The Dallastown Area Historical Society has put a bunch of unidentified photos on the Web for people to lend their hand in identifying. Meanwhile, if anyone wants to meet the minds behind the society, a work meeting is set from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. June 18 at the society’s museum. ‘No skills needed just a desire to help,’ the society noted. For details, contact Mike Sentz, msentz@juno.com. (See additional photos from this lot below.) Also of interest: Dallastown Area Historical Society does right thing: Promoting borough history on Web, too.
Mike Sentz is looking for IDs of a large lot, 200 or more, of late 19th-century or early-20th century photographs.
“The variety of styles and subjects is amazing. Sadly, I couldn’t get in contact with the donors to find out any more information. The portraits are most enjoyable. Such interesting people. The clothing and hairstyles are fun to see,” he wrote.
The photographs aren’t necessarily from Dallastown or of that borough’s people.
“My memory is that the donor said they were owned by local Dallastown photographer William Bigler … ,” Mike wrote in a previous email. ” The photographs however are all York Studios, Pentz, Swords etc.. so perhaps they were of acquaintances? None are identified.”
The full set is on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dallastown/sets/72157629804971400/
And this Dallastown group didn’t stop there, jumping on Pinterest.
If you have any information on the photos, just contact Mike.
Other Dallastown posts of interest:
LBJ: In small towns, girls are fonder; dinner pails fuller, Bomb group seeks Cameron Mitchell’s WWII info and Speeding trolley cars drew criticism.
Welcome to York Town Square, 8 years of daily posts about journalism and history, topics that can easily become plodding and self important. My goal is to keep this blog fun and accessible. And I try to say something in each post. I welcome your comments and respond to every one you write. Please contact me at 
It’s a shame that the subjects of many early photographs are not identified. I was given possession of my grandparents photograph collection – several thousand photos – and have been working to digitally preserve and identify them. These date as early as the 1860s, but the identity of many people shown in the early examples will never be known.
Best of luck to the Dallastown Area Historical Society.
Blake,
Wouldn’t it be great to have one place for people to put all their unidentified photo scans? Anyone could browse through thousands of these lost photos easily. Just an idea.
There’s a popular place already for user submitted photos at YDR photos: http://www.ydr.com/gallery. We’re going to look into your suggestion some more, Mike./Jim
There’s a great website called Dead Fred where people post unidentified (and sometimes identified) photos that they would like to return to family. I found one on the site a few years ago, and the owner was gracious enough to send it to me, along with others from the York area.
The site can be found at http://www.deadfred.com
Blake, thanks for sharing./Jim