Good for you Dead Fred!

Something that always made me sad and a little angry too. Have you ever cruised through an antique shop and stopped to thumb through a large box of photos? Beautiful old vintage photos? Photos of people who were loved and wanted to be remembered by those that loved them? Photos that no one took the time to identify by name, date or place? Photos of family members now lost forever? Photos that now ended up in that antique shop? Unknown and uncared for?



Good for you Dead Fred! DEAD FRED is a website that takes in these  orphaned photos hoping against hope a family member will someday claim them. And it does happen. Happened to me in fact. Go on the site and search on a name, place etc. and just maybe you will find an ancestor!
I googled "Abrahamson" and up popped a photo found in a photo album of an elderly now deceased lady from Chicago who saved a picture of her pastor at the Salem Lutheran Church. I now had a photo of Dr. Rev. Laurentius Gustav Abrahamson. He was great grandfather Albins cousin who had emigrated from Sweden in 1853 as a young boy, graduated from Augustana College and became a quite influential person in the Illinois Swedish Immigrant community. He was Ruth Soderstroms contact mentioned on her Ellis Island manifest and he married my grandparents in Rock Island in 1911. He's a pretty interesting fellow, one day I will devote a post just to him.



Dr. Rev. L.G. Abrahamson

My long winded point is this. Please, please, take the time to identify your families important photos. Those hundreds of photos on your cell phone or in your computer? Just in my time, in additional to the traditional prints, I have 8mm movies, slides, 3D photos, VHS cassettes, video cassettes, floppy discs, CD's, DVD's, cell phone and I-pad photos. They all have a limited shelf life. Did you know that the average DVD degrades in 5-7 years? Keep up with current technology, better yet, print them out and label them with name place and date. Someday your great grandchild may get a big kick out of that photo of you proudly polishing your '69 Mustang wearing your bell bottoms and tye-dyed T-shirt!

I visited a cousin this week who had some orphan photos his mom had saved, because his grandma had saved them. But...who are these people? No one ever wrote down their name. Take a look and let me know if you can identify any of these folks who posed so proudly for their family and friends. They were family and friends of our ancestors.

See the bottom of this blog for contact information if you can add a name to these old friends/family.

Don't forget to check out my buddy Dead Fred. Maybe you will be lucky also.

click on► Dead Fred - Genealogy Photo Archive

- Thanks! cousin, Ranae

(clicking on photos will enlarge them for easier viewing)