Mysteries in my Victorian Family Photos: How to Date Fashion History

[@NicoleRudolph]

Check out MyHeritage and start discovering today! bit.ly/NicoleRudolph_MH

[@sallyk7363]

Those graduation outfits do not look like they're from 1919s they would have evolved into more Sleek Lines by then with shorter (ankle length) skirts and without the big sleeves and the big skirts it looks more like the Styles worn between 1899 and 1909

[@CraftQueenJr]

I think the matching dresses with best friend thing is about as peak 12-14 age range as it’s actually possible to get.

[@cam4636]

People have really always been people, huh

[@jessiebrown6084]

Junior high school, there was always the discussion at lunch as to what were you going to wear the next day, so friend groups would all show up in jeans, or all show up in dresses, or a certain color.

[@kelseyrydar9497]

It's so dang cute though

[@acecat2798]

It's peak 12-14 year old + the influence of late 19th century romantic friendship being all about devotion between girls. It's freaking adorable.

[@acelibrarian]

TBH I was watching this and thinking my best friend and I (currently 41 and 39 years, respectively) should do a matchy pic, maybe for my 40th. We've been friends since I was 13 and I don't think we ever did one.

[@benneufeld2315]

Hey Nicole, I didn't fully watch this video but I wanted to say that when you put different old photographs into AI colorizers, you can see all sorts of things. Like how they would paint in or scrape of the ink by the waist and neck, you can see totally different colors than the backgrounds. Its so cool to see how they used different techniques in black and white thinking you would never see the paint or scrapes until you colorize the photos!

[@uleubner]

"You push the button, we do the rest." My father worked, from the late 1960s until the 1990s, for Kodak, as a researcher in chemistry, improving films and film processing. If you ever took a picture on Kodak film, or had it developed, during that time, you enjoyed the fruit of his work. Thank you for drawing attention to the history of photography. It is a pity that chemical photography has pretty much disappeared. I fear for future generations, they won't have pictures of themselves, or their family, because digital is so ephemeral. And much, much lower resolution than what they were working on perfecting when Kodak's research was shut down. (My father had been working on creating film with one-photon resolution. DPI- dots per inch, is crude in comparison.) If you care about your family's history, make sure your pictures are hard copies, that your grandkids will be able to see with no technology beyond their own eyeballs. Because even now, people who digitized their pictures a decade or two ago can't necessarily actually see them.

[@mcwjes]

I used to always buy the old pictures at the thrift shop in town. I don't know whose family they are, but I like to think they'd be glad someone appreciates their baby pictures and the farm they loved.

[@Joe___R]

Even though some people update their wardrobe to align with modern trends there will always be those who don't. Men are much more likely to keep with a style they like or simply not buy new dress clothes as often. As long as their preferred style is still available for purchase or even more likely able to be made for them. I know people who haven't changed clothing styles in over 80 years. I haven't changed styles in over 20 years & I don't plan to ever change it.

[@jezanne]

I will definitely try to colorize some old family pictures. One fun fact I knew from my grandmother born in 1890 is that she like pastel and floral. One of my aunt told us that people in the village was talking that she was wearing too young a style as a middle age women. My grand father defend her telling anyone that he like that she dress nicely and that she was pretty. BTW you think that house was small to raise 4 children. My grandparents live in a similar size house in Québec province and raise 15 kids.

[@fleurpouvior2967]

I have two photo albums I put together in my teens. I should really go through and label them. Preferably in the most confusing ways possible, so future family members can spend years trying to work out what it means.

[@DipityS]

My word! It's a wealth - a veritable Aladdin's cave of gems from your family's past. Thank you so much for sharing some of this with us - somehow having the girls all troop into town to the local photographer, dressed in their most fashionable and up to date gowns - it's adds such depth to these images. It brings them alive and makes me really like the young women in the photo and makes them very real to me 😊

[@chrisbeckstrom6182]

What an absolute treasure to have such an archive of photos!

[@TealCheetah]

What fantastic detective work!

[@Becky_Theroux_Gockel]

It could be that they are hand-me-downs or they wearing styles from previous years because they haven't warned down enough. I know my mom had to wear her brother's shoes that he had grown out of. I love all of the videos that you put out.

[@lindas.1751]

LOVE this, Nicole, esp. because I've struggled with family photos, myself, for some time.

[@thevirtualtraveler]

You come from such handsome people! Loved this video, please make many more like it!

[@shelleymonson8750]

I was just able to ID a photo of my great-great grandmother Sarah Jane Teem Rackley through one of my DNA matches on MyHeritage! My ancestors are mostly farmers too.

[@shutup-gc2yk]

I wish my family had records like those. The furthest back I can go on my mother's side are my great grandparents and I got to meet both of them before their death, in their 100s. On my father's side, all I can do is grandparents, didn't meet either of them as they both died when my father was 5. I wish I could know what their ancestors looked like and did.

[@alicemurphy8111]

I had an uncle named Manly-I wondered if that was a common name back then. I had never encountered that name before.

[@christinearndt881]

Thank you. This was very interesting.

[@RychaardRyder]

I hope to one day have a distant relative look back on me and my photos and say, "he has made *choices*, and *aggressive* choices at that" when it comes to fashion

[@anneisenborghs2170]

I love this video, looking forward on seeing more in the future

[@caspernewkirk5697]

My family is also from Indiana and they were farmers

[@TheGFeather]

The thing I think we forget when looking at family histories is that our families were every bit as messy and complicated as they are now, it was just a bit less out in the open than it is now. I remember discovering that my eldest uncle was a war baby and only a half sibling and being absolutely floored. Looking back a bit farther, there are plenty of children and marriages that don't line up, second wives mistaken for first wives because of similar names or appearances, and cousins incorporated into households as siblings. Blended families were really common when mortality was higher and options for getting by more limited. Tidy branches of family trees are unusual. Wonderful photos and interesting stories. It looks like you had some really characters in your family tree.

[@lauralake7430]

Well said!

[@beefarren]

As someone whose childhood best friend is now my sister-in-law, that discovery of the BFF dresses hit me pretty hard. I have a bunch of pictures of my great-grandmother with her sister-in-law from throughout their lives - I might have to go digging and see if that story repeated itself in my family history too!

[@julievitous8069]

I inherited all of my Grandmother and Great Grandmother's photos. Once I got them scanned to digital, we had several family get togethers where we played 'Name that Richardson'. On of the big lessons I learned was, some of the biggest clues are in the background. My uncle was able to date some photos based on farm outbuildings - when they were built or removed - and automobiles. One fairly generic picture of a flower girl at a wedding was identified by the bridesmaid in the background. It is a fun process of detective work.

[@kohakuaiko]

Do you happen to have a William Carol Alexander Elijah James Alexander or Alexander Buchanan Among those? If so we might be related.

[@msandigail]

That is so neat!! And a great tip for me going through family photos!

[@annbrookens945]

This sounds like a great idea for a family get-together!

[@julievitous8069]

@@annbrookens945 it helps to have someone in the family hook a laptop up to the TV so you can run thru the digital images as a group. I do not recommend trying to go thru to many pictures at one time. An hour or two can be enough and get quite a bit accomplished. Also, we started recording the sessions because of the stories that were coming back to older family members based on photos. Don't rush the process. Let the stories come.

[@theab3957]

Lucky you. I guess your family didn't come from a war torn country.

[@mothiestman4995]

Edith always looks so incredibly horrified by whatever she's looking at. I love it.

[@Hair8Metal8Karen]

Edith is a whole mood!

[@xnapalmxmorningx]

The big question is what are future historians / descendents going to think about the mall glamorshots of the 80's and 90's.

[@Siansonea]

I mean, they're already a punchline. "Mall hair" of the 80s is the subject of many a meme. And Glamour Shots were always a bit cringe, even at the time. I was never tempted to do that, I always thought it was a tacky concept.

[@elisabethmontegna5412]

“Glamorshots” have been around for quite sometime (even if they were called something else). I have a rather fabulous headshot photo of my grandma from around 1950 looking very elegant and glamorous wearing pearls and (I thought) an off the shoulder black dress. I asked about it once and she told me her friends thought she was a bit scandalous for having the photo taken because it was well-known at the time that that style of photo was actually taken by draping black fabric around your shoulders (no shirt or even a bra or anything underneath) and the studio provided the jewelry. So, it was a 1950s glamorshots. It wouldn’t surprise me if there weren’t similar types of photos (glam photos taken with borrowed accessories or clothes) in earlier decades as well.

[@elfieblue3175]

I like to think about the "Old Wild West" portraits taken in amusement parks and at carnivals. We're talking tie-at-the-back costumes and cheap props. Or themed tourist costume portraits (my grandparents had a family portrait taken in "traditional" Dutch costume; 40 years later, my mother *required* us to do the same at the same tourist stop).

[@kimberlynnwomack4262]

“This is fashion. She has made choices. And they are aggressive choices” I LOVE this!

[@vadalia3860]

Heck yeah, very proud of Daisy & her bold teenage fashion choices! Something about the look on her face, at least to me, reads "Yeah, my parents didn't want me to wear X, Y, or Z in this picture but I'm still gonna!" People really have just always been people.

[@robintheparttimesewer6798]

That is such a lovely video. It’s so important to remember the past and keep the history alive. My grandmother was born in 1910 to her father’s second wife. When his first wife passed his widowed sister and her son moved in to take care of the kids and house. This really made him think as his sister didn’t have anything. She moved around the family to help out where needed. Anyway he made sure that all of his girls finished school and got a trade which was amazing for the time. My grandmother did secretarial work and moved to the big city. Her wedding was put on hold for the depression as they couldn’t afford to give up her job. Married woman didn’t work for the bank at that time. I never meet my great grandfather but I admire his forward thinking and his dedication to making sure his daughters would have a skill to fall back on. The fact that his sister had become the family’s housekeeper and nursemaid must have really weighed on him.

[@simsvictor]

I found the picture of Eva aging so touching and beautiful. The wedding picture and the later picture of them together is realy moving 💜

[@woodstock6957]

At my grandmas house we were looking through old photos I noticed one photo of a lady who looks Native American asked my mom and she said that is Goldie she is half black and half Native American and I ask her you are half native American and Grandma and she said yes and so are you I was shocked and also happy sadly my uncle couldn’t find the photo when we asked for it so I only saw it once rest in peace Goldie

[@lizzaturnbull]

I absolutely love this! I tried to do my family tree but on one side I could only 3 generations until I came to an abandoned baby found by travelling people, and on the other side my grandmother lost pretty much all photos etc when she escaped Austria as a Jewish woman in 1939

[@caitlynstarrparrish]

With genealogy reaching the heights it is, you still might be able to find where that abandoned baby came from. Long lost families are finding each other a lot more often now a days. But even if that's as far as you get, it's still an amazing story to hold on to. 🖤🖤

[@laurakondrick1635]

Good reminder. My Czech grandfather came to Minneapolis with no claim to antecedents. Only a rumor that he was dropped off by his "aunt."

[@mlatham23]

This is hard. It might be one of those cases where DNA could help.

[@mortuaryartist]

I bought a lovely picture frame many years ago. It had a B&W wedding photo from the 30s. I didn’t have the heart to change it. I don’t know who they were, but has hung on my wall for 20+ years

[@myladycasagrande863]

My old roommate likes buying antique photos of strangers; she calls it adopting orphans. :)

[@carlymizzou]

OMG the marrying your bro/sister in law when they came to help "keep house" after a spouse died threw me off so much. Completely had to start my family history over after that realization. Also didn't help that my great great great grandfather was named "Beverly" who married "Cecil" and 2 years later, about 45 days after she died, married her older sister "Mary" who then had a son named Cecil with him, then after Beverly died she married someone else and I ended up with a 30 year span of like all these Cecil's with different last names and genders I couldn't sort out.

[@michellecornum5856]

Uhm -- hello, cousin. I'm related to both Joseph Heavilon and Eleanor Byers. I'm also related to Daisy's husband, Charles. I think I should quit looking, this is just becoming a wreath. It's all distant cousins . . .

[@ragnkja]

Local fashions in “less fashionable” parts of Europe weren’t simply London or Paris fashion but a few years out of date; I assume it was the same in America.

[@annaapple7452]

Additionally, a lot of farmers had their regionally traditional clothes. Those were not static either, but I don't know to what extent they followed city fashion. There is a yt channel that does stabilized and colorized film from the 1920s and 1930s in (among others) the Netherlands, and it is amazing to see the people in local costumes mix with the city dwellers in everyday life. I have a picture of my g-g-grandmother in such traditional dress, which feels somewhat surreal.

[@annapruitt5546]

@@annaapple7452 who is the KZbinr?

[@annaapple7452]

@@annapruitt5546 it is Rick88888888 There is a cluster of videos from about a year ago with several places like Zeeland, Leeuwarden, Drenthe, Scheveningen, Marken and Urk where people wore folkwear. Keep in mind that the colours are not accurate. Some dresses were really colourfull and others weren't.

[@mygreenfroggy]

It's the same here for sure. I've seen fashions from the east and west coasts, usually very close to English or French styles, usually take a couple of years to catch on further inland. The center states do tend to be more conservative and slower to adopt the crazier, fashion-forward styles even now with instant communication of ideas. Not as being more backwards just less apt to be able to do the extremes of fashion.

[@AndersWatches]

I’m so jealous 😩 I know so very little about my family history. Nobody was a prolific photo taker, it’s like pulling teeth to take them now even. I know I’m from working class stock, miners, potters, that sort of stuff. That’s about it. I didn’t even know my great grandmother had an identical twin until after she died and I met her twin at a party lmao.

[@nelliebly6616]

😉 Envious not jealous 😎

[@AndersWatches]

@@nelliebly6616 Uh, okay? Do you often go around correcting the vocabulary of strangers?

[@kaypgirl]

Did the sisters just not get along? To be fair I don't think I ever met any of my great-grandparents siblings, even though I know some of them were alive when I knew my great-grandparents.

[@saraa3418]

The same thing happened to my mother at her grandmother's funeral! The story goes that Anna and her sister traveled together from Poland to the US, but her sister met and fell in love with someone on the boat and they were married by landfall and her sister and her new husband moved to Chicago while Anna stayed in NYC. I guess they corresponded, but couldn't make it to see each other much at all because bothe families were very poor. My mother says she got the fright of her life showing up for that funeral, because it was her grandmother's funeral, but here was her grandmother!

[@AndersWatches]

@@kaypgirl They got along just fine, it’s just they lived up in Durham and my great great aunt never had reason to come down to Stoke since everybody had moved back up there too. Both the twins are dead now but I think at least one other sister is still going!

[@counter10r]

We have 3 photos of my great-great-grandfather--an ambrotype on glass in his 20s (1850s) and two tintypes where he's older. The interesting thing is none of them are with family members--two are with other (non-family) men--and in examining the third, a tintype, I realized that it was actually half of an image--presumably it was a double portrait that had been cut in half. Wondering if this was a friendly gesture (they went halfsies on a photo?) or if this literally was a split in a relationship. I have asked my mother's cousins if any other photos exist, but no one has come up with any--however, one of my mom's cousins owns this g-g-grandfather's fiddle (his name is on a piece of paper glued to the inside).

[@aShadeBolder]

this is fascinating, and it gives me hope that I can fill out some details of who-they-were-as-people IF I can find really old family photos. I don't have grandparents anymore, so everything verbal is from parents, and filtered through the resultant lack of description (even for the relatives they knew, I'll get "yeah, she was a bit weird" or "he was alright" followed by "I don't know, just weird" or "I don't know, that's just how it was" if I ask follow up questions) or lack of curiosity (they didn't ask older relatives very detailed questions, so there is very little they know about relatives they didn't meet). I do know that my granddad was a lamplighter in the east end of London, during the period between the phasing out of gas street lamps and people working out that electric street lights could all be turned on by a single switch at a centralised location. his job was to unlock the bottom of each lamppost & switch them on in the evening, then switch them off again in the morning. which is interesting, if only in the sense that I wouldn't know that job existed otherwise.

[@erynhofland4744]

I don’t know if anyone else read little house on the prairie when they were little, but I distinctly remember a lot of different descriptions of buying fabric or cutting out a pattern or getting a sewing machine, and they took place around the same time.

[@sarahwatts7152]

Sometime in the future I would love to see a recreation of one of these dresses (and maybe a lookalike picture?)

[@honoraweaver788]

I just did this with my daughter and an 1895 picture of my 2nd great-grandmother. I made a dress inspired by the picture and had pictures done in a circa 1903 house that’s a bed and breakfast.

[@becauseimafan]

@@honoraweaver788 That is _adorable_ and I love it!

[@izzyhaynes6422]

It is really nice that you have away to look back so far! Coming from two generations of displaced families not having more than bare bones oral stories of what little is remembered warms my heart

[@lucasmcinnis5045]

I'm always surprised by how well-dressed some of my ancestors were despite being rural farmers. Glad to see I'm not the only one.

[@thomasfoley8287]

My mom used to say, "just because we were poor, we were clean and never looked like a ragamuffin." Clothes were always neat.

[@lucasmcinnis5045]

@@thomasfoley8287 I think I've noticed, at least from the photos and stories that survive in my family, appearance usually had something or other to do with infrastructure. My family lives in North Carolina, and the farmers that lived in the more developed east look better dressed then the ones that lived out West and up in the mountains of NC.

[@gauloise6442]

Getting your photo taken used to be a very special occasion. People dressed in their "Sunday church clothes" I doubt they dressed that way in daily life.

[@lucasmcinnis5045]

@@gauloise6442 Not always, I have seen many family photos taken up in the mountains or at farmhouses, the entire family dressed in work clothes and rags, hair undone as if they weren't expecting the picture to be done that day

[@EXO-L45]

@@gauloise6442 the fashions shown in this video were actually for day to day wear.

[@katiespalding3729]

Jessie, Marion, Hannah, Richard, Ellen, Linnie ... then Manly and Epaminondas?? Victorians really knew how to name people!

[@kathmorgan3429]

It's an interesting contrast to my family: my grandmother was born in 1920 in rural england. Her dad was a keen photographer, so we have a lot of photos of her childhood, but the styles she was wearing were positively victorian. We always put it down to being rural and lower income, but perhaps (especially since he did have the camera hobby which suggests some disposable income), we are looking at her grandma's influence on the dated choices!

[@aeolia80]

my mom's mom and her sister-in-law were best friends too before her sister-in-law married her brother, and continued to be all the rest of their lives, even though my grandmother moved to a different State and raised her family in this other State from her hometown, to this day my grndmother's kids and grandkids are closer to the children and grandchildren of this great-aunt than my grandmother's own sister's children. Hahaha, I've kind of always wanted to name a bakery after those 2 women if I ever decided to open one.

[@Chibihugs]

Thank you for sharing your family history with us. I love looking at past photos they can tell us so much.

[@roweng.4245]

Back in the very early 70s, I was visiting my grandmother (born in 1897) and her surviving older sister (born in 1891?), and I extracted from the tops and bottoms of closets boxes and boxes of photographs - tintypes, collotypes, cabinet cards, early b&w photos, mid-century color photos. . . plonked myself down on the rug in front of their chairs and said, "who are these people?" And wrote on the backs everything they told me. I am still amazed that as a teen, I had the forethought to do this.

[@dismae7784]

OMG I loved this video so much!!!! The detailed description of your research methods was so helpful and satisfying. Would love to see more of these kinds of videos!!!!!

[@chriswalther7329]

So would I

[@ChayatsujiKimono]

I love this video and it resonates so much

[@NicoleRudolph]

How neat! I recently acquired a book about the various types of folkwear around Germany and I am amazed at how varied it was from one small region to the next. I'm also amazed at how many of the elements (like embroidery patterns) have survived into modern fashion. A lot of the people in the book are also wearing antique clothing that would have been "fashionable" mixed with the traditional pieces, which is extra fascinating! That's great that you're finding all of that research material.

[@rdb4996]

@@NicoleRudolph now that you mention it, Europe must have had such a variety of folkwear. I am also from the Netherlands, but was lucky to visit ethnographic musea in Eastern Europe. The regional differences in both West and East are stark! Now let's count the countries that you pass through from the Netherlands to Eastern Europe and imagine how many regions that must be with their own folkwear 😲

[@ragnkja]

@@rdb4996 If you just count countries, you’re _really_ undercounting, because regions within countries had their own traditions and styles too.

[@rdb4996]

@@ragnkja I know!! But my brain cannot comprehend the amount of traditions/styles/folklore that used to be and that we lost 😱

[@ragnkja]

@@rdb4996 They’re not necessarily completely lost, but there definitely used to be a lot more variation in how people dressed. Nowadays you could travel to the other end of the country (or even to another country) and people-especially teenagers-still look basically the same as what you’re used to. At best you might see one or two who are wearing one garment that is specific to the region, unless of course it’s a special day when people wear traditional dress.

[@GoingGreenMom]

Lol, love that your grandfather loved candid shots. We have loads of pictures from both sides as the pictures from estate sales wound up at Grandma's house on my Mom's side, and my Granddad on my Dad's side got the camera and he and Grandmother did lots of documentation and photo developing when they lived out of the country.

[@worm193]

not sure if you know this but the sites that colourise old photos are just making up the colours not “revealing” what they looked like so it wouldn’t be a very useful tool for working out what old clothes looked like. it’s all guess work. but seeing flesh coloured people in the clothes and the enhance features that make the images sharper could still be really interesting and useful! x

[@catzkeet4860]

This is true, but, there are other resources than can inform the colouring process, such as textile samples from the period, wallpaper samples ditto. Written descriptions from the period will have colour references in abundance. They may not give the colours of a given garment per se(tho they can) but they will give an idea of the kinds of colours that were popular and possible in the era.

[@worm193]

@@catzkeet4860 This is a great point and its very true if its a person doing the recoloration but for sites like these it's often a automatic thing (the algorithm can be fed this stuff but I wouldn't bet on it) I just wanted to warn against using an automatic tool as I think there's some confusion as to how these things work. But yeah recolorations a really interesting and very useful resource! im not saying to avoid it altogether which i'm sure Nicole knows :)

[@hanananah]

You're so lucky to have all of those pictures. I've been kicking myself for a decade for not helping my grandfather digitize his collection when I had the chance before his house burned down. He still has an incredibly detailed family tree that is longer than the dining room table when it's unfolded though, goes all the way back to 1690.

[@rynrose81]

I love everything about this video, the fashion details, the family photos and stories. My extended family has splintered a lot in recent years so it’s really fun and interesting to look further back at a different era and hear different stories

[@belfrykat]

most likely the photo of the girls was taken to mark something for your ancestor. how they are seated all around her, she being the focus of the photograph, etc. that would not have been random. they were very specific in portraits back then. how people were seated, what they were holding, so on. the envelope/card she is holding could even be a clue. worth a bit more detective work.

[@verawyder8289]

If it’s for their graduation, as speculated, they might have taken a series of pictures, so that each girl was in the center for their version of the picture.

[@Enjemnsnens]

Why are you just making shit up lmao

[@___LC___]

An awesome finding in my family photos is images of my Uncle Plenny. Plenny was a formerly escaped slave turned free man who married into the family and was included in family photos, despite his status and fears at the time. Due to the time at which they married, they didn’t have children out of fear, but he was loved by the family. We think his name was actually Plentiful, but we only know the nick name and haven’t found records of him….due to the times it is thought he avoided government censuses.

[@mizsherm4352]

I have to thank you for helping me date a photo of a very large group of people standing in front of my great grandfather's newly built store in rural Illinois. This will help immensely when I go to the state capital to do more research.

[@katwitanruna]

Not unusual for a man to marry a sister when the other died. My grandmother had a double first cousin that way whose mother was the second sister her father had married while my great grandmother was the third sister.

[@wangofree]

My huband 's maternal grandmother died, and so did his paternal grandfather; then the two surviving spouses married each other. To add to the confusion, both the first and second wives were named Annie.

[@misspeach3755]

Yes, it's biblical.

[@wangofree]

@@misspeach3755 Brother-in-law marriage to keep the family name going and keep the property in the family, yes. A good idea in many ways.

[@christyb2912]

Fascinating!!! thank you I really enjoyed this - your knowledge is amazing -and 19th century first names are hilarious aren't they? Epaminondes?? Manly?? In my family tree (french Canadian) I have Euphrosine and Adjutor LOL

[@liznotslow]

The matching friends makes me think of Anne and Diana of Anne of Green Gables. They never had matching dresses I don’t think? But they would have LOVED to.

[@user-mv9tt4st9k]

I loved this. I have many old card photos of my father's family in a well worn padded album. I was always referred to as the "three generation throwback," because I am darked eyed/haired with with an olive complexion. Until I saw an image of my maternal great-grandmother (same eyes, bone structure, jawline) I had wondered where my dark olive came from. Even in black and white, Grandma Danda was a mirror to me, and my toddler photos looked very like her daughter's. As my grandfather aged, I would often catch him looking intently at me: My mother and I believe that may have been because of my resemblance to his mother. 😉

[@killamoosdraree730]

Genealogy is one of my other pastimes besides sewing. It's really quite interesting to delve into. It's especially fun if you happen across a family member's name in a newspaper. Sadly records do get lost and create brick walls on certain branches. Similarly, I have run into family members who have connected my own branch to the wrong ancestors in the same family tree (untangling that mess can be time consuming). I used to use a free website called gencircles to record my family tree - gencircles was purchased by myheritage and I can no longer access my data without paying for a subscription. Luckily I have my own hard copies. Because myheritage was able to gain so many family trees through gencircles, it really is an excellent resource to connect with other genealogists in your own family and share those fun stories that aren't recorded on any documents. Ancestry is another website that has excellent resources for historical records. When studying those actual handwritten records, you can notice how cursive writing styles have changed and sometimes find that surnames can be indexed incorrectly (Sometimes a capital S can look like a capital L to the modern reader as an example). Using that information, you can sometimes jump over a brick wall by trying to misspell your own family surnames. It was also not uncommon for a family to change their surname after migration. If you run into this brick wall, sometimes you can search first names including known relationships (say you know their names were Elizabeth and John and that they were married before migration as well as their approximate year of migration). This technique can work to point to possible prior surnames which can then be verified through other known facts about the couple such as the date and place of their marriage. Happy researching and as always thanks for sharing!

[@shamancarmichael5305]

Seeing the photos colorized just brings them even more to life! What a wonderful video!

[@dieschatten]

This is so supremely helpful!! I inherited a whole bunch of late 19th early 20th century photos from both sides of my family. one side wrote names and dates on the backs, the other did not 😅

[@crystilmurch5659]

This was super fascinating! Eva sounds like she lived a very interesting life. This whole look into common people's lives has dispelled some myths about less wealthy folks and their clothing. Thank you for sharing!

[@kateruch7196]

OMG! I love genaology and I see a common last name! We are going to be cousins soon!

[@kateruch7196]

Yeah - those Pennsylvania roots are my backyard.

[@nurmaybooba]

Do you have any plans to recreate any of your ancestor's dresses for yourself?

[@MinasMagic]

I hope whoever has my family's photographs takes care of them. Few stayed in contact with each other...it's easier to hide the family secrets when you don't interact with the family...so, I know very little about those I'm related to...

[@teacheraprilrogers]

So many years ago. My late teens early 20s. This was back in the 1990s. I was going through old photos and dating them and trying to figure out who was in them. I can across three pictures of my maternal grandfather. Each photo pictured him with a different woman. My grandfather was farm boy who grew up in rural Oklahoma. He was very handsome. The first photo was of him has a teenager. Maybe 17 or 18. Turns out it was him and his new wife. The girl from the farm down the road. They divorced sometime shortly after marrying. My grandfather then was in a picture with a women who looked very fashionable and he was in his army uniform. This was shortly before he was sent over in WW2. They more then likely weren't every really married. But it was said she was his I am going to off war wife. Then the third picture is of him overseas during WW2 in Czechoslovakia with a drop dead gorgeous young woman. She was his war time girlfriend. After the war when he came home he meet my Grandmother at a dance and they were married in 1946. He was 25 and my grandmother was 23. They were both very stylish. I have to wonderful pictures of my grandmother during WW2 working in a shipyard as a welder. The things you learn when digging through photos. No one knew about my grandfather's marriages. I was young enough to want an answer and ask who the women were. My grandfather told me that none of the women counted just my Grammie. I sure miss my grandparents more then words can express.

[@RiverBear37]

I'm fortunate to have a lot of family photos from my dads side I love looking at them and learning what I can about them. My moms grandparents were poor immigrants so there are very few photos of them but I love the ones we have. I just saw some of 2 of her grandparents for the first time yesterday which was exciting for me. My dad is also an archivist and he's been showing me the old photos and documents my whole life which has made me very interested in history. I would love to have a job like his when I'm an adult.

[@CaraTheStrange]

I love your videos and voice so much. You sound like a wise mentor in all the best ways!

[@Rhaifha]

Oh man, those are some great outfits! From what I've seen most of my ancestors we still have pictures of just wore the local historical dress style (from a rural and conservative part of the netherlands), so they just wore a whole lot of black. I did get some great stories from my grandmother though. I treasure that stuff.

[@digitaldgirl4459]

Such lovely photos of your family and the history you shared was wonderful. My father was a photographer since the early 40's and so many other families histories are there in photos we still have even 5 years after his passing. The ones of our family strikes up such great memories and faces of long gone elders. You are so blessed to have such wonderful historic photos of your family.

[@WanderTrust]

omg i love this!! My dads side comes from the logging industry, and I live in a city that used to be a big logging town (and still is a bit) and so when i was at the local thrift shop I noticed some old books about the logging industry in my area. I bought them for $5 cash only from an old woman, and inside of them were a couple very cool photos!! one of them I didn't discover until I showed the book to my dad, and he actually RECOGNIZED a couple of the guys in the photo, said likely where the photo was taken and also that it was way before his time...There was also a name written in the book (the owners name) who he recognized. So very cool to piece those things together. I think it's really cool that your family has held on to so many family heirlooms. I've never really felt that kind of connection to where I'm from and my family, but I'm really enjoying piecing these things together as an adult :)

[@jenniferb4764]

My grandparents house was full of old photos, they were in north Alabama. They were not like these. They had some blown up really big framed on the walls. They were horrifying when we were kids. Many of them had been done by traveling photographers in a field somewhere around there(from what my grandmother said). I would like to say I would look at them differently now as an adult, but some of them were really odd and I am still afraid to walk around that house at night, and the photos are still horrifying.

[@holzlastname1976]

I hope I'm not the only one but in so glad to see that everyone wasn't actually just wereing black ...i love how it was shown on my heritage beibg able to recolor the images ...i suppose I thought that it was just the thing to do to take lots of mourning pictures

[@NicoleRudolph]

Black is just one of the most popular "formal" colors, just like today! If you ask a group of people to dress up for a nice event, the most common color will be black, even if it's a wedding. Buy a nice dress or suit in black and it won't go out of fashion as quickly as that exact color of teal that's trending this Spring.

[@OriginalPineapplesFoster]

Eva looks so much like Abby, especially in that first (youngest) photo. Coincidence? 🤔🍍

[@lauralake7430]

My people were pretty much dirt poor, and they somehow had a new dress every year, going back to 1901, per oral history. I dont have any photos, or not very many, but my grandma was a good listener. In turn, so was i.

[@melissamybubbles6139]

I've got a pair of brothers who married a pair of sisters on my dad's side.

[@guineapig1985]

Love this...as my grandparents are passing away and losing their memories, I am getting more and more interested in family history. I know they all did a bunch of work on genealogy and family history and uncovered and preserved a lot of stuff...I guess it's time for my generation to start to take interest

[@SusanYeske701]

We have some old family photos that we need to get definitive names and dates for before everyone who knows who was in the pictures passes on. This was really helpful, thanks

[@jennifervasquez]

i wish i could look back on my familys records but theres almost nothing to go off of my family is from a very poor n rural part of mexico n has been there for so long that when i asked nobody was able to even guess how long its been n records of stuff didnt seem to properly come in until pretty late n there were fuck ups in records as late as my parents generation (my moms legal name n dob arent correct n one of my uncles wasnt registered until he was already a few yrs old n that came w its own set of problems) i mean hell my last name is supposed to be spelled differently but thats more a result of immigration but hey the extremely high illiteracy rates sure didnt help

[@dariapack8906]

I love old photos. My mom when I was 10 or so (she's a portrait artist, mainly uses charcoal) did a piece with all of her grandmothers that she has photographs of, and included a sketch of her mother (my grandmother) from when she just graduated from high school. It's one of her best pieces. She even has each of their names and their birth and death dates on there.

[@mparis130]

I wonder how financially accessible daguerreotypes and other photographs were in the Victorian era. My family don't have any photographs from this era, they were really poor farmers in a pre-industrial country, but I don't know if that's something that got lost along the way or something my family could never access. We don't even have pictures from the 1930 and 40s when my grandparents were growing up.

[@vincentbriggs1780]

This is so interesting, and thank you so much for including men's fashion!! It's not an era I know much about, but I'm still awfully tired of people claiming 19th century menswear is inherently boring or "all the same".

[@lenaeospeixinhos]

I'm squealing at these pictures 🥰 love love love! Wish my family's pictures had been this well preserved, but there were few and they're very damaged 😭

[@frankieamsden7918]

I love this video! I have family photos going back to the 1860's-ish. Some of them I know the identity. My grandmother took a lot of photos with a friend in the 1930's but I don't know who she was.

[@mrschurch1979]

I was eating lunch while watching your video, and when you said Frankfort, I just about died of choking on my sandwich. My husband's family is from that area and he spent his first twelve years there. Small world!

[@swarmqueenhydok4990]

One cool thing I hadn't realized that I discovered recently was just how early home video cameras were available. I got to see some casual home videos from my family last summer, lots of college-age guys and their girlfriends hanging out on the beach, boat races, just general silliness... taken by my grandfather's uncle before WWII.

[@WomanRoaring]

This is so cool. On my mom’s side I can only go back to the early 1900s. My maternal grandmother’s mother came to the us in 1904 and her father was born here but his family was from Ireland and came over in the late 1800s and there were no photos. I would love to have these photos going back so far!

[@espurrlady3397]

Omg I love this!! I have some old pictures laying around the house I have needed to get dated for a while and now this video made it possible!!

[@FlybyStardancer]

It’s so awesome how much you have of them!

[@MizzMaree7]

I have family who were farmers in Frankfurt. How fun to see yours!

[@LtSarai]

This made me remember looking through old photo albums at my great grandparents' house when I was younger. Now I wanna hit up grandma and see if she still has them.

[@lajoyous1568]

I really appreciate this video. It hits close to home. I have spent many hours researching my family tree and trying to link the names to old photos. Unfortunately it takes me a lot more effort to determine the year via the clothing. Thanks for the advice, that hopefully will make it easier the next time I pull out the old photos.

[@princekrazie]

Epaminondes? very unique name!

[@lesleyharris525]

Thank you for sharing your family photographs and storys, please keep us updated on what you discover, my cousin tryed to trace the family but could only go so far and contacted my mum for help and was shocked to discover that the reason she could not trace the marriage of our great grandparents is they never had a legal wedding, they jumped the broomstick!

[@InThisEssayIWill...]

This is so cool! My dad was working on genealogy before he passed and I've been waiting for my mom to get me a copy of his files so I can pick back up where he left off... My uncle is the only other living person from that side of the family who could tell me anything... And considering they are twins I worry that he will encounter similar health struggles and that knowledge will all be lost...

[@beagleissleeping5359]

My Granny always had this portrait (1910's or earlier) of an older woman sitting in a chair in front of a farmhouse. My mom asked her who it was, to which Granny replied that she didn't know. She'd gotten it after her mom died, and her mom always had it hanging up in her house. Now it's in my mom's house and we're still not sure who it is. Granny's great grandma maybe? Wish whoever had originally owned the photo would have had the foresight to write on the back of it.

[@katwitanruna]

I think the group of four girls is a graduation photo. It may be the girls of the whole class.