If you’ve ever walked through an antique mall, then you’ve no doubt seen old photographs, some in frames, hanging on the walls, and others just tossed into baskets or bins in the various booths you peruse. This is always such a sad sight to me - images of often unidentified people, discarded and forgotten.

Antique malls aren’t the only place I’ve come across old photos either. Their presence at auctions shouldn’t really come as a surprise, since many items put up for auction have been obtained through estate sales. It’s always a bit surprising to me to discover old pictures at yard sales and garage sales though. I suppose it shouldn’t be, since the world seems to be teeming with orphaned photographs. A quick search on eBay is all it takes to know just how true this statement really is. There are pages and pages of photos for sale, often containing no identifying information about the people and places pictured.

Photographs aren’t the only pieces of lost family history that you’ll find floating around in the world either. There are letters, postcards, journals, school report cards, memory books, yearbooks, military records, and awards - the list goes on and on.

Whenever possible, I try to buy these things when I come across them, a practice I started long before I ever envisioned this genealogy business or blog. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I was compelled by my own sense of commitment to preserving history, particularly the history of ordinary, everyday people. That commitment continues, which is exactly why I’ve started this blog series.

In some cases, these orphaned pieces of family history are the result of a family line that has come to an end, which is something that happens every day. Sometimes though, photos, postcards, letters, and other items may have simply been misplaced. A great example is a stack of military records and family vacation photos I discovered buried in a box of old magazines my brother purchased from a thrift store. I suspect these weren’t purposely donated but were instead somehow mixed in with other items that were destined for donation.

The individuals and families that appear in this blog series are likely to be from Indiana, since that’s where I come across my finds. If there are living relatives of the people featured in lost and found photos, correspondence, and other family history items, they are welcomed to reach out to me. I am willing to part with these finds in order to reconnect them with the families to whom they should have been passed on all along.

If you spy something here that relates to your own family, please feel free to reach out to me. I ask only that you give me the chance to verify that your interest is genuine. Since I invested monies to purchase these items, I will also ask you to help me recover my costs, and you have my guarantee that I will never gouge anyone. When I come across these pieces of the past, I buy them because they deserve better treatment than they’re receiving. I’d love to see them reunited with family and will do what I can to make that happen.