We Need Your Help: the Unidentified Photograph Collection

Calling all Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle fans! We need your investigative and sleuthing skills here at the Champaign County Historical Archives. While the vast majority of our photograph collection is organized meticulously, sometimes we receive photograph donations without any identifying information. Currently, we have about 200 photographs in which we are unable to identify the people, places, or events in them. We have family portraits, beautiful houses, smiling children, amusing events, and more, but we are unable to house them where they belong without more identifying information.

We have organized these photographs into a collection titled, you guessed it, the “Unidentified Photographs Collection.” All of these unidentified photographs have been digitized and uploaded to our Flickr, allowing members of the community to view these photographs online and weigh in. We hope that with your help, we will be able to identify the people, places, and events in these photographs and subsequently be able to place them in their rightful home within the Archives. You can find these photographs linked in our Unidentified Photographs album on Flickr.

These photographs share the lived experiences of those who have shaped our community’s identity, and they deserve to be recognized! Below are a few of the photographs from the collection, but there are many more online.

A color photograph of four young Black students using a computer together. — A group of school-aged children interact with a computer in a computer lab.

A color photograph of two adults and two children on bikes. The smallest child is sitting in a bike trailer. — Two adults and two children go on a bike ride.

Black and white photograph of 5 people socializing on the porch of a house. — Several people gather around the porch of a home with a sprinkler on the front lawn.

Color photograph from the chest of of two adults and a child smiling at the camera. — A woman, man, and child smile for the camera.

A black and white photograph of a group of women posing outside of a house. — A group of women pose in front of a porch.

If you recognize any of the people, places, or events in these photographs or those online, please contact the Champaign County Historical Archives at archives@urbanafree.org.

-Maggie Weimer

Archives Assistant