Hello<\/p>\n
I am trying to get in touch with any living family member of Mary Ellen Edgerton (1904-2001) regarding a very large photo album and scrapbook of her childhood and high school days in Aurora, Nebraska, where she graduated with the class of 1922.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you may be Mary Ellen\u2019s granddaughter, please contact me<\/p>\n
Thank you<\/p>\n
Aaron Turner<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Okay. So many questions<\/p>\n
Who is this guy? How did he reach my sister, who has virtually no online presence? How could there be a \u201cvery large photo album\u201d that nobody knew about? How the hell did he<\/em>get it?<\/p>\n And above all, what\u2019s his angle?<\/p>\n The most unsettling part was how he\u2019d nailed the details. Mary Ellen Edgerton was our grandmother (our dad\u2019s mom). She did grow up in Aurora. She did die in 2001<\/p>\n After consultation with my sister, my brother, and my father, I responded to this Aaron Turner character, asking for more information. And I got it:<\/p>\n In August of 2025, I purchased an old photo album from an online antique dealer in Florida. It contains numerous photographs of Mary Ellen in her high school days with friends; her with her violin in various orchestras; and at the back, many pictures of her family, including her parents Frank & Mary, her brother Harold, and her younger sister Margaret.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n (\u201cHer brother Harold\u201d grew up to become celebrity MIT scientist Harold Edgerton<\/a>, pioneer of the strobe light, sonar, and high-speed photography.)<\/p>\n Turner also attached some photos of the photos \u2014 and they were amazing. Grandma as a teenager, as a little girl, as a baby<\/p>\n And then, inevitably, the offer:<\/p>\n If you may be interested in retaining this album for the family, I would ask $150 to include my original costs and outbound shipping. Perhaps this would be a good 98th birthday present for Dick on April 26, 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Okay, enough with the creepy insider family knowledge!<\/p>\n My dad wrote to me:<\/p>\n Dave:<\/p>\n How in the world did he find us?<\/p>\n And, even more amazing, how did he know about me and my birthday?<\/p>\n I would say that he earned the $150!<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dad<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Whatever Aaron Turner\u2019s game was, he was indeed enterprising. I Venmo\u2019d him the money and began a convoluted, eye-opening journey through an online network I hadn\u2019t even known existed: people who find, sell, and collect strangers\u2019 old photos<\/p>\n The album arrived overnight, impeccably packaged.It was spectacular. It was a three-dimensional snapshot of Mary Ellen\u2019s life more than 100 years ago<\/p>\n As her grandson, I\u2019d known only the elderly Mary Ellen: sweet, erudite, a little dotty. Every year, without fail, she sent us the same Christmas gifts: objects d\u2019clutter from her attic<\/p>\n But here was Mary Ellen in full flower: beautiful, lively, funny, talented, accomplished. According to her high-school yearbook clipping, she participated in \u201cStudent Council, Junior Play, Senior Play, and Basket Ball.\u201d She played violin all over town. Before even graduating college, she\u2019d become a travel columnist for the Hamilton County Register<\/p>\n In one shot, she and 12 friends cram into a 1921 Dodge Brothers touring car, goofy and grinning:<\/p>\n Can you imagine an America so empty that you could address your letter with nothing but \u201cMary Ellen Edgerton, Aurora, Nebraska?\u201d<\/p>\n Her childhood home appeared in some of the photos; my dad recognized it immediately. \u201cI lived there during my 16th summer when I worked for the CB&Q railroad as a \u2018gandy dancer,\u2019\u201d he says, \u201cspading gravel under railroad ties to give them support.\u201d<\/p>\n Incredibly, we found the house online. It\u2019s still there, beautifully preserved<\/p>\n The whole experience was making me regret that I hadn\u2019t known Mary Ellen better. After all, I, too, grew up performing in plays, playing teen concerts around town, and becoming a newspaper columnist<\/p>\n We were delighted, obviously, to have this album. But something about the Aaron Turner transaction still bugged me. I couldn\u2019t shake the distasteful feeling that we were paying for a family treasure that should have been ours in the first<\/a> place<\/p>\n So I called him. Turner is a 43-year-old archivist and digital sleuth in Lexington, Ohio. He\u2019s got master\u2019s degrees in library science and archival studies. He pieces together an income from a few different kinds of archivist-related work. One of them is the quirky sideline that brought him into our lives: He buys vintage memorabilia, tracks down the descendants of the people in those photos, and then sells the stuff back to them.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are like, \u2018Why would you waste so much time doing that?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cWell, it\u2019s just what I like to do. I don\u2019t watch TV. I don\u2019t watch sports games. This is my hobby. It\u2019s just kind of a niche that I found, and I\u2019m very good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n It started out with individual pictures. \u201cI would go to antique stores, where they have baskets of photos that say, \u2018Instant Relatives, one dollar each\u2019 or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n To identify the people in an old photo, he\u2019d look for handwritten names on the back, a fragment of a street address, or a recognizable building. Then he\u2019d dig through obituaries, U.S. Census records, FindAGrave.com, and subscription services like Ancestry.com<\/p>\n Once he knew who was in the picture, he undertook a second quest: hunting down descendants who might like to see it \u2014 like my sister<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes people are mad. Like, \u2018How did you find me? Where did you get my phone number?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cWell, people think that information is private and sacred, but it\u2019s not. It\u2019s combing through Facebook, combing through LinkedIn. I usually pull cell-phone numbers off of FastPeopleSearch.com or TruePeopleSearch.com. If you know what to look for, it\u2019s all there.\u201d<\/p>\n Our grandmother\u2019s album wasn\u2019t a tough case to crack: Her name, address, and age appeared on the first page. \u201cIt was so easy to look her up in the 1920 Census,\u201d Turner says. \u201cThen you can figure out who the spouse is, who the parents are. You can look at the ages and see, \u2018Eh, that\u2019s probably their kids, because they\u2019re about 20 years younger.\u2019 It all kind of meshes.\u201d<\/p>\n Years ago, he\u2019d mail out photos to descendants for free. He called this hobby RAOGK: random acts of genealogical kindness. The effusive thank-you notes that he received in return now fill 14 albums<\/p>\n Eventually, he upgraded the venture. He began buying entire albums \u2014 and requesting payment. He\u2019s sold and shipped hundreds of albums now, two or three a month<\/p>\n I asked him if anyone else found it a little gross to sell heirlooms back to the families<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d say 95 percent of people are happy,\u201d Turner says. \u201cBut yeah, sometimes people are like, \u2018Well, why should I pay for something that should be mine anyway?\u2019 They say, \u2018You\u2019re taking advantage of us,\u2019 or \u2018That\u2019s extortion.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I have to kind of say, \u2018The person you should be mad at is the one who cleaned out Grandma\u2019s house and threw it all away.\u2019 Or, \u2018The person you should be mad at is the one that didn\u2019t pay their storage-unit bill, and this stuff got lost.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But inevitably, he says, some of those people pop up again a couple of weeks later<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll be like, \u2018Do you still have that album \u2026?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The final mystery was one of provenance. Mary Ellen was born in Nebraska and died in Maryland. How did her scrapbook wind up on Aaron Turner\u2019s desk in Ohio?<\/p>\n These days, Turner doesn\u2019t have to wander through vintage shops to find his material. Instead, he taps into a teeming network of memorabilia middlemen online: dealers who buy old photos, documents, and albums and resell them to collectors and other dealers. They populate sites like eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, and specialized auction sites like HiBid.com. They use terms like vernacular photography (nonart photos), found photography (unidentified photos and albums), and ephemera (all paper collectibles).<\/p>\n Turner bought Mary Ellen\u2019s album in August 2025 from an eBay store called StMortiz. Its proprietor is Mavity Freeland in Jacksonville, Florida; her two eBay stores have racked up over 12,000 sales<\/p>\n But how did she<\/em>get the album?<\/p>\n I messaged her. \u201cI\u2019m going to hope that this isn\u2019t a scam,\u201d she replied<\/p>\n Soon enough, though, she cheerfully joined my provenance quest. \u201cI buy from estate sales or auction houses, sometimes sight unseen,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI take out the photos that are special to collectors \u2014 or if it\u2019s special as a whole book, I sell it as is. In your case, the captions and collage aspect of the album made it special.\u201d<\/p>\n Her customers often collect specific categories: \u201cPhoto-booth photos, military shots, bathing beauties (pretty ladies in swimsuits), African American history, Civil War, and people doing things that are strange, like a person blocking the camera with their hand (we call that \u2018camera shy\u2019). People search for these tropes like Easter eggs!\u201d<\/p>\n A few days later, she messaged me: \u201cDavid stop the presses!!!! I found it! I can tell you the auction house that sold it to me. Are you ready? It\u2019s in Maine!\u201d In July 2025, she\u2019d bought the album from an online dealer called HSC Auctions (18,000 sales)<\/p>\n HSC turns out to be Matt Carr and his daughter Olis from the Canadian border, notable as the northern terminus of I-95<\/p>\n Incredibly, Carr remembers Mary Ellen\u2019s album. \u201cIt was well-made, historical in context, with clean images and some written history to resell,\u201d he says<\/p>\n During the day, Carr manages the radiology department at a local hospital (\u201cmy part-time job,\u201d he jokes); each night, he disappears into his basement office to work on the online resale business. For him, the virtues of selling a vintage item is more than financial. \u201cFirst, I feel like we saved it from a landfill, okay? And two, we saved it so that another<\/a> human touches it and maybe takes that piece of history and does something better with themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n These days, most of the material he sells comes from his other part-time job: cleaning out houses. (His daughter creates the listings; she and her husband run the auctions.) But in 2024, Carr was still buying stuff through online auctions. He won Mary Ellen\u2019s album for $25; a year later, he sold it for $22. \u201cSometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Cost averaging is important,\u201d he says. \u201cBut your grandma\u2019s album didn\u2019t beat us up too much.\u201d<\/p>\n So where did he<\/em>get the album?<\/p>\n From yet another online dealer: Brian McKeon, based in North Carolina, whose online shop is called Haywood Creektures. \u201cI\u2019ve been a collector for years,\u201d McKeon told me. \u201cI love old photos, especially any with military or automobiles. I buy from eBay and from HiBid and from local thrift stores.\u201d<\/p>\n I was getting the message: These old photo albums may kick around for years, passing dealer to dealer. But how did Mary Ellen\u2019s album enter the ephemera-dealer slipstream? Who relieved her estate of this volume in the first place?<\/p>\n With my siblings\u2019 help, I finally figured it out<\/p>\n After both of my grandparents died, their youngest son, my uncle Jack, lived alone in their Maryland house. He\u2019d had mental-health struggles his entire life. So maybe it shouldn\u2019t have been a shock that when hedied in 2018, we found the house filled, wall to wall, with crap. There was barely enough room to thread yourself down a hallway<\/p>\n When you\u2019ve got a hoarder house to clean out, whom do you call?<\/p>\n Matt Paxton, of course \u2014 the clean-out guy from the TV show Hoarders<\/p>\n In November 2018, we hired the company he worked for at the time to haul out the mountains of clutter so we could sell the house<\/p>\n \u201cI remember that house. I mean, it\u2019s crazy how many times I think about that house. Dude, the shit we found! Excuse my language,\u201d Paxton told me. \u201cI mean, the history! Your grandfather \u2014 I mean, like, I think there was an association with the Wright brothers.\u201d (My grandfather, Welch Pogue, was a lawyer who created the government agency now called the FAA. He owned a framed swatch of fabric from the original Wright Flyer airplane.)<\/p>\n The clean-out did not go entirely smoothly. \u201cI was still learning my craft back then,\u201d Paxton says. \u201cAnd that house really pushed me, operationally.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019d brought a portable safe to hold whatever cash, jewelry, or stock certificates the army of workers found. But on the second day of the cleanout, one of his guys stole the entire safe and never returned to work<\/p>\n Paxton filed a police report (the worker was later arrested) and reimbursed us. But if that<\/em>could happen, couldn\u2019t one of his crew members have swiped Grandma\u2019s album, sold it on eBay, and enjoyed a little bonus cash? After all, Paxton\u2019s team had expertise in identifying collectors for the random stuff they found in these houses. That\u2019s the entire premise of Paxton\u2019s latest streaming show, Filthy Fortunes<\/em>.<\/p>\n But that theory doesn\u2019t hold much water with Paxton<\/p>\n \u201cOh, not this guy,\u201d he says. \u201cThis guy didn\u2019t have that kind of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n Aaron Turner doesn\u2019t buy it, either. \u201cThey\u2019re gonna look for things that they can pocket easily, like jewelry or coins. Somebody\u2019s old photo album would be the absolute last thing that they would take.\u201d<\/p>\n Well, okay. Then here\u2019s a second theory<\/p>\n As Paxton\u2019s team purged Uncle Jack\u2019s house in 2018, they disposed of everything that was obvious trash. But anything of potential value, they arrayed on tables in a vast warehouse in Richmond, Virginia<\/p>\n Mark, Tracy, Dad, and I spent an unexpectedly delightful two days trawling through an avalanche of Pogue-ancestor ephemera. For every item in every box on every table, we had to answer an exhausting question: Will this thing ever mean anything to anyone? Or will we just wind up saddling our kids with garbage they\u2019ll<\/em>have to throw away?<\/p>\n This is humiliating to admit. But it\u2019s possible that we missed the album \u2014 or even passed over it. We never dreamed that this book, presented to us in isolation years later, might turn out to be gold<\/p>\n So suppose we did skip it. What happened to stuff that the clients left behind in that warehouse? \u201cLegally, once you pass on it, it is ours. We\u2019re allowed to do whatever we want with it,\u201d Paxton says. \u201cBut ethically, we should have shredded it.\u201d<\/p>\n But Paxton never had that chance. Shortly after our visit, he parted ways with the company he had been working for. Then the pandemic came; maintaining that huge warehouse cost his former employer a fortune. They wound up shutting down the business<\/p>\n \u201cMy hunch is, they auctioned the whole house off, all of the contents that y\u2019all didn\u2019t take,\u201d Paxton says. \u201cAnd it was probably at, like, a dollar. I mean, it was probably nothing, you know? And someone bought it and sold it online.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s how Mary Ellen\u2019s album achieved escape velocity in 2021<\/p>\n Over the course of five years, Mary Ellen\u2019s scrapbook traveled from Maryland to North Carolina, Maine, Florida, Ohio, and finally to me in New York. For the most part, its value increased with each transaction<\/p>\n And you know what? Fine. It\u2019s a treasure \u2014 a 104-year-old time capsule. It also makes me wonder, In another hundred years, what will become of our billions of phone photos? Even if the JPEG files still exist, will anyone have any interest in looking at them?<\/em><\/p>\n And how will anyone even know who\u2019s in<\/em>those pictures? \u201cNobody is making the kind of albums like Mary Ellen made anymore,\u201d Turner says. \u201cThey just don\u2019t exist. So the concept of printed photos assembled into a scrapbook with the little whimsical captions Mary Ellen wrote \u2014 the names, the places, and that kind of stuff \u2014 it\u2019s just a lost art. It\u2019s a relic of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n The Business of Selling People Their Family\u2019s Lost Photos<\/p>\n \n Related:<\/strong> \n <a href="https:\/\/yoursite.com\/automation-africa\/" title="WhatsApp Marketing<\/a> Automation Africa: 6 Dangerous Mistakes Brands Make in Nigeria”> Join Justfine Infotech<\/strong> and build real digital skills in AI, automation, web development, digital marketing, office productivity, e-commerce, freelancing and cybersecurity.<\/p>\n Available Programmes:<\/strong> WhatsApp:<\/strong>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/justfineinfotech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/3a5bba470f816b256650e0fa04af312f85-Samples-1.w710.jpg\")
\nThe album featured black construction-paper pages with handwritten captions.
\n Photo: David Pogue<\/p>\n\n
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/justfineinfotech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0d22915659e36a124e2a1c85b08983df2a-violin.w710.jpg\")
\nMary Ellen with her violin.
\n Photo: David Pogue<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/justfineinfotech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/dfbb9e59d3792c5b6659a7f087508ab25b-12-friends-in-car.w710.jpg\")
\nMary Ellen, in the driver\u2019s seat, \u201cjust after lunch.\u201d
\n Photo: David Pogue<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/justfineinfotech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/4f4b625bf2fc6842465b553b3919495b95-Envelope.w710.jpg\")
\nAurora had only 2,600 residents in 1922.
\n Photo: David Pogue<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/justfineinfotech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/bfd9aa30cc9aedd3896de89428cae535b1-J-street.w710.jpg\")
\nThe house is still in Aurora, lovingly maintained.
\n Photo: David Pogue<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/justfineinfotech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/a974c0cf16a556f97e48a6d0283f776cf0-Aaron-Turner.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
\nAaron Turner, photo sleuth, at his desk.
\n Photo: Courtesy Aaron Turner<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/justfineinfotech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/43a79d1a8b81b59e7102bf211faf7f7330-warehouse-shot.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
\nMy brother, sister, and I, and our dad in Paxton\u2019s warehouse.
\n Photo: David Pogue<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/justfineinfotech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/fc989e5ecc90a7c6732b1622058c3ce408-sweet-16.w710.jpg\")
\nA colorized photo of Mary Ellen at 16 years old.
\n Photo: David Pogue<\/p>\n
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