Very cool. I ventured into the family photo scanning project as well. Scanned all my fiance's family photos first, then mne. All told there were close to 6,000 images scanned. And, like you, I found some vintage images of people I didn't recognize as well. They are really old posts, but I thought you might like to see them...
https://ecency.com/photography/@winstonwolfe/w-w-s-vintage-family-photo-collection-006-mystery-people
That is a lot of scanning! I've done hundreds, but the suitcases full that are left seem daunting and I can't seem to get started.
Did you have a way to scan multiple images at a time?
I do. So I tend to swap back and forth between my Canon and Epson scanners, depending on which one's behaving better at any given time. Either way, in the scanner software there should be a way to "Preview" what's on the scanner bed. When it gives you the preview, you should have a tool that allows you to draw boxes around each individual image you have Tetrised onto the scanner bed, and I always have every image set to scan at the highest resolution the scanner can give me. When you hit "Scan", it'll scan the contents inside each individual box you drew, outputting each one into their own image file.
Oh! Good to know. I'll see if I can get that figured out. Thank you. That would be valuable.