Identifying the Unidentifiable: How You Can Identify Family Members in Unlabeled Photographs

Three strategies I use all the time and examples of when they worked

It is exciting and excruciating at the same time: discovering that unmarked family photograph in the attic. Nothing is more of a double-edged sword for a genealogist. On one hand, you might be holding the only surviving picture of your great-great-grandmother. On the other, you have no idea. It could be your great-great-grandmother giving that smirk to the camera. But it could also be a decorative antique, somebody you have no ancestral relationship to. There might be nobody left to ask.

Don’t give up! There might be ways you can crack the code. Here are 3 strategies I discovered through trial and error that might be able to help you.

1. Where you found the picture and what is physically around the picture is key.

Have you ever seen a crime scene on a television show? Don’t touch anything! Don’t contaminate the scene! Treat your attic, or wherever you stumbled across a potential heirloom, as a crime scene. Excavate it carefully. You can use the information about the things around the discovery spot for identifying who is pictured.

Here’s an example. I was in my grandmother’s attic this summer, poking around for any heirlooms. Nobody had been in the attic for over 30 years. In one of the drawers of a dresser that was falling apart was this dusty, unlabeled photograph.

As a child, my grandmother told me that her in-laws moved all their belongings into the attic during the ‘80s. More investigating into the dresser drawers revealed some receipts that had my great-grandmother’s name on them. Carefully excavating the “crime scene,” in conjunction with my #2 tip, helped me figure out that the young girl standing on the chair to the left was my great-grandmother with her mother and older sister. The picture is 120 years old. It is the earliest existing picture I have of my great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother.

2. In a photograph with multiple people, match age guesses and sexes with those in your family tree.

If you stumble across a photograph showing multiple people, their ages and sexes can help identify them.

Example: I came across this photograph in May, 2020, in a box. I didn’t recognize anybody pictured or the location, and since it wasn’t labeled, I was stuck.

To try solving the mystery, I jotted down a likely scenario. The kids’ ages, I guessed, were 14, 11, 7, and a few months for the baby. I started combing my family tree for matches, and when I found it, it hit me like a bag of bricks. My great-grandmother, Glennys, was born in 1907, and was the youngest of five. She had three older brothers — Frederick (not pictured), Walter, Leon — and an older sister, Cora. Cora was seven years her senior.

This was the first, and for three years, the only, picture I had of my great-great-grandfather, John B.M. Lovejoy.

3. Use the type of photograph to help you narrow in on a time frame.

Photography went through many iterations before becoming what it is today. Some of the forgotten phases can help you narrow in on when an unidentified photograph was taken. Clothing, furniture, and environment caught in a picture can help you zoom in on the important “when,” too.

Example: I found this photograph as a kid.

Something striking about the photograph, aside from it’s antiquated style in the boarder, clothing, and hairstyles, was that whenever you moved it, it would go in and out of focus. It looked like it was printed on glass. 

I learned that this type of picture is a “Daguerreotype.” They were the first type of photograph available globally, introduced in the U.S. in 1839. People took them in the 1840s and 1850s, but after that, they were hardly ever made. That gave me a probable time range of 1839-1855. Using the first two tips, I narrowed down the people to my great-great-great-grandmother (the baby) and her parents, John and Eliza Remick, pictured between 1845-1847. 

I hope these ideas help you! The key is to be mindful that sometimes, you might not be able to crack the case. Especially with solo portraits, it can feel like a hopeless battle. Try to embrace the excitement of the mystery rather than be irritated by the unknowns.

Here is an example of such a case. In 2016, I found a portrait of a very serious-looking man in my grandmother’s attic. It is 3 and 1/2 feet tall and 2 feet wide; it's huge. I have tried everything to identify him and have some good guesses. But right now, there is no way to be sure. The mystery is so compelling to me that I’ve hung the photograph up in my dining room. For all I know, this stoic man has no relationship to me. But I enjoy seeing it daily and keeping his memory alive. And, who knows, maybe one day I’ll walk past the mystery man, and have that lightbulb realization of who he might be.

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Jack Palmer is a History and Psychology double-major who graduated from Duke University in May 2023. I’ve done genealogy research since I was 10 and love writing about it for family, friends, and anybody else who might enjoy a blast from the past.