Public Domain Photos



Flagler train into FLNeed some images of a hometown, a historic region, a view of a homeland, of a farm, or city? Using the following public domain photo sites will help located and allow you to download needed images to make your family history complete.

For example, you found that your parents came down to the Ft. Lauderdale / Miami area in 1940 or 1941 on vacation. They traveled by train, a most common form of transportation then. Checking with the online site, Flickr the Commons, there was a train from 1941 pulling into the Hollywood, FL station which is part of the Ft. Lauderdale. It is almost a photo your parents might have taken if they could.

Maybe your grandparents retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico; going to the Morgue File Photos showed there were 116 images just of Santa Fe. The term Morgue File refers to a place to keep post production materials for use of reference, an inactive job file. Doing a search on images relating to Florida produced 703 images.

Looking for images of Brooklyn, NY, the Stock Exchange (x’chng) has 163 images. Stock exchange has some 401,000 images online. Just search for the state of Florida produced 857 images.

Then there is World Art site from the California State University that contains over 60,000 images from around the world that can be used freely for non-profit and education use.

Flickr the Commons uses the photos from The Library Of Congress, Powerhouse Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and various users who can post and share images that have no known copyright restrictions. There is a massive collection of images to select from. A big feature is the many older images on the site. Checking various topics to search, many also includes videos.

draftsmanMicrosoft images and clip art has free to use photos along with clip art. If your great uncle was a draftsman as an career, some clip art of draftsman tools would be a nice addition.

Photo: From Flickr The Commons – the ‘Dixie Flagler’ train coming to Hollywood, Florida in 1941.

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