The Tinker family settled in Bedford, Ohio sometime in the early 1800s. The earliest image in the family archive was taken in approximately 1865 and is a sepia photograph of George C. Tinker, a prominent citizen of Bedford. Most of the early photographs of the Tinker family were taken in Bedford, Ohio. In the early part of the 20th century, George Tinker's son Clare married Gertrude Myrtle Strahle (or Straley) of Cleveland, Ohio. The photographs from the Strahles were taken in Cleveland. Clare and Gertie lived at 2222 W. 93rd Street in Cleveland and had one son, Keith David Tinker, who married Rita Rowinski in 1942. They in turn had two children, Penelope Ann Tinker and Debra Ann Tinker. Penelope has two children, Keith David Sprochi and Amanda Kay Sprochi. Debra has two children with her husband Charles Enos, Christopher Tinker Enos and Matthew Tinker Enos.
The archive of family photographs consists of thousands of images collected by various family members over the last 150 years. Documented among the photographs are the surveying of the Cuyahoga County Metroparks system, undertaken by Keith D. Tinker during the 1930s; the South Pacific during the years of World War II; family life from the Victorian era to the present; and the pictorial history of the Bedford and Cleveland areas during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The photographs depicted here serve as an introduction to the family and a historical record of the earliest available images in the archive.