More than twenty thousand people on social media have viewed these images of the mysterious women in uniform. That’s a whole lot of eyes. Thank you for all the leads! Here’s the update. The Buildings The United States Army built Spanish Colonial buildings at many of their bases. All had tile roofs and stucco exteriors,…
The details in this picture are plentiful. A man in an apron holding a shoe. Patriotic bunting. A house. It’s so lovely I couldn’t resist. I bought it at an antique shop in Franklin, New Hampshire. A sticker on the front of the glass frame says: “Cobbler Shop, West Bow St., Franklin.” Other than that…
I live in Rhode Island. You’d think the answer to that question would be easy. It’s the smallest state in the country with 8 cities, 31 towns, and only 5 counties. Yet folks that live here usually don’t give you the name of a city or town when you ask where they are from. They…
DAR Library Acquisition Assistant Andrew Boisvert is one crafty genealogist/historian. Years before we worked together on Rhode Island research projects. I’m well aware of his research skills. A few weeks ago he thought, “What would happen if I searched for soldiers in the 1860 Federal Census?” He used the parameters born in 1756 with…
You gotta love a librarian! James Jeffrey of the Western History/Genealogy Collection of the Denver Public Library bought a couple of pictures and sent them to me. He also mailed me a page from the 1860 Federal Census of Pennsylvania listing the family. Thank you, James! On the surface, they are simple carte des…
A long time ago, my husband worked for Polaroid. Portions of my kid’s childhood are frozen in those shiny plastic images. Part of the fun was watching them develop. The plastic makes it difficult to write information on them so you know what I’m going to say. It’s a photo saving nightmare. At the outdoor…
Why do people love old photos? That was the question a vendor at a local outdoor market asked me. Her question was in reply to my inquiry about the price of a photo on her table. She then told me that she’d recently been in someone’s house where there was an entire wall of old…
After being lucky enough to snag the last two tickets for a London performance of Hamilton, I feel fired up to work on volume 3 of my Last Muster series of books that features images of men and women who lived during the revolution and into the age of photography. For the past fifteen years,…
It’s an often-used phrase, but what does it really mean. On the surface it’s about studying the clues in the picture. People, places, and things are key to our understanding of a picture, but that’s not the whole story. It takes more than pictorial evidence to fit a picture into family context. Truths and Mysteries…
A few weeks ago, my daughter went on a photo hunting expedition with me. Rhode Island is full of tiny antique shops tucked into old buildings. On this particular afternoon we were in an old mill that wandered over the landscape. The smell of mold was in the air. I’d found good things here before.…
On a recent trip to Burlington, Iowa, I drove through the town of Roseville, Illinois. Right in the middle of town was an antique store. It was lovely. Clean and well organized. “Do you have any photographs?” I asked. “Hmm, I’m not sure. I have trouble keeping them in the store. They get bought as…
On the surface this is a simple family snapshot. My Mom and Dad are in the middle. It’s their wedding day; my mother’s oldest sister stands to her left and my mother’s niece to the right of my father. It captures a happy time. The houses, the car, and the people all help date the…