(UPI) A West Virginia antiques dealer is trying to identify the people pictured in a nearly 100-year-old wedding photo so the item can be turned over to the family.

Darren Mayfield, who runs online antique store The Plastic Pendulum with his wife, Glenda, said he came across the old black-and-white photo while picking through items in the stockroom of a Wellsburg florist.

The photo depicts nine women of various ages in white dresses at a wedding. The photo does not have a date, but the back bears the mark of The Thomas Studio, a photography business that operated from 1915 through 1930 in Huntington.

Mayfield said he wants to find the descendants of the people in the photo so he can present it to the family.

"I honestly couldn't tell you why I feel so compelled to find its family," Mayfield told The Herald-Dispatch newspaper. I just feel that things like these are so important to our culture and personal identity. It has always broken my heart to go to these sales and see all these family memories left behind.

Mayfield said his local investigations have not yet resulted in any solid leads, so he is now asking social media users to join in the hunt for the family.

"I hate to see what we've learned in the past just fade into memory," he said. It's importantly personal to me that we always have some ties to the past. That, and it really is just a lovely photograph.

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