Relative Soldiers Who Died Fighting for the Other Side in War

I'm sure most genealogists know their family members who served in the US Military and especially those who died in battle. Let's expand our search a bit. Do you know of any of your relatives who died on the other side of the front line? Relatives who actually fought against America and its allies? When I was working on my Panther family history book, my brother called saying his son, my nephew, had a school project where they had to map out where their relatives fought in World War II. My brother wanted to know if I had found any of our German relatives that fought in the war. I was able to tell him that I did and, not only that, I had their photographs!

Automatic Colorization of Old Photos

MyHeritage has made a free photo colorization tool available. It can be found at https://www.myheritage.com/incolor. Once you are logged in using either a paid subscription or a free account, you just select a photo to upload and around 10-15 seconds later, it has been colorized for free. It will have have the MyHeritage logo added to the lower right-hand corner. You then have the option to share it via social media, copy a link to the colorized photo or download it. The tool allows you to add color to an unlimited number of photos if you are a MyHeritage subscriber. If you only have a free membership, you are limited to 10 photos. If you have a large number of photos to colorize, it could make sense to subscribe.

Family Tree Display

My seven year old grandson gave me an early Father's Day gift and it's pretty cool. His parents have allowed him to pick out his own gifts for his family and friends for a few years now. They have no input. It's completely up to him what he's going to buy. In this case, he scored a home run.

It is a copper wire on wood family tree display. It's made by Tapestree and comes in three different sizes:

Small - 19 frames for $34.95
Medium - 38 frames for $49.95
Large - 57 frames for $64.95

Old German Military Portrait - An Amazing Identification

My cousin called me a couple of weeks ago saying he was in contact with someone descended from Ferdinand Panther and Amelia Traub. He said this man had some old photos I might be interested in getting a scan of. He texted me photos he took of a few of them with his phone.

I called the man, who lives in Mediapolis, Iowa, which is near Sperry and Dodgeville, where my Panther ancestors settled when they came to America. My cousin gave him a copy of my Panther family history book. Chatting with him, it ends up he is not blood-related to us. He is a descendant of the brother of the husband of a daughter of Ferdinand Panther.

Photos - More than First Meets the Eye

Of  course, everyone loves old photos. At first glance, they're pictures of your ancestors. Your mother's family, a family gathering at some special occasion. You figure out who's in them and when it was taken and add them to your database. How often do you go back and look at them? I mean really look. In your mind, look at them as if you've never seen them before. Look in the background, at the expression on people's faces, at things that are not the focus of the picture. Do this and it's possible you can figure out things that were really going on. Here are few examples from my collection.

Scanning Photos

After Mom's funeral, I volunteered to take her photo albums and boxes of photos, scan them in to the computer so all of her children could have a copy. Finally, after nearly four months, I finished scanning in over 1400 photos. Then I purchased six USB thumb drives, copied the photos onto them, along with a copy of my genealogy database and all documents associated with my genealogy work. While I don't expect all of my brothers and sisters to be interested in browsing the family tree, if all they have to do is hold on to a thumb drive, they won't mind acting as my emergency backup. Never forget to back up your data and put it at a location away from your main computer.

I've already posted some interesting photos from her collection. Here are a few more that I found interesting.