The Catalog: 
On this single web page are about seven percent of her earliest found rare identified original portrait photos.

    This is only a small portion of her wholy or partially identified portraits collection.  Judith Allison Walters began her activities in photography in 1947 while attending Barnard College. It soon led to her first job in New York - film developing and as a photography assistant and a modeling subject herself. She continued on to spend more than 60 years in and around photography, collecting and sorting old photographs and being deeply involved with the Seattle Photographic Society. Her interests included genealogy and the authorship of family diaries, selected area histories and the publication of Civil War letters. By my count she has authored 24 such books. As a photographer, her own works were primarily nature studies and have earned her many awards and ribbons and have graced many offices and private homes around the Pacific Northwest.
        The collection totals over 12,000 different at least partially identified photographs or negatives of people. Many of the originals were sent or loaned to her over the years by individuals who saw her advertisments in genealogical magazines or read of her endeavors in magazine or news articles. Dates noted and the ages of subjects in many cases were estimated, occasionally the original owner provided personal details on the reverse or in source albums.
       Written information that was found on the originals was often subject to spelling interpretation, and be aware that the spelling of names and surnames was very often inconsistent over time.  In looking for your relatives, remember there are no photos prior to 1839 when photography began in the US.
       The quality and resolution of photo files here varies depending on the size and condition of the originals. In some cases the originals were severely damaged, especially glass negatives. Each photo file here has undergone at least a 10 step process to arrive in digital form.  The photo files available here have been limited in size and resolution to speed page loading.     
     
        All of the photos are black and white, no color photos existed until later, invented in 1907 but not in regular retail use until 1935.
      The original photographs that remain in the collection number approximately 8,000.
      The photo selections here are in the approximate order that they were found and added to her collection, so since pictures were sometimes found in groups, pictures near each other by number have a higher likelihood of being related to each other. Kinship information was rarely included with her finds.
      Hopefully, someday an application or computer program will be developed to determine kinship probability through facial recognition technology.
      Represented here on this page are the photos that Judith collected and cataloged in just two of the 32 catalog notebook indexes of the collection, each has more than 400 entries. There are many more last names yet not entered here. A partial list of about 20 percent of surnames of peoples photos is at the bottom of this page.(speech to text programs / recognition of surnames is inadequate for accurate last name entry due to homophonic and spelling complications.)

INQUIRIES: Keepsakefoto@gmail.com.