Community Corner

Can You Solve This Mystery?

When Greg Van Antwerp develops a 100-plus year old photo from a glass negative, he's left wondering who the people in the photo are. Can you help?

At first, the Danbury estate sale didn't seem promising. But in an upstairs room filled with boxes, that's where Urban Archeologist Greg Van Antwerp found one of his most treasured finds.

"In a cardboard box, wrapped in a sock was a piece of black glass," he writes in his most recent blog post. "The edges were sharp and I wasn’t sure it was anything until it caught the light. Though dim, I could make out a couple standing beside a clapboard home; it looked and felt very old."

He wondered whether he could develop a negative that may be more than 130 years old. 

Visit his blog post to see how he fared, what the photo came out like and let him know if you can help solve this mystery!

And if you're part of a local historical society, Van Antwerp has a message for you:

"Knowing now that I can develop these glass negatives has led me to offer outright to any local historical society — if you have some glass negatives that you would like to see developed; I will volunteer my new skill for free. I may ask only to keep a copy of the developed image."


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