Faces From The Past: One Woman And Her Tireless Reuniting Effort
There was no telling how long the dusty box of old photographs
next to the cash register went unnoticed by countless passersby
in that antique shop in Galena, Illinois. Therefore, when one
woman by the name of Marge Rice casually purchased a dozen or so
of the box's contents on a perfectly ordinary day in September
2000, the transaction seemed rather insignificant and quickly
melted away into the everyday humdrum.
However, despite the lack of fanfare that usually accents a
powerfully heroic undertaking, the event was very significant
indeed, as it marked the beginning of an ongoing crusade by
Marge to reunite orphaned photos with their rightful families.
As of April 28, 2004, she has sent 632 photos home to 477 people.
When Marge was sifting through the old photos at the antique
shop, she found many of them had written names on the backs as
well as imprints of photographer locations. Staring at the
images, she imagined how much she would appreciate the
opportunity to be reunited with her own long-lost ancestral
photos, so she bought a handful of photos with the hopes of
reuniting others with the found images. She then posted the
names, other identification information and her contact
information on surname boards at both www.ancestry.com and
www.genforum.com.
"Getting return e-mails from excited people, thrilled that they
FINALLY could see their ancestors' faces is what got me
'hooked,'" Marge confessed. "What keeps me going are the grand
thank-you notes I receive from people who tell me what a great
service I am doing and how much the family appreciates having
the photos."
She illustrated her point by describing one heartwarming reunion
that still resonates in her memory. She sent a woman an original
family photo taken about 1890 that depicted parents in their
mid-thirties with five young children seated in front, all
against the backdrop of a farmhouse. "When the photo arrived,
[the woman] took it to her elderly father, and when he saw it,
his eyes filled with tears. He told her, 'This one is my daddy,
and this is my aunt so-and-so. That one is my uncle
so-and-so...and those are my grandma and grandpa!' I believe
that his father was about age 5 in the photo; he had never ever
seen his grandparents' faces before, and they had passed on
before he was born," Marge recounted. "...[H]er dad clutched the
photo to his chest, cried and sobbed, looked at it again and
cried some more. She said that she just stood there and cried,
too. And when I read her thank-you note to me, I cried."
With over 500 unposted photos still in her office, Marge
sometimes spends 20 hours or more per week on her reuniting
efforts. Naturally, she has refined her method with practice.
Before posting her finds on surname boards, she looks at census
records to verify ages and locations and ensure dissemination of
accurate information. If she is working with extremely rare
surnames, she researches the same names currently in the same
locations and writes letters via U.S. postal mail to country
genealogical societies or the families directly. When sending
the original photo to a person, she asks only for her costs,
which include cost of photo and state sales tax, cost of sturdy
photo mailer and cost of postage.
"I foresee more and more reuniting of photos in years to come,
simply because while descendants locate information on archived
surname boards and contact me, at the same time I will be
posting more and more found photos for the first time," Marge
declared.