The one where Cookie crosses over the 2,400 mark

 

Who are these men?  They need decorating help.

 

This is the one where Cookie toots his own horn.

As of yesterday, I have validated and then uploaded 2,400 images of copyright-free photographs of people - long dead, of course - to Find A Grave.  And these images are not of famous people.  Nor are they pictures of grave markers - that is a different count.  These are electronic images scanned from the originals. 

It is all about putting a face with the name on the memorial.

Cookie sees himself as a history connector - one who connects people to history - and to that end, I have always felt that if a picture is worth a thousand words, well then, it makes it far more likely that someone will be able to see that a memorial on that site isn't just a name and grave location, but the face of the person behind that name. 

One could just snap up pictures found in yard sales and just assign the picture of Anna Smith of Toledo, Ohio, to the memorial for Anna Smith buried in Toledo.  But that would be a recipe for chaos. I mean, per Find A Grave, there are 29 people named Anna Smith buried in Toledo who have memorials, so how do you know you have the right face on the right memorial?  And in Lucas County? That adds in another 14.  Ann Smith, then things snowball. 

Well, you only know if you study the image, note the name of the person, their possible age, and the era in which the picture was taken.  Those huge mutton sleeves on the comely Anna Smith in the image give you an idea that she was perhaps, 16-25 at the height of the fad in the 1890s.

Then you hunt for Anna Smith on FamilySearch, Ancestry, FindMyPast, and MyHeritage, and you pour over newspapers looking for obituaries, and marriage announcements.  You look at birth records, you look at death records, you search until you have proven that the picture of the Anna Smith you have is the person on the site. 

And what if Anna married or remarried?  Stayed local or moved away?  I guess what I am getting at is that each picture can take an hour, or weeks, months even.  Then there is the pile of images that my forty-five years of experience searching for people means nothing.  These are the people for which there is no positive way to identify them.  Those make me the saddest. 

But when I make that connection, I scan the image, encode the metadata, and if need be restore it in Photoshop.  After all, everyone likes to look their best.  

Then the upload. 

Another one done.

Next?

Onto 2,401.

Of course hunting for the images is a duty in itself.  Flea markets, book and paper shows, etc., and so on.  I also try and rehome these images. I have only had one person tell me to throw out an image: "I have plenty of pictures of him, throw it out," said the person's granddaughter. 

That one got mailed to the local historical society as a gift.  Maybe one day her grandchildren will be looking for the image as well. 

I don't care if people download the images.  If it makes a connection for them, fine.  Isn't that what helping people make connections is really about?

Needless to say that I have plenty of time to work on these.  My goal is 3,000.  But when I get to that, the foot gets punted down the field to 3,500, maybe 4,000. 

I really believe that we owe people something to help them find a link to their past if they search for it. Ignoring history just makes it that much harder to unearth further down the line. 

I want to be the person who in a small way helps them make it there.