Pre 1850 photos
Every once in while I see a photo uploaded to FS Memories that clearly could not be what it is clamed to be.
Just today I found this example:
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/21R5-S6X
if you ever see a pre 1850 photo for a person -- be sure and use a healthy amount of skepticism as to its validity. And if it is for a person who died before 1840 it is almost certainly not a legit photo.
another thing that I occasionally see are supposed portraits that have been downloaded from Ancestry for a given person in FamilySearch. When in reality the portrait has nothing to do with the person it is attached to but is nothing more than a portrait whose intent was to show the dress of the period.
Just use a healthy amount of common sense and a little bit of cynicism that not everything is what it claims to be.
Answers
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Great and, sadly necessary observation. It brought to mind a problem I have with well meaning researchers who fail to attend to details.
I just discovered that someone used an Ancestry or WikiTree photo of my 2nd great grandfather and used it as the profile portrait for a completely different George Washington Garten (LHHT-X9B) who was born in Indiana, lived in Iowa and died in 1887. My George Washington Garten (LY8Q-WKK) was born in Indiana, moved to Kansas and lived there until he died in 1932. I removed the "Memory" photo, but the annoying profile portrait stares back at me whenever I visit FamilySearch to locate Garten family records.
Please, please, people, check check and double check dates to ensure you have the correct source or image with the correct person! Folks who died in Iowa in 1887 cannot possibly live in Kansas in 1900, 1910, 1920, or 1930!
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I don't remove photos but I will put comments that the photo or portrait cannot possibly be this person, and I will state why. Photographs and painted portraits can sometimes be tied to (or excluded from) a date range based on clothing styles, and I have used that logic as well.
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