A Family Portrait

I love finding out the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, and WHERE on my family tree, but a photo of my ancestor really makes them come alive in my mind. I was always told that I looked like my grandma Marie. I never saw any resemblance because I only remembered my grandmother as an old woman. However, when my aunt gave me some photos of her as a younger woman, I saw what others who had known her in earlier days saw. Likewise, my sister recently pointed out how much my youngest son looked like my father in photos of the two at approximately the same age.

If your parents and/or grandparents are still living, they are the obvious people to approach for photographs of themselves. If they don't have any, your aunts, uncles, and cousins may. Today's technology is a great place to turn to next. I once found a photograph of a 2nd great-grandfather simply by entering his name into a search engine and clicking on images. I have also found photos of ancestors by simply asking for them on family history message boards. Social networking sites make it easy to request and share old family photos.



Recently, I have been entering my collected family history data into ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. Occasionally, when I search for source records in Ancestry or FamilySearch, I find links to sources like passports, newspapers, and even school yearbooks. These sources often contain photographs. I attach the photographs to the individuals in my family tree by following these steps:

1. Press the print screen (prtsc) key on the computer to take a screen shot of the web page with the photo.

2. Paste the screen shot into the basic graphics/painting software that came with my computer.

3. Click on the select feature and draw a box around the photo.

4. Click copy.

5. Open a new page in the graphics program.

6. Paste the photo I selected and copied.

7. If the photo is surrounded by unwanted white area on the bottom and right side, I click on the corner dot and pull that corner in to get rid of the white space.

8. Click "save as," then name and save the photo. I can then upload the photo to whatever site I want and attach it to an individual.

There are probably other ways to capture and save photos you find online, but this is the method I use.

If you use FamilySearch, you can download the related Memories app to your smart phone.  You can then use the camera on your phone to take pictures of old photos and documents and upload them to FamilySearch directly through the Memories app.  This is so easy!

So go ahead, add some photos to your pedigree chart and online family tree. Maybe the photos you post will help someone see that they look like their great grandparent!