( CNN ) -- While most photos are digital these days , there was a time when sepia-toned hard copies of pictures were regarded as precious relics -- and families would be thrilled to get their hands on any from times past . Some lucky families were recently able to do just that , thanks to the effort of one St. Louis County , Minnesota , man . When Matt Seppo , facilities supervisor for the Chris Jensen Nursing Home , came across bags of old photographs at the center while cleaning up in 2005 , he could have just thrown them out with the rest of the trash . But he did n't . A self-described history buff and amateur genealogist , Seppo was already hooked on working with old images . `` I am a collector , '' he told HLN . `` I collected a lot of old military things for years . My interest in genealogy started when my grandmother passed down a photo album from the 1860s . '' Seppo traced his own family tree and learned that his family came to the United States from Finland in the mid-1800s . So when he discovered the photos at the nursing home , Seppo decided to take on the challenge of getting the photos back to their owners -- or at least their owners ' living relatives . But how do you trace photos that are from so long ago ? `` I started by turning them face-down , feeling thickness of paper to separate the batches . I also used stamps to discern time taken and where they were developed , '' Seppo said . He also used phone books , newspaper archives , Census information and the genealogy site of the Church of Latter-day Saints to aid his research . Seppo had the photos for eight years before he finally found a lead that connected him to what he was looking for in November . `` The big breakthrough was that finally I found some of the people they should belong to , '' he said . `` I did it on my own . I used Google for some of the research , but I 'm the last person to get a cell phone and a computer , '' he laughed . The bags contained roughly 150 photos , some of them dating as far back as 1890 . One man -- Seppo describes him as `` very distinctive '' -- appeared in many of the photos , from baby pictures to older shots . Seppo discovered his name was La Verne Swenson ( which was also written on one of the bags the photos were in ) , but that there was no link between him and the nursing home . `` I found La Verne 's brother and sister after doing some research in Wisconsin , '' Seppo said . `` I found a newspaper clipping that led me to believe that a woman named Julie Swenson was married to a man that was related to La Verne . And it turned out that La Verne 's sister , Lillian , and her brother , Olaf , had a baby -- and that was Eugene , Julie Swenson 's husband . '' The Swensons were n't the only family Seppo was able to track down . He also managed to track down the Hunter family in Cloquet , Minnesota , and give Mickey Hunter photos of his great-great-grandfather he had never seen before . `` You know more about my family than I do , '' Seppo said Hunter told him when they met for the first time . He was right , too -- Seppo had managed to find Hunter 's relative by tracing a World War I draft registration and then finding descendants of the name . While Seppo has many more photos to go through , he said he feels happy that he has finally met with some success .
Man has found objects to families in his free time . The store manager is also a history buff . Matt Seppo : ' I just could n't get them out '