What to do with old family photos, and the stories behind them
Name the people in each photograph while someone can still tell you. Then keep the picture beside those people, not in a folder of its own. A photograph without names is a puzzle. A photograph with names, a year and a line of story is part of your family’s history.
The box in the loft
Most families have one: an album, a biscuit tin, a shoebox of prints with nothing written on the back. The people who knew who was in them are often the oldest in the family. That makes the photographs one of the most urgent things to sort, and one of the most rewarding.
Ask while you can
Sit with the oldest relative and go through them together. For each photograph, ask:
- Who is this? Do you know their surname?
- Where was it taken? Whose house, which street, which town?
- Roughly when? What was happening in the family then?
- Who took it?
- What do you remember of the people in it?
The answers to the last question are often the best. A photograph of a great-aunt brings back how she laughed, what she cooked, and the argument at the wedding.
Scan, then name
- Scan or photograph each print in good light, flat, without the glass of a frame.
- Keep the back too, if anything is written on it.
- Name the file and the people, so it can be found by name, not just by date.
Store the originals well
Take them out of the loft. Heat, damp and changes of temperature are what harm old prints most. Keep them flat or upright in acid-free boxes or sleeves, somewhere cool, dry and dark, such as a cupboard in a room you live in. If they sit in an old album with sticky pages, take them out gently, but only if they come away easily.
Clues when nobody knows
When nobody remembers, the picture itself can help. Clothes and hairstyles date it to within a decade or so. A studio’s name on the mount gives a town, and often the years it was open. A uniform, a shop sign or a car can narrow it further. And a face that appears in another, named photograph may be the same person.
How Heirstory keeps photographs
On Heirstory, a photograph is kept with the people in it. Upload it, say who it is about, and it appears with them.
- A photograph of a person can become their portrait, on their card and on the tree, with its title as the caption.
- Gene can ask about it. In a spoken sitting, drop a photograph on the screen. Gene, an AI genealogist, looks at it and asks who is there.
- What you remember becomes part of the record, in your own words, beside the people it is about.
- Where it was taken stays private. Photographs are kept without what the camera wrote into them, such as the place.
- Each family stores 1 GB of photographs and documents free.
Questions
Should I throw away old photos nobody can name?
Not yet. Scan them first, and show them to the oldest relatives you can. A face nobody knows today may be named by a cousin next year, or matched to another photograph that has a name on the back.
Does Heirstory recognise faces?
No. Heirstory does not match faces. You, or a relative, say who is in each photograph.
Who can see the photographs I upload?
Only family. A photograph opens only to you and to those who see everyone it is about, and everyone it names, in full.
Can I upload documents too?
Yes. Certificates, letters and family papers, as JPEG, PNG or PDF, each kept with the people it names.