It doesn't matter - because this has been the end result of hundreds of collections I've tried to get my hands on but for a myriad of reasons the owners decided to just throw them away - and a few of them were divided out to the "four winds" with other family members so I'll never be able to find out who has them or get them back to Manning, Iowa, to scan.

Click on the links to the left to see a few of the 400+ pix I scanned - the ones that were basically pix of NON-family members of the original owner, but to me so very historically important and ones I didn't have...plus there were several old farming pictures which I just love, because I've heard so many stories about that era from my parents and grandparents generations and the myriad of Manning old timers over the last 50+ years.
Fortunately most of the pix in the collection were identified so at least anyone who looks at my database in the future will know who they are.

I realize most people won't care one way or the other but someday there will be future descendants/relatives/genealogists/historians who will love to be able to go through my Manning Historical Database to see images of their ancestors from so long ago...

I originally left the identifications off this picture on my main page introduction but here are the names.

Leola (Spear) Gray, Marie (Rostermundt) Nulle, Pauline (Cramer) Graves, Lucille (Genzen) Pfannkuch, Ann (Frahm) Popp

I recently had spent several hours editing and adding the guestbook comments from 2004 and 2014.
After I finished I double checked to make sure my HTML editing didn't create any errors and I also took some time to skim through the messages.
It is amazing at how many posters have passed away, or comments about Manning folks who I posted tributes to that had passed away.
These particular posts remind us how time is fleeting and we all have limited time here on this Earth.

My guestbook also shows me how our society and most citizens have changed drastically (in particular how they use the Internet) and from my observations - NOT for the good...I'll leave it up to you to make your own conclusions as to the changes we've been seeing for the last 5 or so years.

I also relate to how what I've been doing to preserve Manning's history has not changed, but the way many people today see our history and how they work on their own family history (if at all) has changed a lot.

I've gotten much older in this pursuit to save our area history and have learned over the many decades that patience is very important.
For instance, I've been waiting since 2009 to go through a family collection so patience is an important trait to have.
I had approached the original owner of the collection prior to 2009 to scan their country school pix but they didn't want to be bothered.
Then that person passed away, so I approached the person who inherited the collection but they also refused to let me go through and scan those pictures.
Then this person died and the next family member who inherited the collection finally let me look at them and start scanning.

Unfortunately, the country school pictures I was wanting to scan had been thrown away sometime in the past when I had asked both individuals on multiple occasions to scan them.
The person who inherited them this past year told me that his relative told him to burn all of the pictures...fortunately he did not so now I'm going through what has survived the trash can.
One of the country school members had e-mailed me about 20 years ago to see if I had any pictures of them and their school and all I could tell them was someone had pictures but would not let me scan them.

As usual, there are quite a few non-family member pictures in this collection and above is one of them.
I've scanned a lot of old bowling team pictures over the years and this one is new to me.
I'm intentionally leaving off the names - I know who they are but besides people throwing their old pictures and history left and right, sadly the collections I do get my hands on to scan have mostly unidentified pictures.
Fortunately this current collection I'm scanning has mostly identified pictures but showing an unidentified picture will give everyone a little idea of what I go through in trying to find people who can help with names.
20 to 40 years ago I had lots of older folks I could go to for help with IDs, but now I basically have no one who is old enough to help me with the very old pix and even the ones not so old.

From time to time I get requests to show pictures and information about a past era or time-frame - for instance my good friend and classmate, Kerry Joens, had e-mailed me to see if I would post pictures of Christmas past...I said I had done this in previous years and would try to do so again this year but now time has run out and even more projects have piled up for me, so there won't be a Christmas of the past feature - this season.

I have also been wanting to take pictures of a high school basketball game but just haven't had time, but will do so in the new year.
While I realize not many people will look at the pictures I take because many of the games are broadcast and other people also take pictures and post them, I want to still capture some games because I know my pictures will be preserved and archived, whereas most of the other pictures taken by others will someday get lost when their hard drive dies and they didn't have any backups.

Well, enough of my rambling and back to more scanning...