Mam-ma's Southern Family

I found a negative in the papers of my grandmother. The image appears to be my grandmother's parents, George W. Lancaster and Lela Ann Loveless, likely on their wedding day. I scanned the image, as you can see here. I wondered if there was a way to convert it into a positive photo using software. That way, I wouldn't have to search for a specialized photo shop, since it was a larger format than 35mm. I found IMGonline.com.ua. I uploaded the negative scan and they converted the image to this. I am glad that it has converted, but it’s not quite what I would like. Next, I adjusted the image in Photoshop Elements to get it to look better, using the Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels. I moved the sliders until I got the image looking more like a true black and white photo.  I don't understand many of the tools in Photoshop Elements. It would be nice to crop the background out and to remove the spots on their faces. I also find it odd that the color of the two don't...

Genealogy research is never easy, and when a surname can be spelled in many ways, it can make it even tougher. However, one can make it even harder if only one spelling of the name is researched. My grandmother started me on that road back when I first began researching her family line. Her mother’s name was Lela Ann Loveless. She was very insistent that it was spelled with LESS at the end and not LACE. It did not take me long to discover that her ancestors were listed in records under all kinds of spellings: Loveless, Lovelace, Loveliss, etc. I wrote about this name previously here . Recordkeepers wrote down the name as they heard it. It really depended on the education of the recordkeeper. Sometimes these misspellings can indicate how a person pronounced the name. Lela Ann was listed in the 1900 census as “Leelar” which clearly indicates the pronunciation of her name in an Arkansas accent. I can just hear my grandmother say my mother’s name, also Lela, in the same manner. On my...