09 April 2014

A Few More Photo Identification Comments

The original post on photo identification was one of our more popular posts, so I could not resist doing one more.

This is an image of a photograph of my great-grandparents and their children. In hindsight, I could have put more text on it than I did. 

Just remember to only stick to what you know in your textual information on the picture. If the photograph requires analysis or suggests a variety of scenarios put that discussion elsewhere. The text on the photograph should focus on the picture, how you got it, how you identified the people in it, and when you made the image. 

Discuss grandma's hairstyle elsewhere and do the same with who "looks like who." Those are interesting discussions to have, but concentrate on the origin of the photo in your text that you add to the image. There are two main reasons why other researchers will benefit from your text:
  • they can see how the photograph "got to you."
  • they can determine if the informant likely knew who the people were or not

In this case, I did include the nickname of one son (Babe). I don't think I ever heard him called Carl. Cecil also went by Pete, but didn't use either name exclusively. I always have to stop and think about what Uncle Babe's real name is. Uncle Pete's I don't.


My Grandma, Ida (Trautvetter) Neill is the young girl on the right. My own daughter looks a lot like her, but that's something for a blog post--not commentary on the picture itself.