Tin type wallet size photo.. any clue who?

So I have 4 of these not sure who they r but I found them years ago cleaning out an house before it was demolished I'm here in oklahoma. And the house was a Denist of Frank Phillips. Anyone have any info on these?

 

It's a tintype, so 1860s maybe into the 1870s. Not the best photographer - he got his fingerprint in the emulsion. The photographer could even have been your dentist; lots of people did two jobs back then.

 

Not my dentist... frank Phillips dentist

 

Sad to say that the vast majority of photos from this era are just ordinary people. Sad because what ever family they came from no longer have any idea who they are. I even have some myself - I created a whole pile of "unknown" when I was organizing the multiple boxes of old pictures my mother had stashed away. I kept them just in case some day I'll figure them out. No one else was interested.

 

About 15 years ago I attacked boxes of family albums. Scanned all the pictures that I did not know and emailed or mailed them to all our 'older' family members. Believe it or not, got about 5 IDs. All those members are gone now. Glad I did it when I did.
Virdendale, have you searched copies of old local newspapers?
Patd

 

Agreed! It's usually not possible to identify people in a tintype. Also, tintypes persisted in the U.S. until the 1920s, although the latest ones were generally for specialized uses like tourist/arcade photos. The one posted here is 19th century.

Try looking at the back of it, with the light raking it from an angle, to see if there happens to be anything written on the back. It would be scratched in, since the back is dark metal. I've found interesting writing on a few in my collection. The majority don't have writing, though.

 

Oh, and if this came out of an album, do you have the album? Sometimes ID's were written in the albums.