Finding Images of Your Ancestors at The New York Public Library

You want to find a photograph of your ancestor, but somewhere down the line, that person went missing from the family album. Or perhaps you have a photograph of a family picnic from years ago that includes your ancestors, and some folks you can’t identify? The NYPL research guide Images of Our Ancestors: A guide to finding images of people online and at The New York Public Library includes descriptions of collections, and tips for how you might go about finding photographs of ancestors in library and archive collections, in databases, and books. The guide also includes suggestions for how to research unidentified family members in photographs. This blog post looks at a selection of those resources, along with some research examples.

School yearbooks let us see what our ancestors (or celebrities) looked like when they were younger, the classes they took, the societies they belonged to, and who their friends and classmates were. All invaluable data for genealogists, and of great interest to family members. If you want to get the family talking about genealogy, pull out the yearbooks!

For information on finding high school yearbooks, consult the NYPL guide Class Act: Researching New York City Schools with Local History Collections, as well as Images of Our Ancestors: Published sources.

If your ancestor became a citizen of the United States on or after July 1, 1929, their Declaration of Intention should include a photograph. Naturalization records can be found at Ancestry Library Edition (free at every branch of NYPL), Fold3 (free at NYPL research libraries), and FamilySearch (free online when you create an account). If you are lucky, the digitized record will have been scanned from the original record, as was the above clipping, from the 1939 Declaration of Intention for Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, better known as the classic Hollywood actor, Joan Fontaine.

Your ancestor may have applied for a U.S. passport, which from 1914 had to include a photograph of the applicant. The Ancestry Library Edition collection U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925 comprises a number of collections of passport applications with photographs for 1914 through 1925, applications that describe the lives of men and women from the United States and other countries.

One such collection—Emergency Passport Applications, Argentina thru Venezuela, 1906-1925—includes an application, with photograph, for a U.S. passport made by Sallie Jeffries, born Warrington, VA, in 1891, a nurse traveling to Great Britain and then France to serve in the United States Army Reserve Corps during the First World War. Jeffries dedicated her life to nursing. 

Applications of Wives of Members of the AEF [American Expeditionary Forces] in Europe 1919-1920 features photographs of the foreign-born wives of U.S. servicemen requesting permission to travel to the United States just after the First World War. On January 22, 1920, Marguerite Goujon, born Lorient, France, 1899, the wife of serviceman Joseph August Robillard, applied to join him in Fall River, Massachusetts, and her application included a photograph. 

Marguerite was successful in her application, and the couple went on to have several children, one of whom, Simone, born c.1920, we see in a photograph of mother and child taken for Marguerite’s U.S. passport application in 1924: the application states that she was headed to France to see relations.

Rules governing the formatting of passport photographs appear to have been a little looser in the early 20th century than they are today. Above are two rather candid looking photographs from Ancestry’s database Passport Applications for Travel to China, 1906-1925, a collection comprising applications from missionaries and their families, and Chinese Americans traveling to and from China. James R. Graham (1863-1943), and his wife, Sophie Peck Graham (1865-1940) were missionaries in China, on behalf of the Southern Presbyterian Church.

Two applications in this collection include photographs of Wong Look Hin and his wife Low Yin, both born in San Francisco in the late 19th century. Low Yin’s passport application includes not only her photograph, but a notarized statement describing her reason for travel—a story that speaks to the period of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The note tells us that Low Yin is a native-born U.S. citizen, and that during a visit to family in China in 1913 she had a child, her son Wong Sin. Owing to the arduous Pacific voyage back to the United States, Low Yin and her husband decided to leave their son with his paternal grandmother. The grandmother was now sick, so it was imperative that Low Yin bring her son to the U.S. Fortunately for all concerned, passenger lists show that mother and child arrived safely in San Francisco.

Registration cards for foreign citizens with permanent residency in São Paulo, issued by the Office of Public Safety and housed at the Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo are available in the FamilySearch archive Brazil, São Paulo, Immigration Cards, 1902-1980. Included in this collection are photographs of many traveling Americans, business people, and some celebrities, including a family of two generations of one acting family: Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The Virgin Islands became a territory of the United States in March 1917. With travel restrictions in place during World War I, identification as a U.S. citizen by right of birth in the Virgin Islands was necessary to travel to the United States. U.S. Virgin Islands, Applications for Travel Identification Cards, 1918 (Ancestry Library Edition) collection comprises applications for travel identification cards made during 1918, including photographs and often baptismal or birth certificates. 

Seen here is an application and identification card for Brithania Beatrice Bastin, 23, born in St. Croix, April 8, 1895, headed for New York City via St. Thomas, aboard the steamship Saga, en route to take residence with Miss Caroline Smith, at 238 East 148th Street.

Remember Sallie Jeffries, the nurse we saw pictured in her passport application? According to Ancestry’s U.S. American Red Cross Nurse Files, 1916–1959, a collection that includes duty files (service records) of nurses enrolled in that organization, Jeffries nursed victims of the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane in Puerto Rico. Jeffries's duty file, as with all nurse files, includes a photograph of her, this time in civilian dress. Sallie Jeffries went on to work with the U.S. Indian Bureau. 

You might find a photograph of your ancestor in a newspaper. Local newspapers rather than the big, national, and international titles, like the New York Times, are more likely to feature stories about and photographs of ordinary people. Historical newspapers reflect the culture and events of the day, so you’ll see society news, coverage of weddings, sports events, high school and college graduations, human interest stories, and information about military service, Tip: when searching for ancestors in newspaper databases, be sure to look at the whole page that an article is a part of, that way you're more likely to see a photograph.

For example…

At 2 PM on January 9, 1916, John Edmonds Goodridge, aged 12, of Flatbush, Brooklyn took the family’s Boston Bull Terrier, Toddy, for a walk. The dog was on its leash. As they were walking along nearby South Drive, Toddy saw a bird on a frozen pond in Prospect Park, broke free of the leash,  and ran out onto the ice, where he fell into an air hole. Goodridge, a student at PS 139, where he had won two medals for swimming, ran out onto the ice to try and rescue his dog who was struggling in the water. Unfortunately, he too fell in, but, undaunted, carried on his rescue attempt. Passing motorists saw Goodridge in the water, and raised the alarm. It was answered by a mounted policeman, George J. Lachner, who attempted to rescue the boy, but also broke through the ice. Two more policemen arrived, Theodore V. Hall (see NY Herald, left), who also fell through the ice, and Sergeant  Edward J. Lawler, who managed to get a life belt, attached to a line around young Goodridge, before he also broke through the ice. 

Passers-by dragged Goodridge ashore, and the lifebelt was placed around the exhausted Lachner, who had slipped into unconsciousness, and was disappearing below the water. The policeman was dragged ashore, and his colleagues, along with Toddy the dog (of course!), managed to scramble onto dry land unaided. Lachner and Goodridge were taken to Kings County Hospital. Both were later released unharmed. The boy’s father John Goodridge Snr. was delighted with  the policemen’s efforts, and wrote to the Police Commissioner, commending their bravery. The story made the front pages of the following day’s New York Herald and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, along with photographs to accompany the melodrama of young Goodridge and Officer Lachner. Note: the dog was erroneously named Paddy in some stories. Good genealogists know to use more than one source.

For more information on researching historical newspapers, see the NYPL Research Guide Newspapers in Genealogy Research.

And what of Nurse Jeffries? When she retired in 1950, Sallie Jeffries was Chief Consultant and Director of Nursing of the U.S. Indian Bureau, directing 850 hospital nurses and 105 public health nurses, according to an October 15 article in The Washington Post that includes her photograph. Sallie Jeffries died on December 6, 1976. 

ProQuest Historical Newspapers, America’s Historical Newspapers, and Newspapers.com are historical newspaper databases subscription databases free at the point of use with your NYPL library card. 

For more information on searching for images of people in the collections of The New York Public Library, please consult the NYPL research guide Images of Our Ancestors: A guide to finding images of people online and at The New York Public Library.