Possibilities

        In July 2018 I finally made it to a Hinch reunion (as they say, it was far piece from ND to TN!). They has been going on since 1928 or so, but this is the first one I was able to go to. As I was signing in, I flipped through a 3-ring binder with some old photographs and used my phone to capture the images and description. Since that time I have been attempting to authenticate them, as they seemed too good to be true. 

The photos were of my 2nd great grandparents, William Hinch and Annie Sherrill. On Annie’s lap was a child 1-2 years old. William was born in 1826, and his wife Annie was born in 1829. They were married about 1846, so about 16 years before the Civil War. 

My 2nd G-grands) William Hinch and wife Annie Sherrill Hinch, taken 1859-1860

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Someone had written below the photographs “William Hinch, father of James Hinch, and Ann Sherrill Hinch, Baby Tom”. My research told me “baby Tom” was Thomas Hinch and he was born in 1858. So these photos were taken around 1860. The photos I was looking at were more recent, judging from the printing date at the top of “Oct 71”. So if authentic, someone must have had reproductions made of much earlier photos. Gemini thought the 1860 photos were either tin type or ambrotype. 

Well, enter Artificial Intelligence to help me. And what spurred me on was that someone on FindaGrave.com had just added a photo of William and Annie Hinch to their Memorial page.  And this photograph,  quite old and blurry, was taken much later in their lives. So now I had something to compare facial features to, and to help me authenticate the 1860 photos.

William and Annie Sherrill Hinch abt 1890-1900

Using an AI tool to help sharpen the FindaGrave image (I used VanceAI), I then uploaded both photos to Gemini to help me analyze their facial features from the photos to see if they were the same people, or at least estimate that they were. And the answer came back yes. And not only facial features, but their clothing in each photo matches the time frame they were taken in. 

So I am now quite confident that the original photos from around 1860 are authentic, and they are photographs of my 2nd great-grandparents!  So what was just a possibility for many years now turns out to be very possible.