They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. In genealogy it’s certainly true that the right illustrations may be the best way to evoke a former era and can save a very long and potentially inaccurate description. Many of us are lucky enough to have private family images of some of our ancestors but there will be many gaps, and few people have any portraits before the mid-19th century. Yet images can serve many purposes apart from showing us what our direct ancestors looked like: they can ‘bring alive’ an event, place or character. Maybe you can find an illustration of the church where your ancestors married even though it has since been pulled down, an old street map of your family’s town, pictures of the clothes they might have worn, or a disaster in
