As my mom gets older and many of my relatives start to pass away, I thought it would be a good idea to try to restore some of the old family photographs by digitally scanning them & then retouch them using Adobe Photoshop. In my heart I knew that this was something my cousins would really appreciate but in my brain I knew that it was going to be a time-consuming & laborious process that I kind of dreaded. I just wanted to capture some of the details before all of the people who remembered them were gone. With my stereo cranked, I found out that by carving out a few hours each week I could slowly work my way through some of the older favorites which I've posted below in case anyone else has some interesting images they'd like to share.

In this photo from early 1901, my grandmother Janie is sitting on her mother Molly's lap. Her sister Zora (aka Aunt Zoe) is to the right. One of my earliest memories is sitting on the edge of Uncle Clarence's (upper left) bed at the old family homestead after a morning of trotlining for catfish with my grandfather. The two brother-in-laws would sit there and talk about the weather, crops & church stuff and I'd just listen. Kind of hot & boring back then. Wish I could go back & relive it now. Emmett (upper right) came home from business school in Jackson, MS in 1908 with typhoid fever. He died shortly thereafter. His sister Addie (to his right) who helped take care of him, died from it in 1909. Their portraits hang on the wall of my mother's house.



The photo above was over 120 years old and had extensive damage. Below is what a section of it looked like before I started retouching it. It makes it easier to understand why it sometimes takes 12~15 hours to restore a single photo. Sometimes I only finish a photo per week in my spare time.



This photo is affectionately referred to as "The Clampetts" around our house and was taken in front of my great grandmother Molly's house in Liverpool, Louisisana, St. Helena Parish circa 1945. The three ladies in the first photograph above are standing on the back row here 44 years later. My mother is the blonde girl in the lower left. Missing from this photo is my uncle Wilbur who is serving in WWII in the south Pacific. My uncle Vernon (14-years-old) to the right is wearing his beloved FFA jacket. My first cousin once removed, Helen Joyce, wearing the glasses on the front row, passed away a few months ago.



My great grandfather (dark jacket right) Billy's 84th birthday in 1943. His younger brother at the head of the table was born in 1861 during the first year of the Civil War so his name, Jefferson Davis Venable, is not surprising. To my mom, he was just "Uncle Jeff". My grandfather is wearing the dark suit & tie in the middle of the photograph. Aunt Dillie is serving the food. My mother's main recollection of this day as a six-year-old is that Aunt Dillie put gravy all over her rice and "ruined" her food. One interesting side note is that this image was scanned from the original Kodak 616 negative that was introduced in 1932. It was 2.5" x 4.25" for doing contact print postcards without needing an enlarger. I had to fabricate a negative holder to scan it since this film type disappeared long ago.



A 140-year-old tintype of my great grandmother Ida Elizabeth Taylor that my cousin found hidden in a book at my grandparent's farm 50 years ago. Some of it I retouched & repaired. Other damage where the emulsion separated from the tin (like the background near her shoulder), I left visible.



Ida from the tintype above in front of her house in the Pine Ridge community near Kentwood, Louisiana. For ventilation the house has a "dogtrot" down the middle of it. Some of the earlier homes like this would often be two log cabins sharing a common roof.



A picture of the Kentwood Baptist Church at Easter in 1941. My mother is the blurry blonde girl behind the two wrestling boys on the front row right. My grandfather is the deacon in the dark suit standing on the sidewalk far left. Uncle Vernon has the stylish white belt on the front row middle. Uncle Wilbur is in the middle top peering over the two dark-haired girls. He taught me how to fly fish & he's the reason I hunt. Aunt Aline is on the back row upper right behind the lady with the hat.

That's really cool odonata, love old family photos.

This is one taken in the late 40's of my father with his first moose. I had it professionally framed this is a picture with my cell phone of the photo.

I've been tasked by the guys I hunt with to start getting some of the photos I've taken of us printed up to hang around the camp. Photographs bring back some good memories!

So true!

I hunted for many years and only started taking pictures late in the game, do I ever regret that.

About those military photos that they take of all recruits to send home...in the civil war, they had a similar habit but photography was scarce and expensive. Instead, they used artists. An artist would roll into camp with a wagonload of partial drawings, body only. Then he'd draw everybody's head on the same body. This was an uncle of mine who fought for the south. His head isn't bad. My mother knew him when he was a lot older and said it looks just like him. However, the mass produced body sucks. Look at the left hand in particular. The rifle looks like something from Elmer Fudd.
They used to do baby pics the same way. My SIL has a drawing of her father as a baby. His head's distorted like he'd been through an orange squeezer.



This is my great aunt. She was a lot older than this when I was a kid, born somewhere around 1900. In her youth she was considered to be the family beauty but she was about the most naïve woman I've ever known.



My great grandfather and 1 of his wives. He outlived 3 and was married to a 4th when he died. All 4 were named Mary. None of the family records show any last names for the Marys or who had which kids. Geneology is impossible.

The Civil War drawing I have of a great uncle isn't any better than yours. It does seem pretty common that getting a likeness of the face was the main goal.

I appreciate all of you that posted, very interesting.

Pretty neat. Old pics are very interesting when you enlarge them and can really see stuff like the two kids messing around in the church photo.

A few years ago I went back & scanned all of my high school 35mm negatives from the 70’s. The digital images looked WAY better than the original prints ever did. The images were larger, sharper & had great detail.

I've been doing some of the same, using Affinity. The difficult ones are the old color prints that have faded to mostly magenta. Sometimes I can recover them, and sometimes the only cure is to convert to b&w.

The cool thing is that once you've done the recovery, the whole family has a very long lasting digital copy. Those old photos are precious.

Very cool Rock Chuck

Dad front & center with his 2 brothers and grandpa & grandma - 1940's


Dad on the right with his 2 brothers, sister and grandpa 1953 or so. My uncle in uniform is the only one still alive. He is 91 if I remember correctly.


Grandpa


Grandpa's family

Looking at those images, I thought, harder times in life, then I thought, better times in life for sure.

We all need to enjoy what we have and try to make it better for our families.

We surely can't go back in time.

Great pics, I have some of my family going all the way back to the early 1900 s.

Great pictures! Thanks for posting.

When mom talks about my grandmother’s miscarriages, the deaths by typhoid & scarlet fever, farming accidents, no electricity or running water & the setting of broken bones at home without a doctor, etc., it’s easy to realize how comfortable it is now. But mom also talks about growing up on a country farm as the best childhood ever.

Over the years we’ve gained some things but we’ve lost some too.

OP
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 Pics

In this picture I noticed the 2 people.

Then my eye was drawn instantly to the image of soldier wearing a Confederate Hat in the red circle.

More in that photo than just 2 people ...
Their is a spirit that was captured in it also. IMO....
Just finger spread and enlarge that spot.
It's pretty unmistakable .
Man's face wearing a confederate Cap.
Unless it is some sort of double image or exposure.
Not a photography guy myself.....
Dunno.....


picture url

GOOD EYE that's really neat!

It’s interesting that you mention that because you’re not the first person to do it. The original scan is huge with more detail even though it is an old & damaged photo. Here’s an enlargement of that area. Is there something there? Or is it an optical illusion that tricks the eyes? Something supernatural would be the cooler option.

He is still their.
👍🏻🤷‍♂️👍🏻

Good stuff for sure.
Painstaking no doubt,but the finished product is well worth that effort,to alot of family I'm sure.

Odonata….That’s a very cool labor of love that many successive generations will benefit from. You might not fully realize how the work you’re doing now will live on indefinitely but it will and it is a fantastic contribution to your family’s history. 👍🏼

I love old photos and your family has some great ones that will most definitely benefit from your hours of tedious work but after it’s done I imagine you’re filled with a quiet pride….a well deserved feeling (in my opinion).

Nice work Sir!

AcesNeights, Thanks for the kind words. Hopefully I might inspire someone else to do the same. It really is a good feeling to have them saved, restored & most importantly, shared. Genealogy groups on Facebook really love them. But I didn’t want to sugarcoat the effort involved. It can be considerable especially if you don’t have good tools or retouching skills.

Bonus photo from 1940: You gotta love the socks!

odonata,

That is quite the effort. Good skills and lotsa time.

My own effort with family pics , there are shoeboxes full off them,
consists of making up names and writing on the back of unmarked pics.

cisco1, Now I fell kind of stupid. It would have been way quicker to do it your way!

You are most definitely inspiring people to do the same. I’m always amazed at the tremendous reach this site has since there’s probably 10,000-1 on people that see and read your great thread versus how many reply so I’d estimate that you’re inspiring more people than you know to preserve the family history.

These threads are always such a nice and welcome diversion from all the craziness of the world….probably why it’s so easy to get lost in these pictures even though they aren’t of our family they represent ALL of our families from those “simpler” times.

I gotta say Odonata, that even in the early days of film photography your family was very photogenic. You have a beautiful family that should have their photo-history preserved…..we already have too many old time pictures of ugly families. 😂

I must have picked the really good ones then! One time I was at a large family reunion & this big refrigerator of a guy with a beard & overalls with some Red Man tobacco sticking out of the chest pocket said “Hi! I’m your cousin Cleotus…”.

All I could think was “There is no way you & I can be sharing DNA!” Ha! Every family has some keepers!

My mother front and center with her 3 brothers. The handsome lad standing up was my uncle, and my hero. He was also a hero to a couple hundred of his fellow POWs in a Japanese POW camp. An Extradorinary man.

He sounds extraordinary & that’s a great photo! The photos I posted earlier were from my mom’s family in the country. The portrait you posted reminds me more of the photographs from my dad’s family in New Orleans.

Wanna buy a chikkin?......

This is the reason I start posts like this! It’s always interesting to see what someone is going to reply with.

This is a rare picture. Goes back to my Great Great Grama Rosalia Lapinski. 5 generations of 1st born daughters. Amhurst Junction, WI 1934

Grandfather and uncle's.

johnn, That is the epitome of the classic quintessential hunting photo from yesteryear. Most excellent!

Got a bunch of them from the late 1800’s, early 1900’s. Granddaddy’s older brother took pictures as a hobby. Post some soon.

You rarely see fat people in old photos.

My dad was a high school teacher starting in the late 50's. Looking at his old class photos with his students on the front steps of a school, I noticed the same thing. But when I was a kid, we weren't eating out at all & there was very little processed food around my house. The items that were readily available to eat (e.g. sardines, potted meat, spam, vienna sausages, baloney...) wasn't something that any of us wanted to eat 2,000 calories of. It was something to keep you fed. Not something you wanted to get stuffed on. There's way too much much delicious food to constantly tempt people today.

Hot summer’s back when, only AC was all open, nobody stayed inside house during daytime, when I was little Grandpa and I would take our bath’s in backyard in wash tubs, I had never payed attention to Grandpa naked, he looked like a Greek statue, I mean ripped, I ask him , how old are you, he said 66, people were not fat on the ranch , everyone worked hard, ate right, good life.

My family long ago

😂

This photo was taken around 1914 in Oklahoma. The woman seated was my mother's mother's mother's mother---my great great grandmother. She was born in 1873 or 74 IIRC. The young lady standing behind her was my great grandmother, born in 1899. I remember GG Grandma...she died when I was five years old. My great grandma lived until 1993 and I remember her very, very well. I can still hear her voice in my memory.

My grandpa, Elmer Sweebe, in his WWI uniform. The story is that he was on a ship headed to war when the fighting ended.


Here he is a bit older.


This is my grandma, his wife.

very good work. I did one photo of dad and my to-be godfather. It did take a long time.

AWESOME! How can't you just love that hey?

Lots of cool pictures here.

Here’s my grandfather and grandmother with my great grandma shortly before they married. So probably 1947. I don’t recall the occasion for them dressing up.

My grandpa with my mom and uncles in the mid 50’s.

Gotta love having them on your wall hey TheLastLemming76, they put everything in perspective and make you realize how life goes by in a blink of an eye!

My father in the early 50's on a moose hunt.

Yeah it does. When you look back and realize how much older you are now than what they were then.

Your dad looks like he was probably having the time of his life and smart enough to take it all in and appreciate it in the moment.

He was an awesome man and lived life to the fullest. RIP Dad!

Granddads

He sounds like he was a great dad.

A little footnote. My grandma was engaged to somebody else in ‘42 or ‘43 right before he was shipped out. He was killed in the war and my grandmother then met my grandfather in ‘45 or ‘46. I don’t recall my grandmas fiancés name anymore but it’s etched on a monument remembering the war dead in front of our City Hall. She showed me his name on the monument a few times while stopping at City Hall to pay bills. It always seemed a little bizarre that he missed out on most of his life but that I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t.

Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother along with my Pappy and his older sisters. Two years after the photo was taken my G grandfather would die of scarlet fever, leaving my Pappy, the little guy in that picture, to take over the family farm. He dropped out of school in about the 7th grade or so to take care of the farm. Because of that, he recognized the value of an education. He slaved away on the farm and sent four older sisters and his older brother, taking the picture, to college. He then married my grandmother at 22 and they had six children, one of which was my daddy. He sent all of them to college, most receiving PhD’s! I’d say he did ok. Have all his and my grandmother’s love letters from before they were married. Lived less than five miles apart an could only communicate via letter or horseback. Man oh man.

It does bring back a flood of memories of simple times, northern Wisconsin. Photo was taken before my time.

On the family farm, land they settled, way before safety nets. People survived by their wit and perseverance.

Good morning TheLastLemming76,

My Great Grandfather and Grandmother on my mother's side Immigrated to Canada from England.

My Great-Grandfather came first by ship, his plan was to get a job (he was a school teacher) then when he made enough money he would pay for the trip by ship for the family, My great Grandmother and their 8 kids to join him.

He could not find a job working as a teacher so he got a job working in a factory, he eventually made enough money and paid for the family fare, so my GGM and kids took the trip.

There were no communications in them days while traveling. When my GGM arrived at the docks she was met by someone and handed a telegram, with this massage: Your husband was killed in an accident at work. So she arrived in Canada with 8 children, no husband or income. Can't even imagine that!

My grandmother told me she got a job washing floors in a building in Montreal. While working one night she fell down some stairs and broke both wrists. She was at work the next night with broken wrists cleaning floors.

When I think of and pray for my family members that have passed, I always thank them for their difficult journeys and the hardships they faced. Because my ancestors came to Canada to give their children and generations to follow a better life, I have been the benefactor of a leisurely life full of adventures and fun, without any real hardships.

May God bless them all and I will meet them all in the afterlife.

My Paternal Great Grandfather Tobe Sellards sitting on his mule in Floyd County Kentucky somewhere around 1900.

Ron