If you're writing a family story, your memoir, a novel based on a family member or members, one sure place to begin is with photographs. The box of family photos is a goldmine for every writer in any of these genres. The more you study those pictures, the more the story will come to light. And don't limit yourself to your own stash, ask other family members if you can look at theirs, have copies made. Don't stop there, ask neighbors, family friends, and distant cousins. Search old newspapers on newspaperarchives.com. They have searchable articles back as far as 1753. Not so long ago, both city and small-town newspapers considered local happenings at schools, churches, and the town square to be news. They carried stories about community events and included lots of pictures. Many states also have their own searchable small-town newspaper databases. If you live in New York State, or are from New York State, Fulton History is an archival site containing small town newspapers from all over the state, and other states, as far back as the 1700s. They also have a section on old postcards, images that reflect the culture and society of various eras in American history. 

How do you find story in pictures? Well, you can connect people you know with people you don't know, providing a seed for your detective work. Pictures show us how people lived, who they loved, where they lived, how they dressed, what cars they drove, if they had cars. Pictures of my grandmother and her sisters in their youth reveal that there were no cars. People got from one place to another on foot or in wagons. That got me thinking about how long it would take to get from Uncle Jim's farm to town, and what that would mean to their lives. What if a house caught fire? How would they put it out if there were no automobiles, no way to speed up the highway with sirens blaring?

Several years ago, my father gave me a photograph album my grandmother had put together long before he was born. My father had an older brother named John who died at the age of six. I had known about this event, but not the story. As I turned the pages of this handmade album, covered with care in a fine dust jacket cloth by my grandmother, I was pulled into a story of love and heartbreak. Each page displayed images of a young boy's childhood and his devoted and loving parents: afternoons at the lake, John with his dog, picnics in the woods, a pony, a birthday party, a ride in grandfather's new Franklin automobile on the boy's 5th birthday. Great Grandfather Willis is beaming in this picture. His topless car is filled with children who may be riding in a car for the first time. The album ends with a handwritten note next to the boy John's picture, "John Parsons Cole, b. 9-12-1914, d. 12-22-1920." I still can't look through the album without crying, but now I know the story of John, and my grandparents....the young boy who was adored by his parents, the sad grandparents I remember. There was something beneath the surface I sensed as a child that felt like sadness, but I never knew what it was about. I didn't know the story until I looked at those pictures as an adult, even though my great aunts had told me that there had been an older boy, an uncle who had died.

If I chose to write about that story, the next step would be to examine newspapers and other archives and history books to find out everything from the weather conditions in that city on the day of his death, or the day of his birthday party, and so on, to what was happening in the world at the time. John was born at the beginning of the Great War. And so the story began.

"A Happy Fourth"