Discover your Success Story at AncientFaces

March 18, 2007

AncientFaces is a free genealogy and family history website with over 40,000 member contributed photos, stories, and recipes. Since 1999, AncientFaces has remained a free family history community allowing amateur family historians to share and preserve their personal family history for free. Anyone can search and share historic photographs, family lore, nostalgic documents, treasured recipes, and family memories. The AncientFaces Community enables friends and extended family from around the world to discover and add to their own family legacies.

Through participating at AncientFaces - by sharing and posting comments on family history - many thousands of members have found valuable information. Below are typical examples of some of the Success Stories waiting to happen at AncientFaces:

I came home for lunch yesterday and decided to look at my email before going back to work. The weekly newsletter that I subscribe to from the Logan Family History Center had this message in it:
Ancient Faces - One of the largest visual genealogy presences on the Internet by providing a free location for the exchange of photos. Scanned photos are uploaded by their owners. Others researching family trees can place faces with the names of their ancestors. http://www.ancientfaces.com/

I clicked on the link and the first search I did was for Woodruff, and Mamie was the first picture that came up. I could hardly stand it. I was late getting back to work. I had to add comments and write to you. Thank you for noticing her in the store and for the website. I know there is a lot of time, money, and effort that goes into gathering these kinds of pictures, keeping a website, scanning, uploading, and adding comments.

I can't help but wonder how many other family pictures may have ended up in that store and why.

I also can't help but feel that it was meant to be and that there is a purpose that this picture is coming home as you say. What are the chances of this all just happening? It's amazing that you even picked it up at the store and then went to all the extra effort to post it. It makes me feel as though you have been my friend forever. It certainly has given me a connection to you, and I have a love for what you do.

I just can't tell you how excited I am. I can't even hold it in.

-Cathy K, Utah



The “Mamie” in question is the grandmother of the writer and the photo in question was one that the writer didn’t even know existed. Cathy’s story isn’t a unique case. Thousands of family members as well as family pictures have been reunited.

Long lost cousins, aunts, uncles, and even biological parents and siblings have been found through sharing photos, stories, and recipes from family scrapbooks. The emails and letters keep coming, each with its own unique twist on reuniting families and family treasures. But there is a unifying element in each: The thrill of discovery and reconnection. Whether you share one of your treasures at AncientFaces or you find another’s treasure and it reunites you with long-lost family, your experience is sure to be one of discovery and delight!

The following are other typical examples of members finding new family connections:


I have to tell you a VERY special story about how Ancient Faces helped to reunite our family.

For 13 years, I have been searching for my grandmother's missing sister. She just disappeared from the family in the 1930s without a trace. No one ever knew where or when she died or where she was buried. My years of searching have just run into dead ends, so I had given up.

Today, out-of-the-blue, a young lady called me and said that she had seen a photograph on Ancient Faces and one of the women in the photo was her grandmother! Little did I know that she had left a small child behind when she died so young of TB.

You can imagine our shock and excitement at finding each other and a whole new family that we never knew existed. We only live one state away from each other and very soon plan to have all family members meet to share our sides of "the story" and of course, many, many more picturesl

Ancient Faces...... without you, this family may never have been complete and Aunt Grace would have been lost to us forever.

I hope you realize what a valuable service you provide and how grateful we are to have found you.

Thank you!!!!

-Lynda B



I have previously submitted several pictures of my grandfather August Zemidat. I have tried for many years to find anyone with that name, and I have searched many genealogy web sites to no avail. Recently I was contacted by someone who saw my pictures on AncientFaces who may well be a cousin. She also provided me with information that seems to indicate her grandparents were my grandfather’s siblings. Considering the many years I have been searching for the name Zemidat, I find this is absolutely amazing that I have finally found a family member.

Thank you AncientFaces

-Ron Dakin


I love your site, a while back I saw a site that you had labeled Garcia surname pictures. At the time I didn’t have all my family facts for my research. Anyway, I wandered into your site just to check it out AND NOW 1 YEAR LATER I received a picture from an 87 year old aunt and guess what you had this very same picture on your site!! (They were my great aunts and my great-grandmother!).

Thank you…

-Angela Macias


We have found our missing relative entirely thanks to Ancient Faces. We have received a much clearer photo of Captain Grant from his Son. The picture we put in the website is an old yellowed newspaper photo. I am attaching the new photo and ask that you take the old one out and put the new clear picture in its place. With our Canadian Remembrance Day here in 2 days - the timing could not be better. Thank You, Ancient Faces. My long lost Aunt is now 86 years old and her Son and I are talking by phone and e-mails. Captain Grant was his Father and died in France in 1944 and is buried there.

By posting pictures of the visit to his gravesite - we connected through one of his brothers. Amazing that our prayers have been answered.

Thank you

-Beth Best