Dr. Connor Robins uses his time machine to grab extinct animals who are about to die anyway (since things break down if he tries to alter the past), and he also a young actress who died in a 1920s fire.

Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch, an avid geologist and writer, died of breast cancer shortly after this story was published.
—Michael Main
You could steal all the cells you wanted to use in cloning, or some sperm and ova. Anything, provided that the interaction changed nothing about their time-stream. We could even pull some of the bodies forward.

Variants

(1)
  1. “A Touch Through Time” by Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch, in Past Imperfect, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff (DAW Books, October 2001).
    2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Kathleen M. Massie-Ferch