My July Fascinating Family Find is one that I was lucky enough to inherit from my great grandaunt, Pearl Adams Chadwick. Her son Charles was kind enough to gift me her photo album. Many of the photos in it dated back to the second half of the 19th century and included several tintype photos.

If you haven’t come across tintype photos, they have that name because they were actually photos printed on thin sheets of metal that had lacquer on them to allow the image to adhere to it. Tintypes were most popular in the 1860’s and 1870’s, although they were still available into the early 20th century.

I was very lucky in that I was given some photos in 1981. At that time, Fay Tarbox Sadler, a grandchild of my 3x great grandparents, George Rogers Tarbox and Mary Elizabeth Scripture, was still with us. She immediately identified the man as her grandfather George.