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Dating Old Family Photos: Impossible to Possible
Dating old family photos can feel impossible. However, once you know what to look for the impossible becomes possible. All you need is patience, persistence, and some basic knowledge. Let’s take a look at a photo I identified in my family.
This picture above I have identified as my great great grandparents, Charles and Emmaliza Holmes. I will not go as far as saying I am 100% sure. With all old photos that are unmarked, I don’t think it is fair to say the certainty is that high. With the evidence I have gathered I would give myself 93%.
Now, let’s follow the steps in the process of finding out who is in this picture.
Step 1: Where did the picture come from?
This alone can be one of the biggest clues you can gather. I received this picture from my mother’s side of the family. More specifically, I was told the picture is from my mother’s cousin in Illinois. This information immediately led me to the Holmes side of the family from Crawford County, Illinois. You can narrow down your search dramatically if you can figure out who had possession of the photograph.
Ask any relatives you can if they have ideas on who may be in the photograph. Search other old family photos to see if you can find resemblances on a labeled picture.
Step 2: What kind of picture is it?
Knowing the history of photography, believe it or not, can help in identifying historical photos.
The Daguerreotype photograph peaked in the 1840’s and 1850’s. It has a mirror-like surface, a silver coated copper plate and is almost always cased.
The Ambrotype had a very short peak time between 1856 and 1860. The images were on glass and always cased. However, this type does not look like a mirror. Rotating the image will not make it appear to be a negative.
A tintype photograph peaked in the 1860’s up to 1871. These images were on a thin iron plate coated with a dark lacquer or enamel. They could be found cased or loose.
The Cabinet Card appeared in 1866 and had its peak in the United States between 1875 and 1895. Rarely are they found after 1906. Images were printed on thin paper and mounted on heavy card stock. Early photos in this period were sepia colored. Later photos were silver-like with rich blacks. Commonly the cabinet cards were 4 1/2 by 6 1/2.
This photo of my great great grandparents is mounted on heavy card stock and is 4 1/2 by 6 1/2. Noticing these features leads me to narrow down the time frame to 1875-1895. Now that I have a branch of the family and time frame let’s move onto what we actually see in the photo.
Step 3: Clues on the photograph
One of the best features of the cabinet card is that often the photographer’s name and the city and state are printed on the photograph-either on the front or on the back.
As you can see above, the photographer and city/state are printed on the photo. If you are lucky, you can do research on the photographer’s name to find out when he was business. Unfortunately, research on J.W Mitchell was a bust but much information is out there about other period photographers. This is always a clue to look into further.
I stated earlier that my family was from Crawford County, Illinois. Some of my ancestors were from the eastern part of the county and the others were from the western half. This might not seem like such a big deal in today’s world. However, this is a very large county and getting around wasn’t as easy in the 1800’s. Therefore, I narrowed down my search to the ancestors that lived in the western half of the county where Oblong is located. After looking at census records I could narrow it down further to relatives that lived in Oblong and the surrounding countryside (Crawford County is still to this day very rural).
Step 4: Identify Clothing and Hair Trends
One of the best ways to identify any photograph is to use clothing and hair styles to determine a time frame. In this photo I paid particular attention to Emmaliza’s simple hair and the simplicity of her dress with the buttons and bow at the neck.
Emmaliza’s dress is more fitted throughout. There is no hoop under the skirt suggesting this dress is post 1860’s. Skirts were still typically full until the late 1870’s when skirts became narrower from the waist down. Her hair is simple and put up in a bun which was more typical of the 1880’s and 1890’s.
Her collar is not too high or flared out and the upper sleeves are fitted with just a small stand up poof at the shoulders. The buttons also seem more typical of the late 1880’s and 1890’s.
Charles’ suit with a hip length jacket, wide lapels and lack of formality in buttons leads me to the 1880’s and early 1890’s. His short hair and facial hair is also typical of that era.
Conclusion
My research combined with the clues I found in the photograph pointed directly to Charles and Emmaliza Holmes.
I knew I was looking for a couple in the Holmes family from the western part of Crawford County, Illinois between 1875-1895. They had to be the appropriate age (25-50 by the looks of them in the photo). Based on the clothing and hairstyles I also narrowed this pictured further to most likely the late 1880’s. Emmaliza was pregnant most of the late 1870’s and 1880’s. Although this picture could have been taken between pregnancies it seems more likely that this pictures was after she had kids which leaves it after 1886.
I also compared this picture to a picture that is 100% known to be Emmaliza and did a side by side comparison. Although the other picture is probably 20 years after this one, the similarities are too great to ignore. This just added to the list of clues.
Below is the known picture of Emmaliza. They hair is the same and the mouth has the same crookedness to it. Had this been my only clue then, no, I would not draw this conclusion. However, taking the comparison with all the other clues makes me 93% certain it is her.
Although dating a photo can seem daunting, if you take it one step at a time you have a greater chance of success. Often it takes the combination of research, photographic clues, and comparisons but it is possible.
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Census Records-Beware The Name Game
One of the biggest resources available that you will use in your research is census records. They can be valuable in tracing not only your direct ancestor, but also extended family. For rookie genealogists out there- most of the 1890 census records were destroyed by fire and/or water in 1921. Some still do exist but are sparse.
Census records are not without flaws, however. One of the biggest cautions of census records is names. Names are notoriously incorrect on census records. In a time when social security was not yet established (pre-1935) and records were not meticulously maintained, people would often flip flop on the spelling of their names- first and last- without anyone caring.
Let’s take a look at reasons for the frustrating name game:
- Phonetics: Schools taught using phonetics in the 1880’s. People learned to spell the way they heard the words pronounced. The first dictionary was not published until 1828.
- Literacy: Only 65% of the population in the U.S could read in 1790. If people could not read and were giving the enumerator the names of people in their household, they probably could not help them out by spelling the names or places of birth.
- One person for all: If an enumerator came to the door and only one person was there, that person would give information on everyone in that household. Relying on one person for the information of many would lead to common mistakes.
- Accents: The enumerators would write what they heard and with accents of the many immigrants, mistakes would again be rampant.
- Blending in: Often immigrants would purposely change the spelling of their last name to blend into the area in which they lived or to sound more American/English.
- Numbers mattered most: The enumerators did not have genealogy in mind when they went door to door taking a census. The most important item was counting the population, not getting the names correct.
Considering the many ways in which names are seriously flawed on census records, it is easy to see why census records can be useful but with proper research and common sense.
Think outside the box
When looking at names on census records remember to think outside the box. What does that mean? Simply put- consider historical context, similarities and everyday lives of your ancestors. There was a period of time when ‘Polly’ was a nickname for ‘Mary’. That may not seem obvious to us in 2019 but in a point in history this may have been normal practice.
Similarities may include variations on names. A prime example is my 3rd great grandmother. I have seen her name as Carissa, Theresa, Teresa, Tracey and Tereza. Looking at these names you can see the similarity between all of them. When entering her information into my database I used the name she seemed to be referred by the most, Teresa. See the examples below of the different uses of her name (Yes, all records reflect the the same person).
My 3rd great grandmother’s name on the 1880 census as Carrissa 
My 3rd great grandmother’s name on her marriage certificate as ‘Teresa’ 
My 3rd great grandmother’s obituary listed as ‘Tracey’ If one relative answered the questions of the enumerator and they only ever called their father by their middle name then that is most likely what they stated and not the formal first name of the father. Rigidity in your research can be your downfall. When it comes to census records, rigidity was certainly something they did not adhere to.
Another example of considering the historical context is a consideration for your family wanting to fit into America. I have a lot of Polish roots on my mother’s side of the family. For the most part they kept their full Polish last names. However, I do have one line in which the name was changed.
My 3rd great grandmother’s maiden name was Bohacz. She was born in Poland in 1826. She married her husband, Joseph Spychalski, and they immigrated to the United States. I always wondered why they came to small train stop town in rural Indiana. Believing that they had family there first, I looked for Bohacz in the area and could not find much at first. I then found marriage records for the church in this tiny town. There I found a record for a Frank Bohacz. However, that was all I could find. I decided to search the census records within that township and the surrounding townships. I finally found a possible match that corresponded with the church marriage record. The interesting part? He changed his name to Frank Bohart. Shortly after coming here he changed his name to be more American or perhaps, so that others could pronounce it.
Frank’s death certificate where her uses ‘Bohart’ instead of ‘Bohacz’ it also says ‘Bohart’ on his headstone 
This church record lists Frank’s daughter getting married and has him and his daughter with the ‘Bohacz’ last name
Census records are one of the best resources out there if you think outside the box and realize that there is a gray area when dealing with censuses. It was a tedious job and very time consuming job for enumerators in an age without computers. Human error was bound to happen…and quite often.Think like an immigrant, think like an illiterate, think like an exhausted enumerator.
