Used bookstore searches for owner of antique photo album lost at Milwaukee Airport

When the worn, leather-bound photo album turned up in his bookstore at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport, Alex John knew this was one book he was not going to try to sell.

John is the owner Renaissance Books, a quirky used bookstore that’s been catering to travelers at the airport for decades. He has plenty of experience with very old and often valuable books.

But this one was clearly someone’s personal treasure and a long-guarded piece of a family’s history.

“My instinct right away was like, hey, this clearly belongs to someone,” he said.

The elaborately tooled book is a family album that appears to be a more than a century old — its fragile pages filled with dozens of tintype portraits of frowning babies in stiff dresses, serious looking men with whiskers, women in elaborate 19th-century gowns.

The book, John said, reminds him of “a wizard’s spell book.”

The album was left behind for months in the terminal’s lost and found before airport staff brought it to the bookstore for safekeeping. It isn’t unusual for things to be left behind by travelers. A Mitchell spokesperson said about 170 items end up in the lost and found each month, often small items like keys or glasses.

“They brought over the book, and basically explained that, ‘We don’t want to dump this to Goodwill after it goes unclaimed, so we’re gonna give it to you guys,’” John said. 

Bookstore staff member Morgan Taylor used the shop’s Instagram page to try to share the album’s story.

“We need to reunite this book with his rightful owners,” she said in the video. “We would love to get this back to the family it belongs to. I’m sure you are missing this. In the meantime, it’s in safe hands here at Renaissance Books.”

The story was picked up by local Milwaukee television stations.

After spreading word on social media, John received a lead from a genealogist about a possible family connection. But no one has claimed the book yet.  

While they wait for possible contacts from family, John and the staff has tried to do some research on names found on some of the photos. And they are handling the book with care.

“I kind of hold my breath when I go to turn the page,” John said. “The first page is crackling and falling apart.”

Some of the photos were taken by a man named J.S. Medlar of Illinois. He was one of the first photographers in the state, according to the Woodstock Public Library Archives. Medlar died in 1898. He typically shot portraits of leading figures in northern Illinois.

“It’s cool to be part of the story of the thing, right? It’s kind of like a privilege to be part of the story,” John said. “You never know when something interesting is gonna kind of happen. Yeah, I’ve been lucky to have that experience.”

And now he’s hoping that luck will help return a family’s history to its rightful owner.

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