Uncovering Your Ancestry through Family Photographs

by Maureen A. Taylor

In this visually stunning book of historic family photographs, renowned family history researcher and photography expert Maureen A. Taylor shows you how to cherish old photographs and what clues they can provide to your ancestors' lives. You will learn how

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, History

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Maureen Taylor is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada. She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira). She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com.

Currently a contributing editor of Family Tree Magazine, Maureen also writes personal memoirs and narrative family histories for the Newbury St. Press of the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

Reviews

[My Bookish Delights · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was fine for what it is. I feel like too much time was spent on the history of cameras and a lot of the parts felt redundant. There were some interesting tidbits in there and I liked the case studies. I also liked the photos throughout the book because that's why I picked it up to begin with. I love old photos and want to learn more about them.

I think what it boils down to is that this is a reference book that gives you an introduction to the subject and directs you to other resources. I guess what I was looking for when I purchased it was a resource book that I could sit down with while going through my photographs and be able to get a lot done with the one book. It does have a couple handy charts, but again, it's just telling me to look at details in photos and hey, once you look at those details check this other book out so you can figure out what it all means.

Also, and this is no fault to the book, it is probably already outdated since it was published in 2005. Obviously, resources and records online have grown since this was published.

Overall, the book was fine, but it's not one that I would recommend to anyone.

Challenges:
2019 Goodreads Challenge
2019 Mount TBR
2019 NEWTs Readathon - Ancient Runes: A book that has been on your TBR for ages

[Jessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book with all sorts of ideas and plans on how to learn more about your family tree, ancestors and history in general. my favorite part was the lists of websites to use as resources, I will be checking those with my research soon. This was a quick and informative read.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful. Lots of good information if you want to try and date a photo.

[Sharil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just an earlier version of the more recently published: Family Photo Detective: Learn How to Find Genealogy Clues in Old Photos and Solve Family Photo Mysteries. This paperback is a larger format than the newer edition, which has been updated with a little more information. If your eyesight is not great, then you may want to review this book for photo genealogy tips. A lot of focus is on identifying photo format types and what period they were used (such as tin type or cabinet photo) and things in the photo or period dress, also researching photographers. While I had really studied my photos and picked up on much of this on my own, I was hoping to find something I had overlooked or that was new to me. I'm not sure if I have enough un-dated or unidentified family photos that this could help me with, but would love it if my library had a copy I could check out.

[Christine McCloud · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's no such thing as a simple photograph! There is so much to be learned from the material of the photo, any imprints, the photographer, the frame, hairstyles, clothes, props & pose. Maureen knows her stuff!

[Lauren H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. I found a few usual information but still not sure if it will help me. I'll keep trying and I did learn a lot new stuff on old photos that I never knew about before.

[Mike Niebrzydowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting information - mostly about older (19th century) photographs and types of photographs. Did make me think more about what to look for in photos.