Walk into any antique store or flea market and you'll find boxes of old photographs. These "instant ancestors," as they're sometimes called, have been abandoned for lack of interest and because they're unidentified. It's sad to think they will end up as anonymous wall decorations instead of being cherished by a family for generations.

Most of us have mysterious old photographs in our own collections. They may have been given to you because of your interest in family history or because the executor of an estate didn't want to just throw them away. Maybe some photos have a first name but not a date, or there's partial information passed on from family lore. But most such images haunt us with their lack of identifying information.