After spending hours and hours reading and learning about ancestors in old records, you can't help but wonder how they must have looked. Do the visual images you have formed in your mind really have anything to do with how your ancestors looked in real life? Which one of them passed down the red hair that has shown up in your children or the hooked nose that appears at least once in every generation? How did they dress? What did their homes look like? Were they happy? Photographs of your ancestors can truly bring them to life.

A quest for family photographs should always begin with your family. Contact every relative you know to see what photos they have and are willing to share. Don't stop with your immediate relatives, either. When searching for family photos and memorabilia, it is essential to search out and contact all descendants of an ancestor. You never know which of the descendants of your great-grandfather's eighteen children might have possession of the family photo that used to hang over his mantle.

If you encounter reluctance in a relative to let go of original photographs, offer to make copies of the pictures or pay to have copies made. If he doesn't want the photo removed from his home, you can often make a pretty good copy with a digital camera, or arrange to bring a laptop computer and a portable scanner.

Locate Photographs Online

If you're unable to obtain photos from your family members, it's time to turn to the Internet. There are literally millions of photographs posted online, and at least a few probably have some relevance to your family. Even if you can't locate a photograph of your ancestor, you may be able to find other photos of relevance, such as the town in which she lived, the place where she worked, or even her gravestone. Photo searches can also help turn up maps, scanned newspaper images, and other visual images of your family history.

Google Images search (http://images.google.com) is a great way to turn up ancestral photographs. Search for a specific surname, a town, or a cemetery to see what turns up. You may get really lucky and find a photograph of your ancestor, but Google Images search is also great for turning up tombstone photos, scenic town views, and photos of historic events. Just be sure to check the copyright and permissions for a photo if you plan to use it in your family genealogy.

A large number of online photographs are hidden away from search engines in digital photo collections, such as the Prints and Photographs collection of American Memory (http://memory.loc.gov) and the Francis Frith Collection (www.francisfrith.com) of more than 100,000 photos from across Britain. Ancestry.com also has hundreds of thousands of family photos, submitted to Ancestry family trees by users, available for searching and viewing in its Public Member Photos database (www.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1093). Because they are in a database, the individual photos in such collections won't generally turn up in a standard Internet search. Instead, you have to search each collection individually. You can find many such historic photo collections (http://genealogy.about.com/od/historic_photos/tp/photo-collections.htm) listed on About.com Genealogy. Broad Internet searches such as england photos or historic railroad photographs can also help locate relevant collections.

Another interesting source for family photographs online is what most genealogists call “orphan photos.” These are photographs that have been found and rescued from flea markets, garage sales, and antique shops by thoughtful individuals, and placed online in the hope of reuniting them with a family member who will be glad to have them. Orphan photos can sometimes be found listed on genealogy message boards and mailing lists. There are also websites, such as Dead Fred (www.deadfred.com) and Ancient Faces (www.ancientfaces.com/research), devoted entirely to archiving mystery, orphan, and other family photos online.

Who Are Those People?

Great-aunt Mildred left you the family album, but it's full of unidentified photographs of people you've never seen before. How can you learn who those faces belong to and how they fit into your family tree? If you can safely remove the photos from the album, take them out carefully one by one to inspect the back for names, dates, notes, or a photographer's mark. Return each to the album immediately so you don't lose its position in the album or cause damage to the photo. If you plan to remove the photos from the album permanently, have your new storage solution handy so you can transfer the photos only once.

Next, contact living family members to go through the album and write down whatever they can remember about each photo. If your relatives live far away, have digital copies made of the photos and send them to your relative on a CD-ROM or via e-mail. Anything they can remember may be helpful. If they don't know names, maybe they will at least know the branch of the family, recognize the backdrop, or be able to identify a single individual from a group photo. Have them look at items and props included in the photos as well.

Photos that remain unidentified can often be dated within a period of about a decade or so with a little detective work. By knowing the approximate date when the photograph was taken, you'll be more likely to identify possible names for the pictured individuals. Dozens of online tutorials can help you learn how to use clothing, jewelry, backdrops, photograph techniques, and other clues to identify the approximate date that a photo was taken. Family Tree Magazine, for example, hosts the Photo Detective blog (http://blog.familytreemagazine.com/photodetectiveblog) in which photo identification expert Maureen A. Taylor regularly discusses photo dating techniques using user-submitted photos as examples. Family Chronicle offers a brief online guide to Dating Early Photographs (www.familychronicle.com/photoxtra.html) with sample photographs organized by decade. They also offer two printed publications chock-full of reproductions of old photographs of known dates, offering numerous examples to compare with your own family photographs.

Save Your Family Photos Before It's Too Late!

Many family photographs, and the stories that go with them, are lost each year. Heat, humidity, and even bugs do their damage. Fire, flooding, and other disasters wipe out precious family memories. When there is a death in the family, relatives may divide up the photos, discarding the ones they don't want. Family photo albums and boxes of loose photos often end up sold with an estate or dumped in the trash. Almost every antique store has a section filled with old family photos, scrapbooks, and postcards — bits of family history that have been lost to anonymity.

If you have older relatives, consider letting them know that you would be happy to take care of their photos. If you want to make sure your photograph collection has a good home after you die, sit down and make sure all of the pictures are labeled (to the best of your ability), and make plans for a special family member to inherit the photos. If you have access to a digital scanner, or can afford to have a professional do the work for you, you may want to scan your ancestral photos into digital format and then burn them to CD or DVD for long-term storage and backup.