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[side_show]

I've come into a large number of very old family photos, some likely from the early 1900's and spanning through to the 1920's, 30's, and 40's.  The family doesn't know I have them (they were given to me by Grandma before she was lost to dementia and passed).  Some are pretty fantastic, others are worth keeping for archival purposes, but aren't necessarily display worthy, and I'm trying to figure out what to do with them.  Ideally, I'd like to make them into a gift of some sort.  I was considering having them scanned then turning them into a book I could make a couple copies of for family members, but most of the stuff I've seen for photo books is for newer photos.  Anyone have suggestions?

[pmcd9]

Photobook is a great idea. No reason you can't use old photos. This idea is especially good if you annotate the photos very well so generations from now they can still be remembered.

[miles]

Come on out to Utah, scrapbooking and genealogy are huge out here. I can hook you up with a sweet deal on a cricut machine and some rubber stamps.

Seriously though, that's really cool. I don't have any other suggestions but you're more creative than me anyway. Paul's idea about annotating is great. Someone on my dad's side put together a couple books with photos as old as mid-19th century and a ton of information to go along with them. They are pretty cherished in the family. This was years ago and it's so much easier now.

[jaydub]

We have lots of great photos of my wife's 1800's ancestors and nary a name to go with them.  You can definitely see family traits in face shape, eyes, and the like though.  We've guessed at the personages but I'm pretty sure they are just guesses.  I bet the grandparents would have known, but the men were bad tempered and the women weren't chatty (according to my non-chatty wife).

[side_show]

Same goes here Jaydub - no one alive knows who most of the photos are of, but they're quite fantastic. My MIL once told me of how her ancestors four generations back worked for British royalty before coming to Canada and there are letters from the palace and photos of very well dressed people in the bundle.

[pmcd9]

Perhaps if you studied the letters carefully you could place some names to faces.

[theinevitable]

awesome. My great-aunt accidentally threw out all of the pictures. My dad's childhood, early pictures of the family when they came to America, all gone. She threw out the wrong bag and stored a grocery bag full of junk instead.

My grandpa on the other side has scanned hundreds and hundreds of pictures of that side of our family, but I have seen very few. I hope he has been annotating them. I assume this required a lot more time than you have, since you are not an 85 year old retired man. I have seen glimpses of the albums, which include stuff like him sitting on a llama as a baby with the Andes in the background, his mean dad taking a selfie in the mirror and glaring, etc.

So far I haven't found any family resemblances.

There is this one picture of my grandpa and grandma when they were first dating in the 50s, and I swear to god it is a picture of me. He is so awkward and skinny and trying to look suave and smiling nervously, and my grandma looks like a movie star. Based on talking to him and talking to my mom about him, I got basically every personality trait from him, too.

So, yes, definitely try to preserve these however you can. Any method which would allow sharing with family members is ideal.