who We Will Be. 

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.

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]]> 67930 Episode 121: Ask Maureen March 2021 https://maureentaylor.com/episode-121ask-maureen-march-2021/ Sun, 28 Mar 2021 04:00:00 +0000 https://maureentaylor.com/?p=67584 In this monthly podcast, Maureen shares questions received via email and through social media. Can you tell us about changing exposure times for photographic portraits and why people didn’t smile for pictures? Do you have a good resource for looking up photographer names by location and years they were active? Is there a good resource […]

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In this monthly podcast, Maureen shares questions received via email and through social media.

  • Can you tell us about changing exposure times for photographic portraits and why people didn’t smile for pictures?
  • Do you have a good resource for looking up photographer names by location and years they were active?
  • Is there a good resource for dating children’s clothing styles?
  • How can I preserve a rusty tintype?
  • Can you determine the financial status of a person in a portrait?
  • What can you do with deteriorating Polaroids?

Episode 117: Ask Maureen February 2021

Episode 113: Ask Maureen January 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

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

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]]> 67584 An Inspirational Man–Benson J. Lossing https://maureentaylor.com/inspirational-man-benson-j-lossing/ Mon, 24 Apr 2017 11:14:45 +0000 https://maureentaylor.com/?p=17636 Benson J. Lossing was a man of many talents including watchmaking, writing and engraving, but it was his sense of history that brought him nineteenth century fame. He felt that history of the American Revolution was being forgotten even by individuals living in towns with key roles in the conflict. With the seventy-fifth anniversary of […]

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]]> Benson J. Lossing was a man of many talents including watchmaking, writing and engraving, but it was his sense of history that brought him nineteenth century fame.

Frederick Gutekunst, 1859

He felt that history of the American Revolution was being forgotten even by individuals living in towns with key roles in the conflict. With the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord approaching in 1850, there was increasing interest in documenting that war. Lossing wanted his book to be different than those currently for sale. Not naming titles or authors, he criticized them by saying “the woof of our history is too sacred to be interwoven with the tinsel filling of fiction.” He wasn’t content to use just second hand sources. He began collecting rare books and manuscripts to further his research. He kept them all in a specially constructed fire-proof building on the property of his house.

Rather than a chronological approach he sought to visit each site to view the landscape, document remnants of the war and to seek out individuals who’d lived during the conflict.  His eight thousand mile journey through all thirteen colonies and parts of Canada brought him into contact with remnants of the American Revolution. He saw “half hidden mounds of old redoubts; the ruined walls of some stronger fortification; dilapidated buildings, neglected and decaying herein patriots met for shelter or in council ; and living men, who had borne the musket and knapsack day after day in that conflict, occasionally passed under the ye of my casual apprehension.”

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine gave him a monetary advance to pursue his  project and published the first installment of the Pictorial Field- book in 1850; the first edition of the book appeared in 1853. It brought him critical success. In an article in the Boston Recorder of October 5, 1854, the Literary Gazette called him “an accomplished artist and an elegant writer.” The combination of historical narrative, travelogue and personal memoir made his books popular and widely read. At the time he was considered one of America’s finest historians, a trendsetter in the genre of historical writing. Within a decade, he’d written and published similar titles on the War of 1812 and the Civil War (of which Mathew Brady contributed photographs) using the same approach as his two volume set on the American Revolution.

Not willing to include illustrations merely to embellish the text, he sought to truthfully represent the places he visited. Together with William Barrit, the pair used paintings and photographs to place living people or historical figures in the text, recreated historical scenes as well as maps and drew from life.  He portrayed the ferryman, Mr. Tenyck who led him across Verplanck’s Point, a path followed by General George Washington on his march to Yorktown.

In small towns and hamlets he met veterans who recounted their wartime experiences. At Fort Ticonderoga, he met Isaac Rice who regaled him with stories and who supported himself giving tours of the fort. Each place and personal meeting inspired Lossing to continue his quest to locate bits of Revolutionary War history no matter how small.

Lossing wrote until a year before his death in 1891. His Field-book of the American Revolution remains important more than a century and a half after publication. His treasured collection is owned by various institutions such as the New York State Library, Vassar College, Syracuse University, the Clements Library and Princeton.

I have put together a free download of 5 Revolutionary War-Related Activities that you can explore. Click the button below to get your copy.

Download “5 Revolutionary War-Related Activities”

 

You can buy your copy of The Last Muster books by clicking here.

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