PORTSMOUTH — The 20 or so people who attended “Photo Angel” Kate Kelley’s presentation at the Portsmouth Free Public Library Sunday should consider themselves lucky, because that was her last gig before hitting the big time.

Just few hours before arriving at the library, a taped segment about the Attleboro, Mass. resident’s hobby ran on NBC’s “Today Show. Throughout the day, new fans flooded her Facebook page with messages, and by Sunday evening Kelley reported that 5,000 new members had joined her group.

She may need an agent now.

Kelley, who grew up in Seekonk, spent an hour at the library explaining what she does while sharing success stories as the “Photo Angel.” In her spare time, the 20-year special ed teacher scours flea markets and antique shops looking for vintage family photos for sale. Using a variety of methods, including researching genealogy websites, Kelley then tries to local the families connected to the photographs’ subjects. 

Kelley credited several family members for getting her interested in genealogy at an early age. From her paternal grandmother, Hazel Chapman Norton (1915-1999), she learned that novelist and poet Louisa May Alcott was a distant relative. Her maternal grandfather, Walter Strain (1914-2000), was a World War II veteran who served in the Pacific Theater and always stressed the importance of labeling photos. Her maternal great-aunt, Genevieve Straun, was a public school teacher in Bristol, Conn. who was passionate about genealogy.

Kelley’s photo project started in the spring of 2021, when she and her mom were going through a box of old photos from her great-grandparents. Many of them were pictures of non-relatives — close friends who were part of her late relatives’ lives.

“We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to get some of these photos of non-family members back to their ancestors?’” said Kelley.

She did just that, connecting one of Aunt Genevieve’s old photos of a friend from Adamsville, Tenn. with his family after visiting a genealogy website. “I mailed the family treasures to them and the Photo Angel project was born,” said Kelley, who got the moniker from a friend before she even started the project.

She started hitting antique stores and flea markets, where forgotten family photos often end up. If there’s no information on the photo, she’s pretty much out of luck. But if the back of the photo includes a name, a date or a location, that’s usually enough information to track a family down.

“A lot of them have no identifiable information on them, which you need, and ‘Aunt Mary’ doesn’t cut it,” she said, noting the more unusual name, the better.

After acquiring the photos, she visits websites such as Ancestry, MyHeritage and FindaGrave, and reaches out to members on those sites. Sometimes she runs into people online who falsely assume she’s a spammer trying to promote a product — Kelley does this as a hobby and doesn’t accept payment — but usually people are glad to help, she said.

“Once I started visiting other antique stores and meeting with success, I thought I should start chronicling those success stories on Facebook,” said Kelly, whose social media accounts blew up after Monday morning. “This morning was crazy because after the ‘Today Show,’ I checked Facebook and it said, ‘You have 3,000 message requests.’”

Success stories

Kelley held up a photo of 11-month-old Hugh G.W. Counts of Kansas. Somehow the picture, taken in Topeka in 1889, ended up at an antique store in Providence, where Kelley found it. Because the photo had plenty of information on its back, she was able to reunite it with Hugh’s granddaughter in Washington State.

She pegged her success rate at about 90 percent, and has returned photos to families in 42 U.S. states, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia and New Zealand so far.

“My goal for 2022 is to complete my U.S. map,” said Kelley, who sticks pins in every state where she’s made a connection.

What’s most rewarding, she said, is hand-delivering photos. ”That is the best. You can hear their stories about their families or the people in the photograph,” Kelley said.

In one case, she found a photo of a man’s 1926 high school portrait at Stillwater Antiques in Greenville, and delivered it in person to his son in Worcester, Mass. “It was a wonderful experience. He brought his family photo album to share.” 

Her largest photo haul was when she was contacted by a couple in Maine. They were renovating an old home and found a big trunk full of photos. “Sounds like a road trip,” Kelley said with a laugh. “They said, ‘Take whatever you want.’ It was like I won the lottery.”

That haul, like many others, also included birth certificates, postcards, marriage certificates and more — all of which Kelley collects along with photos. “Even Christmas cards,” she said. “I didn’t realize until I started this project that people did photo cards in the 1920s.”

Although she spends an average of $100 when visiting an antique store and plenty on postage — donations are welcome — Kelley said she feels her labor of love serves an important purpose.

“You don’t know who you are until you know your family history,” she said.