Kate Kelley started a Facebook group called “The Photo Angel,” where she documents all of her success stories.
By Steve Annear Globe Staff,Updated June 28, 2021, 12:56 p.m.
Kate Kelley spends her spare time going to flea markets and buying old photographs and looks for clues to the people’s identities. Then she hops online to try to find people related to them. DEBEE TLUMACKI
Kate Kelley tucked the old black-and-white portrait of a baby in a Santa Claus costume into a small white envelope bound for Ontario, Canada. Another lost keepsake was on its way home.
She had bought the picture at an antique store a few weeks before, and after some practiced Internet sleuthing discovered that the child was the third cousin — three times removed — of an Aurora woman that Kelley doesn’t know and will probably never meet in person.
“It is with great pleasure that I return this family treasure to you,” Kelley wrote in a note accompanying the faded image, which she mailed Friday. “This portrait is one of my personal favorites — it’s just so adorable.”https://7e4a61531a6391f6913594ed535093b2.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0
She signed it, “Warmly, ‘The Photo Angel.’ ”
For the past few months, Kelley, a special-education teacher who lives in Attleboro, has been traveling to antique stores and flea markets across the region and purchasing batches of decades-old images that have been cast asideand forgotten.In her spare time, she then scoursgenealogy sites in search of relatives or descendants of the people in the pictures, hoping she canreunite them with the photographs of their extended family.
“It’s heartbreaking to see pictures of somebody’s relatives [for sale],” Kelley said. “It became my mission to rescue them, and return them.”
Kelley’s journey to reconnect families with vintage photographs started in April, when she discovered pictures of people who weren’t relatives mixed in with her grandparents’ old family photos.
“Friends of family, war buddies — just people that weren’t related,” said Kelley, 43. “Then I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome to get these pictures in the mail?’ ”
Determined to return them to their rightful owners, she hopped onto Ancestry.com and FindAGrave.com to track down relatives, based on the names and other information scrawled on the back.https://7e4a61531a6391f6913594ed535093b2.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0
She immediatelyfound some matches. As she made more connections, Kelley became entranced by the possibilities. She recalled having seen boxes of old, discarded pictures at antique shops and flea markets, and decided to buy some in hopes of expanding her project.
Although Kelley’s hobby is new, her fascination with genealogy islifelong. As a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, she has long been intrigued by family histories.
“My interest in genealogy definitely runs deep. It’s always been my passion,” she said. “[This project is] all of the things that I love: it’s genealogy, it’s research, it’s meeting new people — all of the above. And it’s the thrill of the hunt.”
Kelley primarily turns to Ancestry.com and its 3 million paying subscribers for her detective work. Users on the website can build their family trees and add names and information to their lineage, which makes it easy for Kelley to trace the names on the photographsto people with accounts.
When she gets a match, she sends a direct message to the person, explaining what she’s found and the purpose of her project. Sometimes, the person isn’t all that interested. But most genealogy buffs are thrilled.
“Most people are very, very grateful and excited,” said Kelley, who only buys photographs with names and locations written on the back.
In May, Adam Jurewich decided to hop back into his Ancestry.com account for the first time in a while to add information from his father’s side into his digital family tree. While uploading photos that his father had recently given to him, Jurewich received a message from Kelley, who had found a picture of Jurewich’s grandfather and grandmother while poking around an antique shop in North Attleborough.https://7e4a61531a6391f6913594ed535093b2.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0
The picture was taken in the Berkshires in 1945. Jurewich’s grandparents were visiting a seminary school where his great uncle was studying to become a Jesuit priest. In the photo, Jurewich’s grandmother — who died in 2005 — was eight weeks pregnant with his father.
“It’s just amazing she was able to find this and get it back to my family,” said Jurewich, 38, who lives in Antrim, N.H.“She’s piecing back together bits of history, which I think is just great.”
The photo was the “missing link” between two other photos that Jurewich had of his grandparents, including one which shows his grandfather wearing the same sport coat he wore in the picture Kelley gave him.
Jurewich doesn’t know how the picture ended up in the shop where Kelley bought it. But it was a “weird, cosmic coincidence” that Kelley reached out to himjustas he was sifting through old family photos, he said.
“I’m just so appreciative of what’s she’s doing,” he said.
So far, Kelley has mailed roughly 100 black-and-white images to people all over the country. She’s also sent a few to Canada and the United Kingdom. The oldest photo returned to someone dated back to the 1880s.https://7e4a61531a6391f6913594ed535093b2.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0
Her home office is filled withstacks of old images,waiting to beseparated into folders marked “photos,” “challenges,” and “to be mailed.” There’s also a stack called “waiting to hear back.”
Kelley spends about three hours each night searching for connections, but expects to devote more time now that it’s summer vacation.
“I’m so excited because the timing is absolutely perfect,” said Kelley. “It’s time to just really focus on this.”
Kelley has been chronicling her efforts on a Facebook page called “The Photo Angel,” a nickname she was given by an impressed commenter. There are more than 500 people in the group, and members are encouraged to go on their own hunts.
If Kelley hits a dead end on Ancestry.com, she sometimes turns to private Facebook groups for residents of various cities and towns, to see if anyone within those groups might know the people pictured. She did this during a recent search for the descendants of William C. Allan, deputy sheriff of Warren County, Pa., in 1884, after buying a picture of Allan at an antique store in Rhode Island.
So far, she hasn’t cracked that case. But she has sent a digital version of the image to the county’s current deputy chief,in hopes of a clue.
Those who cross paths with Kelley, or who are following her quest on Facebook, are often stunned that she finds the time to do thisand doesn’t charge a fee for her service or the photos.https://7e4a61531a6391f6913594ed535093b2.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0
She always has a simple reply: “Then it would be business, and not kindness.”