Time-Travel With Vintage Landmark Photos

Take a virtual trip back in time to see world-famous landmarks, cities, and your own hometown the way your ancestors saw them.

I was looking at an 1850 photo of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Then I looked at a similar photo I took in 2015. European landmarks don't change that much. If they survived wars, they're still there, looking as grand as ever.

America is different. It's all about change. We demolish our sports arenas every 30 years or so and rebuild. My mom's childhood home is long gone, replaced by a school sports field. Even our family churches are gone or repurposed.

I started my time travel adventure with a landmark church a few miles from my home. The Library of Congress website has a 1907 photo of Trinity Church. To compare that photo to more modern times, I used Google Street View and captured the same angle. The house next door and 3 tall monuments are the same. But the fence is gone, the large bell is new, and the telephone pole wires are really ugly.

Some of the more startling photos you'll find in this virtual time machine show famous landmarks with almost nothing around them. That's how they looked to your ancestors.

Here are six other websites where you can look at old photos of landmarks that mean something to you.

Redbook's "Vintage Photos of Cities Around the World"

This collection of 30 old photos covers many destinations you may have visited. Number 20, Québec City, looks exactly as it did when I visited in 2017. The end of town in the photo has a landmark hotel that, thankfully, still looks the same.

Condé Nast Traveler's "Vintage Photos of the World's Most Famous Landmarks"

Seeing the Golden Gate Bridge under construction looks like a modern-day disaster film. The photo of people hanging out of the Statue of Liberty's crown makes me dizzy. This collection has a lot of Italian landmarks I've visited. It's fun to see them pictured decades ago.

MSN's "Then and now: vintage photos"

This slide show let's you compare then and now. The before-and-after of Dubai is particularly jaw-dropping. The Times Square photos show what my immigrant ancestors saw when they arrived. The high-angle photos of the Arc de Triomphe point out one key change Paris made to this landmark.

BoredPanda's "31 Before-And-After Pics"

Several cities in this group changed so much, they've rewritten the book on city planning. The 1945 photo of Berlin is frightening because you can see so much destruction. But the "now" photo is from the 1990s. Some of the comments on this page are funny, too.

OldNYC

This interactive website lets you set a time range and zoom into the map. Pick any location with a dot to view photos. I found photos of The Dakota, where John and Yoko lived, with no other buildings around it in 1920. I'm not sure Central Park West was even paved. And I found a beautiful photo of New York's Plaza Hotel in 1908. It's more impressive than I remember.

One more.

Far & Wide's "Then and Now Pictures of Cities"

This page features a jam-packed photo of New York City in 1904 that I can't even imagine. Street cars, horses and wagons, early automobiles, and pedestrians, all on a collision course. It looks terrifying.

I've been tracking down DNA matches (see "How to Solve a DNA Match Using Shared Matches") and finding living relatives (see "6 Steps to Finding Your Living Cousins") for weeks. This week I'll get back to adding missing source citations (see "3 Important Tips for Great Genealogy Source Citations"). This then-and-now journey is both a nice break and a cool way to understand how your ancestors lived and what they saw.

6 Steps to Finding Your Living Cousins

When you search for contemporary cousins, your family tree really comes to life.

I'm coming to the end of my one-month subscription to Ancestry Pro Tools. I took the important step of following blog reader Jon Smith's suggestion. I used the "Ancestry DNA Match Table Maker" spreadsheet to download all my matches. (This powerful tool is the creation of Greg Clarke.) Now I have one spreadsheet with 4 tabs containing every DNA match for myself, Mom, Dad, and my husband.

I went through my parents' matches sharing 30 cM or more with them and color-coded everyone who's also on my list. Then I used a neat Excel trick to display those people's research notes from my tab on Mom or Dad's tabs. That ensures that I can see who I've identified and what I know about their families. (Leave a comment if you want me to explain this trick.)

Using tips I shared with you last week (see "How to Solve a DNA Match Using Shared Matches"), I've solved a ton of matches. I've discovered cousins I never knew existed! I solved matches who were a complete mystery with the help of Enhanced Shared Matches.

Researching Living People

I'm so used to researching my long-dead Italian relatives. My recent focus on DNA matches has me locating living people for the first time. I didn't realize how much success I could have in researching the living.

Here are 6 steps to follow when searching for living cousins:

1. Start with an ancestor you can identify. I know, tons of your matches have no family tree to show. But what if their first cousin does? Look for an ancestor you can pin down using a search.
2. Gather every document for that ancestor: immigration, naturalization, censuses, draft registration cards, death records or indexes.
3. Build out their family members through the years using the censuses you found. Add to their details with individual searches for each family member. See who they married and which kids they had.
4. Look for an obituary with the names of children and their spouses, grandchildren, and hometowns. OMG do I love a good obituary! My newspapers.com subscription is essential here. You can't get the full story from an obituary summary. Which names are the deceased's children and which are spouses? I've also been following my own advice to extract text from an obituary instead of retyping it.
5. Search public index records, marriage indexes and announcements, school yearbooks, and more to confirm all you can about family members.
6. Turn to social media to see who you can find. If available, look at their friends and see who comments on their photos. Did the subject post a photo of dad, and did someone comment on it using the dad's name? That's exactly what cracked one mystery DNA match for me.

Discovering Where Your Paths Crossed

Using this process, I've ID'd DNA matches who helped me find my ancestors' lost cousins. Who knew one of mom's Saviano cousins wound up in Cleveland, not far from where dad once lived? A DNA match helped me find my connection (7C1R) to a former bishop of Cleveland I'd heard about many years ago. And I found that my brother went to high school in New Jersey with one of our 7th cousins. You never know where your cousins may be.

This is the value of DNA matches for me. My direct ancestor chart is in fantastic shape. But this research tells me what became of my direct ancestors' closest relatives. It's an exciting, coincidence-filled journey.

In a week I'll return to adding source citations for my thousands of Italian nationals, and doing it efficiently. But I'll also take every opportunity to follow the families of those who emigrated to America.

If you're interested in finding living cousins you've never met, the tools you need are out there.

How to Solve a DNA Match Using Shared Matches

Use shared matches to see how DNA connects you to people near and far.

I've been using Ancestry's subscription-based Enhanced Shared Matches on a one-month paid trial. This powerful tool is free on MyHeritage, but I have only 621 DNA matches on that website.

Using shared matches, I've identified and placed many DNA matches in my family tree. The process comes down to a few basic steps, so I want to share them with you today. It's the same process on MyHeritage as it is with Ancestry's Enhanced Shared Matches.

Note that I'm not trying to find a missing direct ancestor through a DNA match. My family tree is missing one 3rd great grandmother and seven 4th great grandparents. All but one is missing because their hometown didn't keep civil records before 1861. No DNA match of mine will know their names.

So why do I bother spending time exploring my DNA matches? Two reasons:

1. Filling in dead ends. When the available vital records end, I don't know who tons of cousins married. DNA matches can give me answers.
2. Finding surprising connections. I've discovered cousins who lived near me at different times without my knowledge. Talk about a small world!

You may need to your matches to help you find a missing birth parent or an untraceable grandparent. For you, Ancestry's Enhanced Shared Matches will be far more valuable.

The Process for Using Shared Matches

• Start with the closest DNA match you haven't been able to identify.
• First, if they have a family tree posted, see if it contains any familiar names.
• Then check your shared matches to see if they're on the maternal or paternal side of your family tree. You may recognize one of your shared matches and know which side they're on. In my case, my parents have tested, so I can see which one is a match.
• Next, find their closest relations in the list of shared matches. If you see a shared match who is their parent, child, or sibling, make note of it on each person's profile. If you know one of their close matches, you should be able to work out this person's likely place in their family tree. For example, if you know their 1st cousin, then you can narrow down their grandparents to 2 couples.
• Now work through their relations to piece together an extended family. Use Ancestry and Facebook searches to find more clues. If you can ID their grandparents, build out that couple's descendants. Search for everything you can find.

If your family tree has a lot more holes than mine, you absolutely need to explore shared DNA matches.

Tips to Use Throughout the Process

Labels. As you work through this process, label every match you identify with a consistent format. I call it a label because it appears in your list of DNA matches on Ancestry, but it's actually a note you attach to a match. I use a relationship abbreviation and our common ancestors' names. I'll include their real name if they're using an alias. For example:

4C1R thru 4Gs Tommaso Antonio Nigro (1793) and Brigida Donata Zeolla (1795)

This is my 4th cousin once removed (4C1R). Our common ancestors are my 4th great grandparents (4Gs) Tommaso and Brigida. I include the birth years of the ancestors because too many people in my family tree have the same name.

By using a consistent label format, it's easier to find people who share the same ancestors. You may want to add some other bits of useful information to your labels, including who their closest DNA relatives are.

Cousin Rules. Always keep in mind these basic rules for identifying common ancestors:

• 1st cousins share grandparents
• 2nd cousins share 1st great grandparents
• 3rd cousins share 2nd great grandparents
• 4th cousins share 3rd great grandparents, etc.

Do More Research. Your investigations may lead you to research several of your 3rd or 4th cousins' families. These are likely to be branches you haven't researched in full. With any luck, you'll make some discoveries that make the process worthwhile.

I love finding the obituaries of 3rd or 4th cousins and being able to build out their families. Then I search my DNA matches to see if anyone has the same newfound last names in their tree. Or I find the whole family on Facebook.

Not every DNA match has the power to help you in your genealogy research. Focus on those most likely to be helpful, and see what you can discover.

And speaking of DNA matches:

• Which Numbers Help Solve a DNA Match?
• These DNA Sites Expand Your Tree in New Directions
• 4 Best Ways to Learn from Your DNA Matches

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