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Further
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Faces From The Past: One Woman And Her Tireless Reuniting Effort
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Written By:
Jeannette Balleza
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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 - continued below ...
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continued ...
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. “My mission is to do as much reuniting of original photos (with names on the backs) as possible in the years I have left to me."
Like DeadFred.com, Marge Rice has received an Honoring Our Ancestors grant from Megan Smolenyak to support her orphaned photo rescuing, and Megan maintains the "Marge-O-Meter" at www.honoringourancestors.com, which monitors Marge's progress. Remember to check the Marge-O-Meter periodically, and heed Marge's advice: "For the sake of YOUR descendants, for goodness' sake, write the names on the backs of your own photos." It may seem like an insignificant action now, but sometimes the most heroic acts begin with subtlety yet affect hundreds of people over time.
For additional information, contact:
Marge Rice
Faces From The Past
Joliet, Illinois
margerice@prodigy.net
About the Author
Archivist Jeannette Balleza writes and edits promotional materials for Dead Fred Genealogy Photo Archive at DeadFred.com (http://www.deadfred.com)and related projects. With public relations as her primary focus, she assists in marketing and advertising efforts to both attract support and generate awareness for the site.
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