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| Sarah (Page) Simpson 1840-1920 |
When I was about 11 years old, my grandmother gave me this photo of her grandmother (my great-great-grandmother), Sarah Simpson. Grandma told me it was taken in Ramsgate England sometime in the 1890s.
I was fascinated - she wore such a beautiful ornate hair piece! The gorgeous blouse or dress thrilled me with its ruffles and high collar. I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that I had part of this fine lady in me, in my blood and my genes.
I learned a lot about Sarah - widowed at the young age of 34, and pregnant with her 5th child, she was forced to work as a charwoman to feed her children.
Not only did that spur me on to delving deeper into my British side of my family, it also sparked an immediate love of antique photos of ancestors. I thought about their lives - were they happy? Did they enjoy the same things I enjoyed? Did they get angry, or cry at the loss of a family pet. Yes those are the odd things I thought about as a youngster.
This early fascination with ancestors and photographs that captured one brief moment in their lives led to my determination to rescue and preserve as many old photos as possible. Several years ago I began purchasing entire albums of named photographs (Cartes de Visite and tintypes mostly) from the Civil War era, and offering scans of the photos to interested descendants. My dream was to one day publish them all online for genealogists to freely copy for their own personal use.
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| A few of my rescued Ambrotypes & Daguerreotypes |
I am excited to announce my dream has come to fruition. Several years ago I was able to purchase the domain name "
Lost Faces" from a woman who no longer wanted it.
This year I completed scanning and uploading approximately half of the precious albums I have rescued over the years. Every album is online with a description, a list of names, and at least a few photos from the album.
There are
81 albums online
at this point, and approximately half are complete, meaning all the
photos in the albums are online for visitors to enjoy. Most albums have
50 photographs so you can see that is a lot of photos for visitors to
enjoy and hopefully find an ancestor or two!
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| 1916 Ramsgate England |
As well as these wonderful album photographic treasures, Lost Faces contains dozens of single photos of groups -
sports teams,
class photos, and more. I also have vintage
postcards for your enjoyment, and explanations of various early photograph types such as
Cartes de Visite,
Cabinet Cards,
Tintypes,
Ambrotypes, and
Daguerreotypes. To top it all off I've added some brief tutorials on dating photographs through
fashion,
hairstyles,
photographer marks and more.
Enjoy your visit to
Lost Faces and feel free to download any photos for your own personal use. The only thing you cannot do is publish the photos anywhere else offline or online. Perhaps you'll find an ancestor in my rescues!
After I have finished documenting every page in the rescued photo album, I sart the process of gently and carefully removing the photos. This can be a very laborious process are many are "stuck" to the pages with 100 or more years of dust and grime. I use a very thin plastic flexible ruler when necessary to gently assist each photo out of its slot. My goal is to not damage the album pages or the photo of course, so I do not want to just grab the photo and pull it out.
Have you ever wished you had a photo of a long ago ancestor? Wouldn't it be great to find out what great-grandpa Bert or great-grandma Olive looked like?
Some albums have a great deal of information written on the album pages
. I believe, but have not yet proven. that 2 other Williams photos are of wives of two of the brothers. 
Recently
I rescued 28 vintage orphaned postcards from antique shops. They range in date from 1900 to 1918. 27 are from United States and 1 is from Ontario Canada. 
