I have one other friend who is really into genealogy.  We’ll call her J-Wow.  Her love for geriatric hobbies goes well beyond my own.  She also loves to knit!  She even owns a spinning wheel!  (what??)  Luckily this friend is in town, and sometimes it’s nice to have someone with me to go hunting for gravestones, or scavenge through the state library.  She is usually up for such adventures.  In fact, she has recently gotten very interested in old pictures.  Not just her own, you see.  But everyone’s.  I think this is fabulous.

J-Wow was talking the other day about this new focus of hers, and how she was really getting into her own family photos.  I, on the other hand, was lamenting my total lack of any family photos.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, my mom kept scrapbooks like a champion, but if you’d look at the shelves of pictures you would think that nothing had happened before she was born.  I would LOVE to discover some rare tin-type of my great-great uncle in his army blues.  So yeah, I’m a little jealous.

J-Wow’s plan is really great though.  She is going to collect photos that are rare and in decent conditions, saving them from the trash cans they will surely find soon, and post them on the internet for family members to find.  This will be a much easier process with any names on the back, or information in general.  I think she is doing an interesting and helpful thing for those of us out there who have NO idea what our family members looked like.

So here’s my next and final thought.

I love old timey pictures, but sometimes old timey people creep me out.

This photo of Daniel Heaton (d.1863), is located in the family history at the Indiana State Library.

Case in point: Andrew’s great great great great uncle Daniel Heaton.  Creepy, right? Eek.