I am working on scanning and recording hand written notes on about 100 years of family photos (1880-1960). Is there some software similar to ancestry.com that would allow me to tag and date photos in high resolution, and would love to have facial recognition but no idea if that's even possible. Having it shareable, but not fee/membership based for each viewer would ideal. Does something like this exist?

I don't have the answer to your question, but I will share a tip with you. I inherited a lot of old photos taken in the 1890's and early 1900's. Most, but not all were mounted on card board. I went to have them copied and put on a disc. By chance, we xeroxed some and used a yellow filter. Most of the photos had oxidated or had some kind of fading going on. By using a yellow filter, the copy turned out to have total clarity, so much more than the original. Hell in one photo of my great grandfather's farm, I could now see two dogs that I had never seen before. Take a few to a Kwik Kopy or someone with a little know how and see if this will work for you. If it does, your scanned photos will be so much better. I wrote an article about great grandpa. The editor wanted to see the original photos. We used the filtered xerox copies when it was published.