After a few months of persuading, my aunt finally loaned me her copy of a photo of my great, great, great, great grandfather. It was taken just before he left Germany in the early 1800’s.
I took it to my friend who is in the photography business and he was able to copy it onto Kodak paper.
How many people can say they have a photograph if their greatx4 grandfather?
Prior to this, the oldest photograph of a relative I had was my great, great grandmother.
I’ve been working on and off on relatives for photo use. Some people get things done and do them quick. Other people just kinda lollygag along. Boy I wish I could show up at the lollygaggers house with my scanner and get to work. What’s your secret?
For me the oldest actual photo I own is from the mid 40s showing my paternal grandparents when they were really young.
I’ve got scans those of much older photos. I suppose the oldest would be a tin-type (is that the proper name?) of my 4th Great grandfather from the 1870s but it’s very badly corroded. I’ve also managed to get scans of his son (my 4rd great grandfather) and most of his brother and sisters. Once you the 1900s I’ve got lots of scans.
I’ve got some video of my 2nd great grandparents from the 50s.
I have one of my my great-great-great-great grandmother. She was very ugly. She was a Creek Indian, and left the reservation. The picture was taken not long after she married (family legend tells that she left the tribe because they refused to let her marry the white man)
I have a whole album of photos of my great-great grandmother, plus her mother and her grandparents. The oldest photos were taken in Prussia in the mid 1850’s.
I’ve digitized all of them now, and I’ve been slowly restoring them in photoshop.
I have a mid-1800s tintype of my mother-in-law’s grandmother. I can probably get more accurate on that date if I count backwards… let’s see, MIL is 76, her mom was 38 when she was born, HER mom was in her late 20’s…so… 1862-ish, I’m guessing.
I have some more “recent” photos that are actually more interesting, though - in 1910, my husband’s grandmother sailed on the ship the Olympia and toured Greece, Italy, France, England and Ireland, and he inherited her photo journal of that trip. The oldest photo I have from my own family is one taken of my great-grandmother in 1913 on Ellis Island, with her bags packed at her side. She had just arrived from Italy at age 16 and the photo was taken by her soon-to-be husband there as they were meeting for the first time.
You guys have some impressively old pictures. But rostfrei, the earliest documented photograph, period, is Niepce’s 1827 shot of the view from his window. So it would be surprising if your photo were older than about 1840, which doesn’t really strike me as the “early 1800s”.
The best I can do is a First Communion picture of my great-grandmother, who was born in 1878. That would put it at about 1886.
We have a photo that my grandmother recently recognized as probably her father as a young boy, with his parents and siblings. It has no date but I figure it was likely taken in the 1870s. I was interested to note I have his eyebrows. 
I have a picture of my granmother’s uncle in his WWI uniform. It doesn’t compare to those in this thread, but I think it’s awesome.
(Anyone interested in taking the intitiative to set up a site to display “old pics of Doper relatives”?)
My mother also owns a tin-type I can’t remember the relationship. She tried to take it to a photographers to get it copied on to normal paper, but the photographer refused, as he said it was too valuable and he wasn’t insured for enough!
I have several photos of my great-great-grandparents and family, taken over about a 10-year period from 1890 to 1900. Looking at the faces of the five daughters, including my great-grandmother, I can see strong resemblances to myself, my mom, and some of her sisters. There were also two sons, who died young.
I got to stay at their house, which my great-great-grandfather built around 1900, last summer; it’s now a bed-and-breakfast. The B&B owners are distant relations. The rooms are named after the daughters of the family, and have more photos of them on the walls and framed atop the furniture. I didn’t get to stay in great-grandma’s room, though. I’ve had my above-mentioned photos for a few years now, since a geneologically interested aunt sent them to me, but felt so much more connected to the family after I’d been in their home.
I have a copy of a photograph of my great-grandmother that was made in about 1870. Beside it I display the earrings she was wearing.
I’ve been going through a load of boxes from my grandparents’ house, that have been sat around for ages after the house was cleared. There are hundreds of old photos, most of them sadly unlabelled – apart from the photos of my grandad’s various cars, all of which are meticulously labelled with model, engine size, date bought, price etc!
The oldest, I would guess, are from the 1860s or 1870s. There are also some very interesting scrapbooks of my grandmother’s travels in the Mediterranean in the early 1920s on P&O cruise ships, with photos from Morocco, Italy, Egypt etc, and menus, dance invitations and tickets from the ships. Boy, did people know how to eat in those days…
William Suthard (1790-1891), my 4x great grandfather, taken in 1845.
Some unidentified and very peasant-like ancestors of my father, taken in Russia in (I am guessing by the clothing) the 1880s.
I also have, framed on my bookshelf, the wedding portraits of my great-grandparents (1895), my grandparents (1918), parents (1946) and sister (1996).
Wow, i don’t have anything near like that. A "tin type maybe, not sure but it’s not on paper!) of my grandpa’s mom in 1905 or so, when she was a young lady, a good number from WW II is the oldest I’ve got other than a few scattered fromt he middle 1920s.
I love old stuff like that, though.
Okay, this is kinda creepy. I have a photograph of my grandmother (pregnant with my dad), my grandma’s friend, my uncle (as a baby), and someone else (maybe grandpa?) circa 1929. Anyway, grandma’s friend is holding my uncle very firmly.
So my grandma has a car wreck and goes into premature labor with my dad. Her friend takes care of my uncle during this hectic, stressed out time. Everything turns out well, and my grandma tells grandpa to go get my uncle and bring him home. He goes up to the resort town they were staying in and tries to retrieve my uncle. The woman says no, she’s decided to keep him.
So he goes home and tells grandma that her friend won’t give the baby back. Grandma tells her to go back and give it another try. Sure enough, she refuses to give him up. Grandpa goes back home empty-handed again. Grandma told him he’d BETTER not come home without the baby again. So he goes back to the beach house and has to physically remove my uncle from her clutches. Family is reunited.
Evidently there were no hard feelings over this. No cops were called. They just kind of dealt with it themselves.
Not the oldest photo I have—not even of family—but the coolest.
I bought a book in a thrift shop, an 1880s Social Forms Manual. Tucked into the back was a photo printed on blue paper, of a handsome young man, perched on a tall stool, holding his straw boater in one hand. It was labeled, in ink, “Uncle Hecker, June 1, 1900.” I will go to my grave wondering . . .
I have heard that Wally is actually living outside Charlottesville, Viriginia, under the name Anna Anderson . . .
I have a picture of my great x3 grandfather (John Carnes Pace) taken with his entire civil war regiment (22nd Mississippi) about 1864.
F*ck. I hit "back to NOT post that in the Wally thread, and it got posted in this one instead. Asked a Mod to delete.