Fashion clues in pictures can document trends over a decade, but specific details can sometimes pinpoint an exact year or two.  Like the puffy large crown hats of circa 1910 or the Paul Poiret tapered narrow skirts of the circa 1912, supposedly influenced by bi-plane rides.  Or the Garibaldi shirt style popular in the early 1860s.  In 1864, walking skirts that belled out above the ankles were the rage in Paris. it was a winter of dresses drawn up over colored skirts with plaid edging.

There are fashion repeats like the balloon like Gigot sleeves of the 1830s reappearing in the 1890s.    In episode 91 Dress and the Vote, Emily Boisvert spoke about generations of women who bonded over their desire for the vote by wearing certain style clothes in particular colors.   Have you spotted any of these trends in your family photos?  

Fashion trends can be influenced by politics, wars, people (Garibaldi), technology (think the smokey eye of the silent film era for instance) and even pandemics. 

Pandemic mask wearers had a wide variety to choose from including character themed ones. If you have a photo of an ancestor wearing a mask from that era, I’d love to see it.

Fashion clues can be difficult to read. In this episode you’ll find tips to help you decide when and where an image was taken.

Related Episodes:

Episode 91: Dress and the Vote

Links:

• The Flu Pandemic
• Rethinking Fashion in the midst of a Pandemic,  a Radio Boston podcast
• How the Spanish Flu of 1918 Affected Fashion by Booth Moore. (Subscription required)
• Mask-Wearing Rules in the 1918 Pandemic faced resistance. 
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appea

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

All those little details of a photo such as the who, what, where, when, and why can be embedded in your pictures with metadata.  Imagine never losing that data. Today metadata isn’t always transferable from product to product or website to website. There is room for improvement. Now there is a project called the Family History Metadata Working Group that is trying to standardize the way this information is represented in your pictures (and make it easier to understand). Fingers crossed that this will happen soon. Believe me when I say that this will change our research lives. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 23: Memory Web for Your Desktop

Episode 15: Memory Web: The Photo Organizer for Genealogists

Links:

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Christopher Desmond is an entrepreneur with a background in global business economics.  His keen interest in family history and photography inspired him to co-found MemoryWeb, a photo organizer built for genealogists.  Chris loves helping family historians harness the power of metadata so the story behind their stories will stay intact for all the generations to come.   An award-winning presenter, Chris has spoken at a wide variety of venues, including a TEDx event. 

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

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I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

Our nineteenth and early twentieth century female ancestors couldn’t vote but that doesn’t mean they didn’t want to.  In the mid-nineteenth century a group of female activists tied together dress reform, political activism and abolition using dress to broadcast their beliefs and their daughters and granddaughters followed in their footsteps. After listening to my guest’s description of what women wore when and why, you’ll be reaching for the family photograph albums to see if you can spot these clues. Great great grandmother might have been involved in getting women the vote.  Her fashion choices and color selections might tell you about her beliefs. 

Related Episodes:

• Episode 72: Wearing the Past: A Modern Woman’s Fascination with Period Dress

Links:

• Votes for Women Tour
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Emily C. M. Boisvert has been a visitor guide at the U.S. Capitol for almost 12 years. During that time, she has been instrumental in the creation and establishment of a variety of educational programs and specialty tours for the Capitol Visitor Center.  Throughout her 20-year career, she has worked at museums and historic sites in New England and Washington, DC and was a lecturer in museum studies at Regis College in Weston, MA.  She has a M.A. in American History from the University of New Hampshire and an A.L.M. in Museum Studies from Harvard University. The Votes for Women Tour podcast is now available for listening.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

All this hot humid weather has me thinking about how our ancestors coped in the heat. Long dresses and undergarments in light weight cotton seemed like a sweltering combination. One of my podcast guests loves dressing in period attire. She claims that the outfit is cool, but I’m not convinced.  

Hot summer weather makes me think about swimming.  But what did our ancestors wear and when. Of course it varied by generation with each successive generation of the twentieth century wearing less fabric than their mothers.  It’s a generation gap of sorts. 

Those itsy, bitsy, tweeny weenie bikini’s in the song would have shocked our ancestors.  In Sanditon, Jane Austen’s unfinished novel now featured in a mini-series on PBS, the female characters don full swimming costumes and enter the sea via a horse drawn changing pavilion.  This made me think about swimsuits in general including one given to me by a friend. It was  a khaki colored jersey maillot from the 1920s.  An outrageous outfit too but It was a long way from the head to toe coverage of the 1817 era.  

For generations women’s bathing costumes had caps, bloomer type coverings and stockings. There were lace up beach shoes as well.  In the early twentieth century those bloomer costumes covered women to the knee and multiple layers of stockings took over from there. They were so heavy when wet that some women drowned. Ropes from shore to a pole in the water encouraged women to wade while holding on.  Of course, their menfolk folicked in the water. 

 While most women didn’t go swimming there were a few daring women who did.  Eliza Bennet  and Agnes Beckwith wore outfits inspired by dress reformer Amelia Bloomer  Bennet swam the Hudson River in 1877 and Beckwith swam from London Bridge to Greenwich in 1875.  It wasn’t until the 1890s that their “Princess” suits became more popular. They were scandalous resembling form-fitting lingerie. By the early twentieth century, a female swimmer  Annette Kellerman of Australia, appeared in silent films in 1910 and 1911. 

It isn’t common to see pictures of nineteenth century women in bathing costumes.  I haven’t actually seen an photograph of a woman dressed for the water before 1900 but I haven’t spent a lot of time looking either.  Do you have images of your female ancestors in bathing outfits?  I’d love to see them.  You can share them on my Photo Detective Facebook Page. 

I’ve always loved history. When I was a kid, one of our neighbors took me to a library and showed me the reference department. He explained how to find information. Can you say hooked! From that moment on, I’ve loved the smell of books and the fun in hunting new information.  Today we have libraries at our fingertips. Think of a question and Google probably has an answer. But not everything is online and published.  There is a lot of photo history that’s been lost. From photographer archives to details about backdrops, there are clues in pictures that might not be readily available. 

Way back when my first professional job was split in two. I spent half the day assisting patrons with historical/family research and the other half of the day working with family photos. The two never merged until I decided that could be combined.  So I began to experiment with the ways that a photograph could lead to — or confirm — a family’s history. For instance, a wedding photo can tell

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

It’s likely that if you listen to the Photo Detective podcast that you love family history from the stuff to the stories, but do you love all the parts of collecting, preserving, and sharing your family history?  I bet there are pieces that appeal more than others.  According to my guest, genealogy might be part of your personality.  That’s right. If you’ve ever felt a need to find facts, tell tales, or write it all down, then that family history pursuit could be a part of you.  Imagine finding collaborative partners within your own family to work together to pass all that history onto descendants.  

If you’re fond of tests that reveal more about you then you’ll love what Teresa McCloy has to say.  It’s clear from my test results that working with photographs is part of my personality. The test score proved it. 

Links:

• Learn more at the Realife Process ®
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Teresa McCloy is the creator of the REALIFE Process®, ACC Executive Coach, Accredited Enneagram Professional, Podcaster, and Keynote Speaker. Through training, coaching, and consulting she serves her clients to move from living with their hair on fire to discovering clarity about the life they want to live each day and the business they want to lead. Partnering together her own signature REALIFE Process® and tools such as the Enneagram Typology Profile, Teresa guides clients to a fresh way of intentional living! .

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

Forget the luxuries of early 21st century travel, early 19th century tourists who visited wartime sites usually dealt with bad roads and shoddy lodgings. Instead of the romantic visions of history depicted in paintings and writings, they found sites littered with discarded armaments and bodies of the fallen. Veterans greeted these tourists with reminiscences of their wartime memories. 

Historian Thomas Chambers shares how battlefield tourism enabled wealthy educated ancestral travelers to make the connection between place and memory. Instead of going to Europe they took the weeks long American tour to see where history was made.  They wanted the real experience of people and places to form their sense of the past.  His book, Memories of War: Visiting Battlegrounds and Bonefields in the Early Republic (Cornell 2012, 2018) is a fascinating study of the history of tourism. 

Related Episodes:

• Episode 49: Women Patriots with Mary Tedesco
• Episode 46: Benson Lossing, Revolutionary Traveler

Links:

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Thomas A. Chambers joined Canisius College as Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences in 2019. He currently serves on the Niagara Frontier State Park, Recreation, and Historic Preservation Commission, the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area Board of Directors, and helped lead statewide public history projects related to the War of 1812 Bicentennial and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Path Through History Task Force. In 2016 Chambers was elected to the New York Academy of History. At Niagara University he earned tenure and promotion to Professor in the History Department, and served for periods as NU’s Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, History Department Chair, Graduate Studies Strategic Enrollment Director, Director of the Master’s program in Interdisciplinary Studies, and Director of the Liberal Arts major. He took his Ph.D. and M.A. at the College of William and Mary, and earned his B.A. at Middlebury College. He is The recipient of three National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks in American History and Culture grants.  

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogic

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

Scratching your head over what your ancestor did for work? The answer is usually in a census or city directory, but it also might be in a photo. The late 19th century saw an interest in capturing people at work and businessmen in formal portraits. Such images hold clues to the kind of business in the tools and attire shown.

In your own collection there are probably images of individuals wearing clothing that puzzles you. Some may be recognizable as work outfits while others remain mysterious. You might have an occupational portrait and not know it because you don’t associate the clothing worn in the picture with a particular job.  In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, men (and women) dressed for their job with particular head to toe choices from shoes to hats. 

What do you know about the work patterns in your own family? If you don’t know your ancestors employment history it might be fun to investigate. You could find out that you have more in common with your ancestors than genes—an occupation.    Whether the answer is nothing or a lot it’s still worth searching for more information. You could uncover some fun facts that to use in a family reunion trivia game. 

Links:

• Online City Directories
• The Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums
• ArchiveGrid
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

Everything has a story. That hat your grandmother wore at her wedding. The china passed down for generations. A photograph perhaps. Or maybe you have inherited something else. It might be something that’s special to you from your lifetime. Sharing the story of the “things” in our lives can help us share the past with our family. 

That’s where my guest comes in.  Martie McNabb is a story facilitator. She does this through her business Show and Tales. On the show we talk about themes for her events and brainstorm an idea for one in my home city of Providence, RI. 

Related Episodes:

• Episode 77: Interviewing Relatives: A Conversation with Personal Biographer Francie King

Links:

• Show and Tale: Every Thing has a Story
• Allison Gilbert, Past and Present
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Haunted by all the life stories that get stuck in a box, bag, or a suitcase or, worse, get surrendered to a flea market or auction, Martie McNabb created her business: Memories Out of the Box. For over ten years, she’s been writing life stories with her clients’ photo, document and memorabilia archives, turning these souvenirs into the visual narrative of its owner’s life. 

She hosts object-inspired story-sharing events called Show & Tale. Like elementary school, minus the gerbils (she hopes.) She invites everybody to bring an object and tell its story or simply look & listen. 

With her 2nd business Show & Tales, she teaches small business owners how to use the above story-sharing events as a way to get to be known, liked, trusted and remembered.
 

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesp

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

Pinup photos usually feature young barely dressed women, at least that’s what’s popularized by Sports Illustrated but suppose I told you they don’t have to be.  That you could pose in period dress and look like a glamorous turn of the century, Evelyn Nesbit or like a silver screen star ala Gloria Swanson. Pick a period. Choose clothing and have your make-up done in the style of the era. Smoky eyes of the silent movies or the red lips of the 1950s.  It’s up to you. My guest specializes in a photographic method that encourages women to embrace their glamorous side regardless of age.  
 

Krzystyna Caldarone knows what she’s doing. A student of classic pinups, she admires photographers such as Alfred Cheney Johnson, known for photographing the Ziegfeld Follies.  She’s studied the photography of Bunny Yeager, a former pinup model. Links are in the show notes. Krzystyna attends historically themed events such as the Newport Art Deco Weekend, the NYC Jazz Age Lawn Party,  Boston’s Swing’s Roaring Twenties Lawn Party and even Rockabilly Events. She’s easy to spot…with a converted snapshot camera around her neck.  

Related Episodes:

• Episode 72: Wearing the Past: A Modern Woman’s Obsession With Period Dress

Links:

• Vintage Girl Studios
• Biography of Bunny Yeager
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Krzystyna Caldarone is a professional photographer who started working in film at age fifteen. She learned her craft at the iconic film- processing lab, Ferranti-Dege, located in Harvard Square, Boston.

Krzystyna has owned and managed, Kryzstyna Harber Photography (www.kharberphoto.com), for eighteen years where she transitioned to digital photography and honed her post-production editing skills through her work in wedding photography, rock and roll photojournalism and studio portraiture. In spring of 2010, Krzystyna left the traditional world of professional photography in her quest for artistic satisfaction and photographic adventure to found Vintage Girl Studios.

Vintage Girl Studios offers studio sessions that transform women into classic visions of themselves from past eras. Vintage clothing, set design and professional hair and make-up stylists help perform this transformation to c

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

I have three uncles  and a great uncle that served in the Navy during World War II. While aware of resources for images for Army service, I didn’t realize that the U.S. Navy had a museum and a photo archive.  Well. They do and a lot of their material is online thanks to my next guest. Robert Hanshew served with the United STates Navy and his interest in history led him to a career in archives.  He wrote a popular Facebook column for the Navy that regularly got a million views. He shares what’s online, where you can view the images, and what to do if you think you see a relative in one of those pictures.  Oh…and if you have pictures of naval service, the museum might be interested. I have some research to do about my family and likely you will too. 
 

I’m going to give a shout-out to my colleague Jennifer Holik and the World War II Research and Writing Center. The link is in the show notes. 
 

Links:

• National Museum of the U.S. Navy
• Online Photo Exhibits
• World War II Research Center
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Robert Hanshew has had a career with the U.S. Navy for the past thirty-one years, twenty-one of those as a museum curator with the specialty of photographs. A former Sailor and an employee of the Naval History and Heritage Command, he relocated to the National Museum of the U.S. Navy in 2012 to expand on the current and future exhibits utilizing his research skills at the various repositories in the D.C. area.   In that time, due to the hundreds of pages posted on the site, he is sought out worldwide for advice on U.S. Navy photographic history.   
 

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe,

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show