This site is the result of a life's work of collecting family photos.

It began as a genealogy research project prior to the advent of the Internet. At that period much research was conducted as a private investigation starting with interviews of known family members, collecting names and places of residence, addresses and writing letters. From there it was collaboration with other relatives that may have a genealogy project, travel to locations, visiting courthouses for records, libraries for newspapers, city directories, graveyards for headstone information. and visits to the newly discovered relatives.

Most families don't know what to do with the old photo albums that they find when a parent or grandparent passes on. In many cases they have no idea who the photos are of, or even that they may be relatives. Sadly many of these photo collections are lost. In this case many were saved and donated by those who were left behind, and knew that someone was interested.

One other circumstance lead to so many of these photos being saved. Donald B Dale (1914-2006) and Frances Bertha (Hodges) Hawn-Dale (1915-1994) were professional Photographers, and kept almost every photo, or negative that they shot or were given.

To preserve the privacy of the living, only the deceased are pictured. In a few cases where living individuals are part of a group photo, the names of the living have been removed, and if recent enough the facial image will be obscured.

This project started out with the family photo album of Celstia Malvina (Coon) Bliss (1839-1940). and from there it expanded out to the Spafford, and Hodges family lines, and beyond. Most photos will try to relate back to one of the Bliss, Spafford, or Hodges family lines.

An entire pictorial family tree is available to aid in better understanding the family relationships. Again only the deceased will be named, but there will be empty visible placeholders for living descendants, so if you think your related you may be able to figure out where you fit in the picture.

Additional information or photos would be very much welcome. Please see the Contribute Page for details.

About the Photos:

As a rule the photos on this site have the full EXIF, IPTC, XMP data sets filled in. Facial tagging has been implemented with digiKam, and Geo-location when possible has been added. The site is hosted on Piwigo, so much of the embedded data is lost during the publication. If you do not care about the embedded data then you can register on the Piwigo site and download the hosted photo. If you would like the photo with embedded data then use the Contact Page to send a request. we will try to get to it in a reasonable time frame.

Usage of the Photos:

Photos are for personal use only. No Commercial use is permitted or allowed. Do not re-publish the photos on other sites, but linking to this site is fine. Image Hotlinks are blocked, The site is currently open to the public, if there is abuse then It will move to a registration mode of operation.