History Sleuths
One of our passions at the Church History Library is helping people solve Church history mysteries. Elise Reynolds explains how a seemingly unsolvable photo identification request inspired us to rev up our research engine.
When a photograph of missionaries in the Southern States Mission was posted on Twitter by our social media team, one of our followers asked: “Who is the African American man in the photograph?” This kicked off a collaborative sleuthing effort to try to identify all of the gentlemen in the photo.
First, the information was distributed to our team of reference librarians, who tried to gather clues about the image. Their findings pointed us to a blog that was also working to identify the members of the group. We tapped into the combined knowledge of the followers of that blog, our own staff members, and our collections as we tried to solve the mystery.
Meanwhile, an employee examined the original photograph, which is held in the library’s collection, and discovered some faint writing on the matting. This revealed several names, which we then searched in the Church History Library’s Early Mormon Missionaries database. Based on that search, we were able to narrow down the time period for the photograph to the 1890s.
Multispectral images made the names on the photograph easier to read.
The next step was to take the original photograph to our Digital Operations team, who used multispectral imaging (MSI) to enhance details on the original photograph. The MSI process takes multiple high-resolution images of a document or photograph using different light wavelengths, including infrared and ultraviolet. In this case, these images were able to enhance the faded writing so it was legible. (To learn more about MSI technology, check out this recent blog post.)
Multispectral imaging made it possible to read the names written on the photograph. These names were then matched to an entry in the mission president’s journal.
While the multispectral imaging was being done, another employee reviewed the mission president’s journals for that location and time. Since the photograph was part of the mission president’s collection, we hoped to find some information about it in the journals. As luck would have it, there was an entry that mentioned the missionaries going to Lookout Mountain, near Chattanooga, Tennessee. The number of missionaries matched the number in the photograph, and several of the names our team had already identified were also listed in the journal as being in the group.
This page from President Elias S. Kimball’s journal mentions the arrival of the new missionaries featured in the photograph.
By comparing the journal entry with the enhanced images of the original photo, we were able to match all of the names from the journal with those written on the photo’s backing. Now that we finally knew the names of the missionaries in the photograph with a high degree of certainty, the only work left to be done was matching the names with the faces (see who we found here). The only person we were unable to identify was the African American man who had joined the group for the photograph. He was most likely a guide for the outing, and the missionaries invited him to join them for the photo.
By using resources available online and at the Church History Library, we were able to connect records to people and better tell their story. Now it’s your turn. Happy sleuthing!