Collections cover almost every inch of Greenfield native Erin Bohannon’s apartment. From bureaus of glow-in-the-dark glassware, cattail silk paintings and artwork made of butterfly wings, to floral Italian toll lamps, LEGO flowers, mugs with painted birds and hippo figurines, it takes a squint to spot one of any object at Bohannon’s place.
“Life’s too short not to have fun and collect things,” Bohannon explained simply.
In the corner of Bohannon’s apartment shelves and boxes hold her favorite collection: a treasure trove of thousands of photos dating back to the 1800s. Envelopes of pictures, high school yearbooks, family photo albums, newspaper clippings, family bibles and even a prom scrapbook fill Bohannon’s home archive of photographs and other artifacts.
“This is my world,” Bohannon, 51, said before she pulled out one of her favorite finds, a framed cloth from 1820 embroidered with the alphabet. Bohannon noticed a name on the embroidery, researched it online, and discovered the cloth was likely stitched by a 10-year-old girl as part of her informal education at home. Bohannon bought the relic from Maxsold, an online auction platform.
Since 2013, the collector has searched flea markets, thrift stores, antique stores, bookstores and online stores like Maxsold and eBay for glimpses into the past. While most finds are $5, Bohannon’s most expensive discovery cost her $65.
“Photos are everywhere,” Bohannon said, adding that the snapshots often fall out of descendants’ grips and drift into unlikely hands from floods, fires or a relative’s quick passing.
After she adds the relic to her archive, Bohannon sits at her “office,” the desk across from her stacks of artifacts, and traces the photos to a family tree on Ancestry.com or FindAGrave.com before scanning in the picture. Bohannon’s computer’s desktop barely has room to breathe with hundreds of file folders covering the screen like confetti, each containing photos for high schools, families and other groups.
Bohannon also posts photos to Facebook groups where comments pour in with the names and stories of the people in her finds. When she posted photos from a Brattleboro high school yearbook, she caught Wilmington, Vermont filmmaker Garret Harkawik’s eye. On Aug. 27, Harkawik’s documentary, “The Photo Returner” screened at the Vermont Center for Photography in Brattleboro.
Bohannon said she had no trouble talking to Harkawik about her collection. “I’m normally pretty quiet and shy, but with the photo thing and the whole genealogy … it’s taken over my life,” Bohannon said in her office.
Bohannon also posts the artifacts on her Facebook page, “Erin’s Cedar Chest,” named after her great-great-grandmother Mabel Gertrude Fuller’s lost cedar chest of artifacts. Her page, an endless grid of photos, scrolls like a digital gallery, with the faces of well-dressed strangers smiling through the screen from past decades, along with a few surprises, like a newspaper ad calling for answers to the question, “To Shave or Not to Shave.”
If Bohannon discovers a descendant in her online digging, she reaches out and offers to deliver the photos herself, free of charge. When the recipients see the photos of late relatives or spouses for the first time, Bohannon said they often tell her stories about the star of the photo, beaming.
“For a little bit, it keeps them alive in that person’s eyes,” Bohannon said.
Bohannon works nights at MATIV, a manufacturing company in Greenfield, but she insisted her photo hunting is not a hobby. “It’s a passion, it’s a calling,” Bohannon said, “it’s kind of my reason for breathing most days.”
“I’m probably the only person you’ve met who plans their vacations around cemeteries,” Bohannon joked. On a trip to Old Orchard Beach, she stopped by a cemetery in Salisbury, New Hampshire to take pictures of about 50 graves for her family tree.
“It’s like treasure hunting,” Bohannon said.
“For a little bit, it keeps them alive in that person’s eyes.”
Erin bohannon
Her calling began with a quest to uncover her own genealogy in 2013. Inheriting her dad’s affinity for ancestry, Bohannon set out to find the siblings of her mother, Judith Bohannon, who lost contact with them during a difficult childhood. Right before her mom passed in October of 2013, Bohannon showed her a picture of her brother Roger, and her mother’s heartfelt reaction inspired Bohannon to help others reconnect with their lost loved ones through photos, whether through the branches of online family trees or in their own hands when Bohannon delivers the relic.
Whether in person or online, Bohannon said she has given hundreds of individuals new pieces of their family members’ pasts.
“Back when I was growing up, you get your camera, you’re out taking pictures of the scenery, and you don’t realize that scenery’s great all, but nobody gives a [expletive] when you die,” Bohannon said. “It’s the people that are in the pictures that matter.”
