Free to Use and Reuse: Families

This selection of serious and humorous family portraits and activities concentrates on the 1800s to the 1940s–the time period when most of the Library's free to use and reuse images were created. All pictures are from the Prints & Photographs Division unless otherwise credited. Browse more content that is free to use and reuse

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  Summit Avenue Ensemble, Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Thomas Askew, 1899. (The photographer's five sons and a neighbor)

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  Sauk family. Photo by F.A. Rinehart, Omaha, 1899.

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  Montgomery, Alabama. Marvin Johnson, truck driver, reading "funnies" to his two children. Photo by John Vachon, 1943

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  Lucy Stone holding her daughter Alice Stone Blackwell. Daguerreotype photo, 1857 or 1858

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  Mexican baby with sister, San Antonio, Texas. Photo by Russell Lee, 1939

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  Nomadic Kirghiz on the Golodnaia Steppe (present-day Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan). Photo by Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii, 1905-1915

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  Ambassador Katsuji Debuchi and his daughter Takako Debuchi (at right) visit the cherry blossoms in Washington, DC. Photo by National Photo Co, 1929

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  Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Nipomo, California. Photo by Dorothea Lange, 1936 (Part of the "Migrant Mother" series)

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  Homesteader feeding his daughter at the Pie Town, New Mexico, Fair free barbeque. Photo by Russell Lee, 1940

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  The happiest refugee. Baby gets his sunny disposition from his father who is happy to reach the American Red Cross relief station. Finland News Service, 1919-1929

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  For Home and Country - Victory Liberty Loan. War poster by Alfred Orr, 1919

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  Family moving into trailer at the Farm Security Administration camp for defense workers, San Diego, California. Photo by Russell Lee, 1941

• The Washington family--George Washington, his lady, and her two grandchildren by the name of Custis. Painted and engraved by Edward Savage, 1798

• Five generations on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina. Photo by Timothy O'Sullivan, 1862

• African American soldier in Union uniform with wife and two daughters. Civil War tintype photo, 1863-1865

• Freedman's National and Family Record. Print by Strobridge & Co., 1873

• Family record of [blank]. Color print by Chapman Bros. Lith. Chicago, 1888

• Mrs. Frazer Baker and children. Family of the murdered postmaster at Lake City, So. Carolina. Photograph by J.E. Purdy, 1899

• Group of Hatfields-McCoy feudist with women & children, Welch, W. Va. Photo by T.F. Hunt, 1899

• Telegram, Orville Wright to Bishop Milton Wright announcing the first successful powered flight, 17 December [1903].

• Starting Supper: Flathead Reservation. Stereograph photo by Norman A. Forsyth, 1908

• A family working in the Tifton (Ga.) Cotton Mill. Mrs. A.J. Young works in mill and at home. Photo by Lewis Hine, 1909

• High up on the top floor of a rickety tenement, 214 Elizabeth St., N.Y., this mother and her two children were living in a tiny one room and were finishing garments. Photo by Lewis Hine, 1912

• Four immigrants and their belongings, on a dock at Ellis Island. Photograph, 1912

• The Rocket Book. By Newell Peter, 1912

• Office de renseignements pour les Familles disperses. World War I poster by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, 1915

• A Promise to Mother. World War I sheet music by Emma Myers Masters, 1918. Music Division

• That Family Called the U.S.A. World War I sheet music with words and music by Billy Downs, 1919. Music Division

• Teddy Roosevelt's letter to his son Quentin. April 16th, 1903. (First page) Manuscript Division

• The Job of Being a Parent. Federal Art Project, WPA poster by Kreger, 1936-1939

• Spanish-American family eating dinner. Chamisal, New Mexico. Photo by Russell Lee, 1940

• Jack Whinery and his family, homesteaders, Pie Town, New Mexico. Photo by Russell Lee, 1940

• Greenbelt, Maryland. Family strolling on Sunday. Photo by Marjory Collins, 1942

• Tōyō Miyatake Family at the "Manzanar Relocation Center" (incarceration camp). Photo by Ansel Adams, 1943

• Buffalo, New York. Patsy Grimm helping to do all the housework. Their mother, a twenty-six year old widow, is a crane operator at Pratt and Letchworth. Photo by Marjory Collins, 1943

• Lititz, Pennsylvania. Brothers. Photo by Marjory Collins, 1942

• Carol M. Highsmith, age 4, with her sister Sara at her grandmother's farm in Madison, North Carolina. Photo, 1949

• Two children enjoying the commotion caused at meal time. Chromolithograph by Archibald Willard Published by J.F. Ryder, 1874

• Cole Bros. Circus. Nelson Family. Poster by Erie Lithographic Co., 1935 or later

• Ringling Bros. Circus poster by Courier Litho. Co., 1900

• "Mind the children, finish the washing, and have dinner at 12." Stereograph by Whiting View Company, 1900

• Duncan Sisters. Photo by Bain News Service, 1920s

• The Marx Brothers, top to bottom, Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo. Photo 1931

• Grandpa's Family Restaurant near U.S. Route 66 in Crawford County, Missouri. Photograph by Carol Highsmith, 2021

• A Promising Family: Black and Tan. Lithograph by Currier & Ives, 1868

• Cat and Kittens. Chromolithograph by William Schaus after a painting by Henrietta Ronner,1867