Do You Have a Mystery Photo?

What's going on?

I love old photos – the clothes, the hairstyles, the stoic faces in posed pictures. I always wonder what was going on when it was taken. What were they commemorating? After all, formal photos would have cost some money, so it wasn’t a frivolous snap. The saying is ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. But really, if you don’t know at least some of those words the picture can be meaningless. If you don’t know who is in the picture is it valuable to you?  

The Mystery Photo

I came across this picture when helping my cousin sort through boxes of inherited items from her father and our grandmother. It made me laugh when I first saw it. Who were these guys? Some outlaw gang maybe? A few words on the front squashed that idea. It was taken in Gardiner, Maine (not exactly the wild west). I looked at the faces and tried to match them up with ones previously discovered while researching my family history, but none looked familiar.

Flipping it over, (it is one of those very sturdy photos that is printed on paperboard) someone added some words to help explain the importance of the photo. Right rear – Levi Tufts.

Levi was my great-great-grandfather born in 1857. Besides being widowed in 1892 with a 9-year-old daughter and then remarried, all I knew of him was that he worked in plumbing (the indoor kind, not outhouses).  The only other picture I have seen of him was when he was a much older man. More words (thank you to whoever wrote them) reveal that this was the crew from Lewiston, Maine that was in Gardiner to put heating systems in some of the buildings on Water St.

A group of plumbing and heating guys. It’s a company photo. Heroes no doubt to the folks on Water St who now had heat without fireplaces. No other names are provided, or date. It looks like my grandmother's handwriting. Perhaps she wrote the note and was remembering the story she had been told by her grandfather when she looked at the photo. If those few words hadn't been written would it be important to me? No. It would have been a mystery and it could have been discarded.

Tell your story - write your family history

We take so many photos now. It is easy to take hundreds at a single event. If we don’t put any words to them, will they mean anything to future generations? Sure, now we can afford to take more photos to completely document the story or enough to give context. Imagine if we were witnessing heating being installed with today's technology. We could have taken a picture of the vehicle they traveled from Lewiston to Gardiner in, likely horse-drawn. Pictures of them working and the buildings that got the heat and the people who lived or worked in the buildings. Maybe it would be an Instagram Story or Facebook post.

You can tell your stories even if all I have is one photo. FOREVER lets you write all the details about a picture or group of pictures. You can identify the who, what, where, and why of the photo. Not just in the title of the photo but in a whole separate field. You can go beyond names and include dates, relationships, locations, and stories. Future generations won't have to wonder why you took the photo, you can tell them.

I enjoy a good mystery, lots of people do, but not when it comes to why someone took a photo. Not knowing who is in it just makes me sad that they won't be remembered. Don't just save your pictures, save your stories, your great-grandchildren will thank you.