I'm scanning old family photos and so many women are just “and wife”
I've been scanning a box of photos my dad inherited. Someone took the time to write dates, places and full names on a lot of them, but I've now found three different women identified as “and wife”. One of them is standing right in the middle of the photo.
Dad knew where that woman's husband worked, why they moved, and a story about him falling through a shed roof. He thought she might have been called Nell. We're not even certain about that.
These are photos from the 1960s and 70s, of people he knew as a child. We can talk for ages about these families and then get stuck trying to name a woman who's at all the same weddings and Christmases. Someone remembers that she was lovely, or that everyone used to go to her house, but I still have an empty space under her picture.
I'll take the box to my great-aunt next weekend and see what she can fill in. I also caught myself saving a scan as “Nan and her mum”, which is going to mean absolutely nothing to whoever gets this folder after me, so I've been fixing my own captions too.
Has anyone here tried to recover the names and stories of the women in their family? I'd especially like to hear how you found them when the relatives who would have known were already gone.