Since we launched the enhanced FamilySearch.org in April, we have seen a tremendous amount of interest in our photos and stories features. This new photos and stories feature is one of the most well received features we’ve seen added to FamilySearch in a long time. We have received literally hundreds of positive comments from readers like you telling us how much they appreciate being able to add photographs of their ancestors and stories that help bring their people to life.
“With the help of our users, we are creating the world’s largest, free collection of family history photos,” said Tim Cross, senior product manager of FamilySearch Photos and Stories. “We see this as a major achievement toward preserving, sharing, and uniquely identifying family history memories for people from all over the world.”
We are pleased (excited! ecstatic!) to announce a major milestone—as of this week, more than one million photos have been uploaded to the site.
We finally caught up with William Naylor, the winner of our millionth photo challenge. He is pictured below with Dennis Brimhall (left), FamilySearch CEO, and Tim Cross (right), Photos and Stories Product Manager. William, we’re happy to recognize you as the submitter of the 1,000,000th photo to Family Tree’s Photos and Stories site. Congratulations!
All photos uploaded to FamilySearch Photos and Stories will be preserved forever in our state-of-the-art archive facilities. The tags identifying the people in the photos will be preserved as well, so descendants will have a permanent, central location to find and access these precious ancestral photos.
To discover any photos and stories already submitted of your ancestors, simply visit the FamilySearch Photos and Stories page and click on the blue “Find photos of your ancestors” button (you will be prompted to log in).
UPDATE: Here is the one millionth photo!
We have heard from so many people who have used the new photos and stories feature of FamilySearch. They have told us how happy they are that they can now post photographs and add stories to their ancestor's records. Below are just a few comments from three people who have used the photos and stories feature and love what it does to make their family history come alive.
Jamie Giguiere said, “I absolutely love this feature on FamilySearch. Thank you so much for adding the photo section. It has made our ancestors real to my children.
Donna Grace said, "I have discovered several new photographs that I never knew existed. I showed them to my sisters and none of them have seen them before. This is wonderful. What a great way to discover more than just names and places."
An another user said, “I have worried for a long time how I was going to pass all my photos of my ancestors down to future generations. FamilySearch solves this for me! I am putting all my photos on FamilySearch knowing that they will be preserved and shared forever.”
Note: This is a re-post of the original article dated September 10, 2013. We were finally able to catch up with William Naylor and arrange a meeting with Dennis Brimhall and Tim Cross so they could personally congratulate Mr. Naylor for his 1 millionth photo. We wanted to include a picture of William Naylor so everyone can see who he is.
