Welcome to the Bygone Family and History website. This idea came to me after I started building my family tree. I had many pictures and documents that I would like to share, but realised that using social media, genealogy websites or online storage would restrict who could see these items due to not having accounts on these services.
I have made this website open to all, although there are some features and content that will require you to be registered. You will need to register on the website to make comments on the pages. This is to prevent misuse of the comments and to protect everyone’s privacy. There may be some documents that will also be restricted due to the personal nature of the content. I encourage you to register on the website and add comments where appropriate. I would also appreciate that, if you now anyone or any location in the pictures that isn’t included in the page, you are able to add the missing details.
Why now? When my mother passed away in 2020 I was given a large box full of pictures and some documents. These included many pictures from across the world, some with details written on them but most with no identification at all. Since then I have managed to identify some people in the pictures including family members in a picture which was taken in Iowa, USA, in 1880’s. This stirred my interest in the pictures and who the people were in them.
I have been building a family tree on both MyHeritage and Ancestry websites. These are public trees so that any extended family members can see them. You do need an account, even a free account, with these websites to view the tree. I have added some of the pictures to these sites, but most remain unpublished.
Watermarks. I have added watermarks to all the pictures and documents. This is not my claim on copyright. The reason I do this is to allow others to download and share the items. By adding the watermark, anyone who sees the image online, can then contact me direct and hopefully help identify people in the picture. If you would like copies of the pictures or documents on the website without the watermark, if not copyright, please drop me an email and I can forward a copy to you.
My immediate family that I am tracing from my grandparents back in time include the names; Connor, Phillips, Price and Sinclair. As you go back the generations these extend out to include a much larger number of surnames. If I were to trace all my family lines back to my 4x great grandparents there could be 64 different surnames. As you look through the website you will discover many of these ancestor’s names, some that I have traced as far back as 10 generations. This would be around 1024 different surnames and that is only the direct ancestors.