Thirza's Hospital

Thirza's photograph from the 1920s has made its journey home. Cole family researcher Karen told me she received it, and then sent me something you'll surely be interested in knowing about, as well.

Remember how we discovered that Thirza Browne Cole ended up actually owning and running a hospital? What Karen sent was a copy of a local newspaper article on Thirza's presentation to the ladies' auxiliary of a current-day hospital in the same city where she lived in Lodi, California.

The newspaper clipping itself is unfortunately undated, but I suspect it was an article which ran in the Lodi News Sentinel. Since Thirza passed away in 1979, judging from her picture which accompanied the article, the report was likely written in either the 1960s or early 1970s. Unfortunately, there are no online newspaper archives carrying an extensive collection of that publication, and those dates were not included in the scanty collection of Lodi issues in the Google News archives. As for dates, we'll have to remain blissfully ignorant.

What was useful was the detail Thirza shared with the (unnamed) reporter, especially about her years after first arriving in Lodi. According to the article, "Hospitals: Past and Future discussed at Branch meeting," Thirza's medical career spanned almost forty years.

Thirza got her start in a practical way: after graduation in 1911 from the Red Cross Hospital nursing school in Salida, Colorado, in 1915, she and her husband, William Cole, moved to Lodi. At the time, Thirza had been taking care of her mother-in-law, who had recently suffered a stroke. In the course of providing that care, Thirza became acquainted with several local doctors, who then asked her to take on some of their own cases of patients needing extended care.

By the time the 1918 influenza epidemic hit Lodi, several local doctors fell ill along with their patients. This left two main doctors, operating one small hospital facility, to serve the stricken population of Lodi—at that time, a city of just over four thousand residents—and a makeshift emergency facility was set up on the upper floor of a local bank. Several "practical nurses" bore the load of caring for those smitten with the disease, and Thirza Cole was asked to take charge of the emergency center.

Not long after that—July of 1921—Thirza and her sister, Nellie Yates, together bought a nearby hospital called the Mason Hospital. This was the former home of one of Lodi's popular doctors, Wilton M. Mason, which he had converted into a hospital. Thirza and Nellie did extensive work to the facility over the years, but the building certainly wasn't anything of the magnitude of the type we think of today when we consider hospitals. There were several rooms for patients, plus a room for surgery and a room for "sterilizing." That was it.

Nor were the services at the facility as specialized as those we'd expect from a hospital today. It was not unusual, for someone undergoing surgery, to have Thirza administering the anesthetic—usually ether. Then, if X-rays were required, they might "occasionally" be done by Thirza, as well, since she had been "taught X-ray" in Colorado. As the newspaper article explained, "Nursing in those days embraced many facets usually associated today only with specialization."

If the building needed painting, the two sisters would be there, doing the work themselves. Of course, any equipment updates were a cost Thirza attended to, as well. Nellie stayed with her sister to launch the business and oversee it in its formative season, but after seven years, she returned to Colorado. Thirza operated the hospital for twenty nine years, selling it in 1949.

The building once known as the Mason Hospital is still standing today, though it certainly is no longer a hospital. In its current re-iteration, it serves as a board and care home for seniors, a much sleepier ambience than in its heyday. The old Mason Hospital sits just north of the downtown area on the same main street which traverses the entire downtown shopping district, today a tony collection of bistros, wine tasting stops and antique shops.

It was a treat to find an old photograph of the Mason home on a Facebook page called "Historic Lodi," a picture taken from the time long before its establishment as a hospital. Dr. Mason, it turns out, was one of the first residents in town to own an automobile, as documented in a photograph preserving the memory of not only his home but his horseless carriage. Click through the embedded photo from a year ago to view the actual page on Facebook and explanation of the photograph from long before Thirza Cole and her sister bought the place as one of Lodi's hospitals.

Posted by Historic Lodi CA on Thursday, May 25, 2017

Mildred Finds Her Way Home

Just a baby whose infant photograph taken in Greeley, Colorado, somehow ended up in California, Mildred "Rigg" turns out to be someone whose descendants live not far from me. And thankfully, now that I've corresponded with two of those family members, Mildred is heading on her way home.

Mildred's picture was one of several added to the photograph collection of Thirza Browne Cole, another Greeley resident who moved, eventually, to northern California. I'm still not sure what the connection was between Thirza and the family of baby Mildred—even after puzzling over it with her descendants—but I think it's safe to say it was just another token of how much Thirza seemed to care for those she met along the way in life.

As I've done for the other abandoned family photographs sent home, I first looked for descendants among those posting their family trees on Ancestry.com. With a little time and an eye to detail, it is fairly easy to determine those who have put in a lot of time on their research, as opposed to those for whom genealogy is just a passing fancy. I like to look for those for whom this means a great deal. I also like to seek out the closer relatives, rather than those over-zealous researchers (like me) who have constructed enormous trees with multiple branches of very distant cousins.

The researcher I found to make first contact with, in Mildred's case, deferred to a closer relative, and forwarded my information along to this person. I am happy to say this recipient is apparently one who has had a longstanding history of researching family, for he mentioned using Ancestral Quest as his genealogical software, a program first developed in 1994 and most often associated with the Personal Ancestral File program formerly provided by FamilySearch.

I'm always encouraged when I discover that an effort in "giving back" actually goes to benefit those who helped newbies like me, decades ago, because I recall that time period as an era in which there were so many who freely gave of their time and expertise to help others develop their genealogical research skills. This little token of rescuing abandoned family photographs is my way of giving back, in memory of folks like those, back in the 1990s, who helped me when I first tried to bridge the gap between the hand-to-hand combat of wrestling with real, live—and dusty!—documents in archives to viewing their pristine facsimile in virtual format online.

So today, off goes Mildred to a descendant who understands the efforts of genealogical research and values remembering the inter-generational connections between family.

Above: Photograph of Mildred "Rigg" from Greeley, Colorado, dated about 1898; picture currently on its way home to one of Mildred's descendants.

But Wait! Wasn't There Another Daughter?

There is one additional detail about Thirza Browne Cole, the woman whose photograph collection ended up abandoned in a northern California antique shop. You may have picked up on it, back when I discussed finding Thirza's obituary from 1979: the obituary made mention of a daughter.

She is survived by her daughter, June Buck of Lodi, and two grandchildren.

The confusing thing about that mention is that we had already seen that Thirza and William Cole's only daughter had died young in 1923. Who was this other daughter?

In order to discover anything further on this mystery person, it helps to go back to the earlier obituary of Thirza's husband, William Cole, who passed away in 1947. There, we notice a mention of someone with the same surname, Buck:

In addition to his wife, the deceased leaves a foster son, Geo. I. Buck of Lodi...

Other than that, for descendants, the same obituary mentioned only his deceased daughter, "the late Mrs. Pauline B. Lee."

So who were George and June Buck?

Going back to the 1940 census where William and Thirza Cole lived—in Lodi, California—there were two entries in their household which may help tell the tale. Although the enumerator seemed confused about how to properly report the relationships, he did include two names of interest in our current question. While there was an entry for a George I. Buck, Junior, there was also a name immediately above his in the Cole household for a single woman also bearing the surname Buck.

She, however, was not June. Her name was entered as Burnis Pauline—or possibly a sloppily written Caroline. Burnis was twenty two, and George was twenty. At first, the entry for Burnis' relationship seemed to be "relative" with a question mark included. Then, penciled in above was the word, foster, again followed by a question mark. George's entry was equally unclear, seeming first to say "son" which was lined out and replaced with the word "foster."

Checking the previous census record in 1930, George—then a ten year old boy—had again been listed in the Cole household, although then, the listing was simply as a lodger. There was no sign of Burnis, nor any hint about who June might have been.

This, of course, calls for further explanation. You know I couldn't just let it sit there. I noticed there was a record of George's World War II draft card, listing Thirza Cole as his next of kin. Yet, Thirza was not technically his closest relative. At about the same time, there was a 1940 census entry for the elder George I. Buck (remember, our George was a junior) which included a "Bernice P." Buck of the exact same age as our "Burnis" in his household.

Looking back through the years, the 1920 census offered a potential Buck household, complete with father George I. Buck, wife Althea, and including two year old "Burnis E." and infant George.

As for June, my guess was that she had married George, the Coles' foster son, though I couldn't find any marriage record online. What I did find was a sad Find A Grave memorial for George, dated years later—but during the years in which Thirza was still alive—noting that his wife was named June.

After George was gone, June must have continued maintaining the connection with Thirza. Perhaps their children grew up knowing Thirza as their grandmother, just as Thirza's obituary had listed them.

What I wonder is whether it was June who provided all the detail about Thirza's life for the newspaper article after Thirza's passing in 1979. The obituary was so full of minute details of Thirza's younger years, yet by that time, there were none of her peers to have provided that much information (unless it was from Karen's own parents, who, despite the distance between their two households, had kept in touch with Thirza since at least the 1940s).

All this may seem like a diversion from the true goal of finding Thirza's roots as we prepare to send her photographs home, but I don't think it is. Family is sometimes a concept that is more fluid than we may make it out to be. Sometimes, it just doesn't fly to tell the census enumerator, "It's complicated," about relationships. We're left reading between the lines.

Just this vignette of Thirza and William Cole's longstanding relationship to two—later three—young people who were not actually their kin reveals something about the personality of the couple we have been observing. They seem to be people who were willing to reach out to others in need, regardless of whether those others were family, friends, or lost souls desperately in need of love.  

Because She Said I Could

It may seem like I've been in a tailspin the past week or so, but behind the scenes has been some activity. This week will be the time—at last!—to start sharing how some of the photographs in the Thirza Cole collection will be going home.

But before I unwind the stories of the connections—remember, this was a collection of pictures of unrelated (as far as I can tell) individuals—I wanted to get permission to share one thing: a picture.

No, this is not another photograph rescued from an antique store in the foothills of northern California. This picture already has its home. But I think, once you see it, you will appreciate having had the chance to see it too.

The picture, you see, comes from the very person who will soon be receiving the photo of Thirza Browne Cole, herself. I am very glad to be able to send Thirza's picture home to this researcher, someone I found through her thorough family tree posted at Ancestry.com. What a collector of family photos this woman is! You can understand why it's a reassuring feeling to be able to add to her collection: family photos evidently mean much to this person, and she is willing to share them on her family tree at Ancestry.

Look carefully at the composition below, and you will see as the little girl in the center, none other than Thirza's only daughter, Pauline, the one who, widowed, died in her early twenties. Pauline's parents, Thirza and William Cole, stand behind her. Will's brother Howard and his wife Bertha complete the picture.

The picture affords us a wonderful snapshot in time for Thirza and her family—an earlier version of the woman whose picture I found, plus a glimpse at what her husband and daughter looked like, too. Of all the ones in Karen Cole Eaton's many uploaded photographs on Ancestry, I think I'm drawn to this one the most.

Thank you, Karen, for sharing so many of the Cole family memories in picture form. It's such a treat to know that Thirza's photograph is going to a family history keeper who cares so deeply about preserving the family story!

Above: Photograph of Thirza and William Cole and their daughter Pauline, standing behind William's brother Howard Cole and his wife, Bertha. Photograph courtesy of Karen Cole Eaton; used by permission.

Constructing Thirza's Timeline

Granted, not every obituary contains as much detail as the one we read yesterday for Thirza Browne Cole, the woman whose photographs I found abandoned in a northern California antique store. Someone must have provided all that information in Thirza's obituary; the question is: who? By the time of Thirza's death in 1979, she had turned 101. Obviously, she outlasted her parents, but not only that: she long outlived her siblings, as well. In addition, she had already lost her only daughter through a tragic event in the 1920s. Who was still around to tell Thirza's story—especially with that type of detail?

The story, if it is correct, does help fill in some gaps in Thirza's history. To help place these events in date order, let's reconstruct her life's timeline. Here's what we now know about Thirza:

• She was born in Greeley, Colorado, on 27 June, 1877.
• In 1892, she moved to Sargents, Colorado, with her parents, Thomas and Ophelia Browne.
• At an unknown date soon after, she moved to Cripple Creek, Colorado.
• Soon after that, she attended the Red Cross hospital school in Salida, Colorado.
• On 28 September, 1895, she married William E. Cole in Denver, Colorado.
• In March of 1897, Will and Thirza's daughter Pauline was born in Colorado.
• By the time of the 1900 census, the Coles were back in Teller County, location of Cripple Creek.
• In 1915, she "first came to Lodi" California.
• According to the 1920 census, she was living in her son-in-law's household in Fresno, California.
• Around 1921, Thirza and her sister Nellie Yates purchased the Mason Hospital in Lodi, California, presumably after her son-in-law, Ralph Lee, passed away in June.

From that point on, Thirza remained in Lodi. That's the easy part to find, since she was listed clearly in the 1930 and 1940 census, as well as city directories.

What I still have questions about are the whereabouts of her family members. As much as her sister Nellie was mentioned as her business partner in buying the hospital, the woman remained in Colorado, as far as I can tell, through at least the 1940 census. And then, there's that small question about whatever happened to their sister Mable. And that other sibling named Adelbert.

More than that, though, is the question of what became of their parents. Thomas Browne seemed to have dropped out of the picture early. And his wife? Named Ellen in one record (the 1880 census), she is called Ophelia in her daughter Thirza's obituary. Is one of those two names her middle name? Or are we talking about two different women?

This is not simply an academic question. There is another reason why I want to know what became of the Brownes. You see, there is a matter of one more photograph. And the name on the back involves the surname Browne. I'm hoping the details from Thirza's own obituary will help lead me to her parents' whereabouts when they had their own obituaries drawn up.

Learning More About Thirza

Among genealogical researchers, a well-written obituary, once found, may be considered a blessing. Not only does the article contain the essentials of the deceased's parents' and siblings' names, but it includes highlights of the person's own life.

While Thirza Cole's obituary didn't appear on the front page of the Lodi News-Sentinel, as had her husband's back in 1947, it certainly bested his in length and detail. Since our primary interest in the Cole family centers on Thirza herself, that's a good thing; we've got quite a bit more to learn about this woman whose photo collection ended up in my possession by default.

Because of the length of Thirza's obituary—which ran in the Sentinel on Monday, January 29, 1979, buried on page seventeen—I'll save most of my commentary on this obituary for tomorrow's post, with the exception, of course, of noting that yes, she did live to be 101 years of age.

 Thirza M. Cole

     Thirza M. Cole, 101, of 207 Pleasant Ave., died Saturday morning in a local hospital following an extended illness. A native of Greeley, Colo., she was the daughter of the late Thomas and Ophelia Browne who were pioneers of that area.

     At age 15, she and her parents moved to Sargent, Colo., and then to Cripple Creek and then to Salida, Colo. She graduated from the Red Cross hospital school in Salida and later became the superintendent for several years.

     In 1915 she came to Lodi and six years later, she and her sister, the late Nellie B. Yates, purchased the Mason Hospital in Lodi and operated it for a number of years.

     She was the wife of the late W. C. [sic] Cole and mother of the late Pauline B. Lee.

     She was a member of the First Congregational Church of Lodi and a charter member of the Lodi Business and Professional Club of Lodi. She was an honorary member of the Lodi Womens Club and Circle Seven of the First Congregational Church.

     She is survived by her daughter, June Buck of Lodi, and two grandchildren.

     Services will be held at 2 p.m. Tuesday in the Gierhart & Wells Funeral Home with the Rev. Paul Donovan and the Rev. Vernon V. Robertson officiating. Private committal will be in the Lodi Cemetery.

     Friends may donate in her memory to the First Congregational Church, Grace Presbyterian Church or to their favorite charity.

The Micro-Biography of an Obituary

An indispensable tool of the genealogist's trade is the obituary—as long as it is, hopefully, the micro-biography we expect it to be. There, we learn about a person's occupations, interests and family. It is in that obituary that we gain clues perhaps not found anywhere else in our family history pursuit.

As far as my search for the story of the woman whose photograph collection I've stumbled upon, we've yet to touch on that research tool. So far, thanks to clues I've found on those hundred-year-old photographs from a Jackson, California, antique shop, I've learned more about their owner's friends and neighbors than I have about the person who owned those photos, herself. It's about time we take a moment to learn more about Thirza Browne Cole and her husband, William.

Granted, we did stumble upon Thirza's childhood home in Greeley, Colorado, thanks to the inclusion of her name in the Browne household in the 1880 census. We also discovered the name of her siblings: Adelbert, Nellie and Mable. We managed to learn that the picture of baby Louise was actually a photo of Thirza's niece. But other than that, all we know is that Thirza was someone who grew up in Colorado, married, and eventually moved to northern California.

It's time to learn a bit more about Thirza, herself. Since we've yet to take a look at another traditional source of genealogical information—the obituary—we'll start with that, today and tomorrow.

Finding someone's obituary can sometimes be easy for researchers. Uncover the date of death, the location, and, thanks to the use of several newspaper archive subscription services—or, better yet, resources to find free access to old newspapers—pull up the very article as it was published.

Not so for people in Lodi, the California town where Thirza and her husband, William Cole, lived in their later years. Until the California Digital Newspaper Collection catches up with more recent dates, folks wishing to research ancestors from that modestly-sized city will either have to go there in person to crank through microfilm rolls, or be thankful that at least some of the editions of the Lodi News-Sentinel have been digitized through the auspices of Google News.

In the case of Thirza and her husband William, I looked up their dates of death, thanks to Ancestry's California Death Index, and then held my breath while seeing whether those would be my lucky dates on Google News.

In William Cole's case—the first of the Cole couple to pass away—I was indeed in luck and found the obituary quickly. William Edward Cole, the man who married Thirza Browne in Colorado, back in 1895, had lived in Lodi for thirty two years before his death on 13 July 1947. His obituary was published the very next day, Monday the fourteenth—on the front page.

During his almost seventy four years—William died two weeks before his birthday—he had seen the death of his only child, daughter Pauline Cole Lee in 1923, and her husband, Ralph Lee. Then, too, as one of six brothers, William had already lost the oldest and the youngest of his siblings. As obituaries often do, this brief article allows us to learn more about the Cole family constellation, and a bit about William's life—and his wife's interests—in the process.

     William E. Cole, a native of Vermont, passed away on Sunday morning at the family home, 209 North School street. He was 74 years of age and death followed a short illness.
     The deceased had made his home in Lodi for the past 32 years and is survived by his wife, Mrs. Thirza Cole, who has operated the Mason Hospital for the past 26 years. He was a member of the Salida, Colo., B.P.O.E. Lodge, having received his 25-year jewel.
     In addition to his wife, the deceased leaves a foster son, Geo. I. Buck of Lodi and was the father of the late Mrs. Pauline B. Lee. Brothers surviving are Clifford C. Cole, Alberton, Montana; Howard H. Cole, Lodi, and Robert R. Cole, Oakland.
     The funeral will be held Wednesday afternoon at 2 o'clock in the chapel of the Wells Funeral Home with Rev. A. R. Boone of the Congregational church officiating.

The Last Baby Picture

Bit by bit, we're working our way through the hundred-plus year old photograph collection of a woman named Thirza Browne Cole. Though I found the pictures in an antique store in Jackson, California, the origins seemed to be anything but from California. We've already observed the studio imprint on one baby picture was from Greeley, Colorado. That led to the accidental discovery that Thirza's childhood home was situated next to the household of an uncle of the young man in the second photograph.

With this last baby picture, we already had a few hints to work with in our search. First, the baby's full name was written on the back of the photograph. And second, there was a nearly-unreadable studio imprint that said—I think—"F. L. Ray" of Salida.

Salida, where? There were two possibilities: Salida in Colorado or Salida in California.

We can't be too fussy about this baby picture, though. At least it contains a full name: Louise Van Noate. So, opting for that first possibility—a baby in Salida, Colorado—off to the most recent census record I went to see how many people there were in 1940 who claimed that exact same name.

As it turned out, not many. No, actually...more than I could handle. It appears that the Ancestry.com search engine doesn't take kindly to two-part surnames. I got plenty of hits, alright, but they were for Louises with every surname imaginable starting with Van. I tried removing the space between the Van and the Noate, but that didn't help.

Well, scratch Colorado. Let's see if California produces any better results.

Yes.

But don't expect it to be for a baby Louise Van Noate. Instead, Louise was married to a Van Noate. And she lived in Lodi, California.

Same place as Thirza.

In the 1940 census, this Louise was thirty four years of age, putting her year of birth around 1906, a believable date, considering the style and appearance of her baby picture. She was born in Colorado, thus telling us just where that town of Salida was where her photographer was located. We also learn from the census that she was married to Leon, owner of a retail drug store, and had a ten year old son named William.

The 1930 census basically agreed with all that information, minus the ten years' span in ages and a change in residence—the Van Noates had moved to Lodi from Vallejo in Solano County, California.

Pushing back another ten years to the 1920 census wouldn't help our quest, though, because by then, Louise would have been about fourteen years of age and obviously not married. So we had to snoop around for other ways to discover her identity. An entry in Ancestry's California Death Index and an obituary (thankfully) posted by a volunteer on her Find A Grave memorial gave us that one clue we were seeking: Louise Van Noate was born to William and Nellie Browne Yates. And Nellie was Thirza Cole's sister.

Thus, of all the photographs in Thirza Cole's collection, the only one I've found so far who was actually a relative to Thirza was this baby Louise. And Louise was born Eleanor Louise Yates, thus explaining why the census entry we found earlier for newlywed Nellie in Colorado hadn't rung any bells: her daughter was listed in the census as Eleanor, not Louise.

Those middle names can get you every time.

Above: Photograph, circa 1906, of baby Eleanor Louise Yates, daughter of William D. and Nellie Browne Yates of Salida, Colorado. Photograph currently in possession of author until claimed by a family member.

Seeking Sisters

Searching for Brown. Or is it Browne? Or Browns? Time to activate the wildcard search technique.

Thirza may have been just the right touch of unusual as a given name, but its coupling with a surname as simple as Brown—or whatever spelling permutation it had taken over the years of governmental documentation—complicated the matter.

In order to find a descendant interested in receiving the family photographs I had rescued from an antique store up in California gold rush country, it was beginning to look like I'd need to push back another generation.

We had already discovered that Thirza and William Cole's only child, Pauline, had died in the 1920s. Of the other photos linked to Thirza's collection by her telltale first name affixed to the reverse, I had yet to figure out the identity of Baby Louise of Salida or Mildred Rigg from Greeley, Colorado—to say nothing of Ralph Pollock, the young man from who knows where.

That left me with Thirza and her two sisters—Nellie and Mable—and a surname as common as Brown. To find the sisters in a census record all in the household of their parents was going to be a challenge. For one thing, the 1920 census revealed that Thirza was born about 1879 in Colorado—hopefully, an accurate enough report to place her in the 1880 census. As for her sisters, though, the soonest they would be enumerated would be in the 1900 census, as Nellie was born about 1883, and Mable in 1886.

Problem: by 1900, Thirza was married with a daughter of her own. I'd either have to opt for a Brown household with daughters claiming names as common as Nellie or Mable, or look for Thirza the one-year-old.

I went with Thirza.

This was one of the reasons I became thankful for that unusual given name. There aren't too many Thirzas around—not even Thirza Browns.

Remember the baby photo Thirza had in her collection from Greeley, Colorado? Well, it turns out that there was a Brown family, complete with one-year-old daughter named Thirza, in the very county for which Greeley serves as county seat. The parents, according to the 1880 census, were Thomas, a thirty two year old farmer from Illinois, and Ellen, his twenty seven year old wife from Indiana.

This Brown household was not just a family of three, however. There was another daughter, an infant born in October of the previous year, 1879—making Thirza's age in the census rather suspect. This second child was listed as a daughter, and also happened to sport an unusual name (at least for a girl): Adelbert.

What caught my eye even more than that, though, was the entry which came directly beneath the line containing baby Adelbert's information. Remember Thirza's photograph of young Ralph Pollock? Just below the Brown household's entry came that of a family named Pollock. More than that, the family included a two year old son whose entry contained only the interesting place holder as "Baby."

I couldn't help but wonder whether "Baby" was actually Ralph—wouldn't you? To answer that, though, would take some more searching.

 
Above: The Weld County, Colorado, enumeration from the 1880 U.S. Census, containing the information on Thirza's family just next door to a Pollock family. Image courtesy FamilySearch.org.   

Connecting Two Sisters—no, Make That Three

Obituaries, as much as they mark sad—often tragic—events, provide family history researchers with the intel to fill in the gaps in the family constellation. When we found a transcription of the obituaries for the young couple, Ralph and Pauline Lee, posted on their Find A Grave memorials, we gained a valuable clue: Pauline had an aunt.

We already know that Pauline Lee's parents were William and Thirza Cole. It was Thirza's family photographs—each of them, no matter who the subject, marked with her name—which had started me on this quest to research the Cole family in hopes of returning the hundred-plus-year-old photographs I had found to family members.

Despite knowing Pauline's parents' names, we still had a problem: I could not locate the family unit in the 1910 census. Thankfully, when we had found the family all living together for the 1920 census, Pauline's father's name had been clearly spelled out as William E. Cole, but by the time of her death a few years later, his identity had reverted to the more formal Mr. W. E. Cole. With a name as common—and enigmatic—as that, it would be a challenge to locate the right family unit, especially if Thirza went by a middle name at the same time.

Moving back in time to locate the 1900 census—when Pauline would have been just three years of age—I did manage to find the Cole family in the enumeration, but no longer in California. By 1900, they were living in Colorado, in the newly-created Teller County on the western slopes of Pike's Peak. Young Pauline and her parents, Thirza and William, were living with his brother and mother. At that time, William's occupation was listed as "gold miner," apparently a hot pursuit on the minds of many men in that region during the turn of the century.

But who was Pauline's aunt, Nellie Yates? Was she one of the Cole siblings? Or related to Thirza's as-yet-unnamed side of the family? Thirza's husband, William Cole, was one of six siblings, as we could tell from the 1900 census, but those siblings turned out to all be brothers. Yates wouldn't fit tidily into that picture.

The hunt was on to locate the connection between Thirza and Nellie. This is one of those parts of the pursuit where I simply cannot recreate the sequence of how I uncovered the details to solve this question, but fortunately, I did locate two marriage records in Colorado which helped push the margin back another generation.

Yates turned out to be Nellie's married name. I did find her in Colorado for three consecutive census enumerations, beginning with 1910, where I learned that Nellie's husband was named William D. Yates. Together with their four year old daughter Eleanor, they lived in Chaffee County, where William worked as a locomotive engineer.

By the time of the 1920 census, the Yates family had a helpful addition: William's sister-in-law, Mable C. Browns, was living with them.

The 1910 census had indicated that William and Nellie had married in 1897, and the 1900 census had reported that the Coles had married in 1895, so I gambled on the sisters' maiden name being the same as that of William Yates' sister-in-law Mable, and tried my hand at locating some Colorado marriage records. Sure enough, William Yates had married one Nellie B. Browne on September 18, 1902, and William Cole had wed a Thirza M. Brown on September 28, 1895.

With that discovery, my next step would be to locate a Brown or Browne family with daughters named Thirza, Nellie and Mable.
    

Aftermath of a War

When troubles over the great World War escalated enough to call all able-bodied American men to register for military service, by 1917, Ralph Howard Lee was among them. Then single and just about to turn twenty five, Ralph was actually a native of Lyn, Ontario, but this Canadian had come to California as a boy with his parents and subsequently became a naturalized citizen. He was ready to serve.

Apparently, by the end of the war, Ralph had returned to his adopted home of Lodi, California, as a war hero. Respected as a "rising young business man," by the time of the 1920 census, he was newly married and living in Fresno, about a two hour drive south of his childhood home. That's where we found him yesterday, when we stumbled upon his identity while searching for our photograph collector, Thirza Cole. Ralph, as you remember, had married Thirza and William Cole's only daughter, Pauline.

Unfortunately, the only reason I know Ralph's community considered him to be a rising young business man was that that was what he was called in his obituary. I might even have missed any mention of his passing, had it not been for a Find A Grave volunteer posting a transcription of the June 7, 1921, article from the Lodi News Sentinel.

According to the news report, Ralph Lee had, some time before his June 5, 1921, passing, decided to undergo surgery for removal of his tonsils. An abscess subsequently formed in his lungs, which, in an era predating use of penicillin, became the cause of his untimely death.

It was barely over two years later when Ralph's young widow joined him. Pauline succumbed to unknown causes on the morning of June 23, 1923, at the Mason hospital, a local medical facility in Lodi. Her deceased veteran husband's comrades served as her pallbearers, and she was laid to rest next to Ralph Lee in the Lodi Memorial Cemetery, leaving behind her parents, her in-laws, and an aunt, Mrs. Nellie B. Yates—all, presumably, still living in Lodi.

The California Chapter of the "Rainbow Division," the 42nd Infantry Division, left a marker at the Lee grave site to commemorate Ralph Lee's service during the Great War, and a respectable monument was erected in memory of the young couple—in a spot on the cemetery grounds which I have undoubtedly walked past, unknowingly, several times.

All told, though, the Coles' and the Lees' residence in Lodi was a recent occurrence. It was just in 1920 that we had found them in Fresno. Before that, Pauline was not even living in California. Finding the name of that one aunt, Nellie Yates, in Pauline's obituary thus becomes our next clue in tracing the Coles—and especially Thirza—back to their origin.

  

The First Sighting

Despite all the mother-in-law jokes which ever provided fodder for comedians' acts throughout the ages, I was certainly glad to find, in the 1920 census, one particular mother-in-law in the Fresno, California, household of Mr. and Mrs. Ralph H. Lee.

Ralph, a twenty seven year old immigrant from Canada, was working in California's agricultural "Big Valley" as a buyer specializing in fruit.

Ralph's wife, Pauline, was reported in this same census to have been born twenty two years earlier, somewhere in Colorado. Besides Ralph and Pauline, there were no children in the home, but there were two other people living there: a man who was a farmer, and his wife, a "trained nurse" working in a private home in the area.

This, of course, was not just any Pauline—as I'm sure you've suspected—but the very one I've been looking for since finding the baby picture dedicated to "Thirza and Pauline." The couple living with the Lees was none other than Thirza Cole and her husband, William. Conveniently listed for us by an unsuspecting census enumerator nearly one hundred years ago, the Coles were specifically identified to be mother-in-law and father-in-law to the head of the household, Ralph Lee.

In other words, the Pauline listed in Louise Van Noate's baby photo was Thirza's own daughter.

With that discovery came others. For one thing, I learned Pauline's married name, as well as her approximate date and location of birth. I learned her father's full name—and thus, one and the same, the name of Thirza's husband.

In case, in subsequent records, the parents and daughter were to maintain separate households, I could now trace Pauline—and any potential descendants who might be interested in the photographs I've found—through the information shown here in the 1920 census about her husband's identity. Best of all, I learned that Thirza was indeed named Thirza, and not Thiega or Thieza or any other name permutation which difficult handwriting on the photos might have led me to pursue.

I happened upon this 1920 census record quite by accident. You know how it is: you open up an online service and tap in the name of the person you are seeking, and voila!, there she is in multitudes of entries. Which one to choose first? I picked at random, and am now so thankful that the haphazard choice I made was the 1920 census.

You see, that was the last census record where I'd find Pauline listed—not just as a member of the same household as Thirza, but as an entry in any record whatsoever. By the time of the 1930 census, neither Pauline or her husband were anywhere to be found.

Above: Thirza Cole, her husband William, daughter Pauline and son-in-law Ralph H. Lee, itemized in the Fresno, California, Lee household for the 1920 census. Image courtesy Ancestry.com.

A Clue from Baby Louise

Genealogy is always presented in a neatly-tied package when a researcher can ably articulate how she got from square one to the final conclusion.

When it comes to how I found the connection between some of the names in this collection of abandoned photographs from a northern California antique shop, don't count on me to supply such a tidy explanation. Yes, it was wonderful to realize I was gifted with a full name, Thirza Cole—or was it Thiega Cole?—for one of the pictures in the set. But that didn't help me connect the dots between Thirza and the other people identified in the collection bearing her name.

With the picture of baby Louise, however, I did get a viable hint. There was an inscription on the back of the photograph.

Let's face it: baby pictures are pretty nondescript. If you've seen one baby picture, you've seen them all—at least, this is how some people feel. The receipt of a baby photograph is really just a gesture of inclusion from some pretty proud parents. So this photo of baby Louise could have been from anybody—close family, distant relative, army buddy, college chum.

Thankfully, it wasn't, as I found out. Still, it took a lot of wandering about, poking through files, forming hypotheses and then seeing them dashed to the ground, crashing and burning with the discovery of subsequent documentation. I wasn't kidding when I said this search is not following any logical, linear pattern.

The note on the back of baby Louise's darling picture began, "For Thirza + Pauline" and was signed off, innocuously, "With love from the Baby."

I realize that doesn't tell us much—in my head, I'm screaming, "Whose baby?!?!"—but it did introduce a possibility. Who was Pauline, I wondered—a much more rational (not to mention, sedately-uttered) question that started my research in a solid direction. My first goal was to find a nexus between Thirza Cole and someone named Pauline.

Someone, presumably much later, had added in a different hand and color of ink, "Louise Van Noate," which will turn out to be another useful hint.

Between these two names and the one I already knew—Thirza Cole—I was ready to hunt and peck my way through online documents to see if any possibilities popped up.

Above: Reverse of photograph of baby Louise, bearing the inscription, "For Thirza + Pauline, With love from the Baby." The name, Louise Van Noate, appears to have been added later. Photograph currently in possession of the author.

The Linchpin

Having collected several photographs from one antique store in northern California, all bearing some form of the inscription, "To Thirza," I thought my task, in returning these abandoned photographs to appreciative family members, would be fairly easy. Surely, I thought, these would all be relatives somehow linked to the Thirza Cole whose photograph I also had rescued.

The more I tried to make the connection, though, the less likely it seemed that these photograph subjects were linked to each other—even remotely. With that, I was left with the 1920s photograph of Thirza Cole, an 1880s vintage likeness of Ralph Pollock, and a turn-of-the-century baby picture of Mildred Rigg.

But no connection.

There is, however, one more photograph listing Thirza's name—this time, with more than just her name, for the reverse of the baby picture contains a brief note. Better yet, it includes a full name.

For today, I'll introduce you to this baby, as well as a small detail I just noticed from the front of the photograph. Since it involves a convoluted explanation, I won't share how I figured out the connection just yet. We'll begin with that tomorrow.

As it turns out, the name on the back isn't exactly the baby's name, but just knowing the name came in handy, once I started researching what could be found about Thirza. The inscription served, later on, to confirm I was on the right track as I thrashed about, unsure of which of several research avenues to pursue.

And that small detail I just noticed? It was the imprint of the studio where the photograph was taken, but even that, at first, wouldn't have been much help to me. It was such a tiny mark as to make it difficult to read. In fact, even now, I'm not sure that it says, "F. L. Ray," but that is not what matters. The real clue is what is listed underneath the nearly illegible studio name: the studio's location in Salida.

If you think that clinches the matter, guess again. The city was given, all right, but not the state. My first thought was that it referred to a community in northern California, close to my own home. As I found out in my research, though, there is also a small town by that name in Colorado—a tip which turns out to be an encouraging lead.

So, for now, here's baby Louise. Tomorrow, we'll begin the tale of how the names on the reverse of this picture helped secure certain puzzle pieces in the right place in Thirza's bigger picture.

Above: Was that name affixed to the top of the baby picture really Louise? The handwriting made me question my own eyes. Thankfully, there was an accompanying note on the back to confirm it really was baby Louise. And the studio imprint? Salida? Nearly obliterated by the stain in the bottom right corner. Photograph currently in possession of the author.

Introducing Ralph

In researching the identities of the photographs in Thirza's collection, it would be quite handy if each of these people grew up to marry each other, or turned out to be cousins, or some other convenient and handy resolution to my research problem.

Apparently, that is not the case. The only nexus that I've been able to find, so far, is a link to the state of Colorado. Neighbors in Greeley, perhaps, but nothing more.

I can't help but think, though, that surely there is a story line weaving its way in and out of the three families we've discovered so far in this odyssey through Thirza's photograph collection. Perhaps at some point we'll discover it, but for now, it's a well-kept secret.

So we'll move on to the next photograph. Today's picture is the faded photograph I referred to the other day, one which makes me think it was taken much earlier than that of baby Mildred. This one, of the head and shoulders of a young man, bears no date or location. Though I don't know enough about photograph trends to date the style of the composition, I had thought this was an earlier type of photograph, perhaps from the 1880s, as opposed to the turn of the century date for Mildred's picture.

In a hand similar to the writing on the front of Mildred's photograph, someone had inked in the name Ralph Pollock. Just having a full name was a great help. However, trying my hand at locating a suitable census entry for someone with this man's name brought up too many possibilities. For one thing, the handwriting on the face of the card made it difficult to tell if the surname was Pollack or Pollock.

Time for a fuzzy search, I tried my hand at some guess work: what if Ralph was from the same town as Mildred? Figuring out Ralph's age and the date of the picture might make a big difference in finding the right Ralph, but it was worth a try.

Of course, to explain how I stumbled upon what I found, finally, will take another post, for there was another step in between these two that landed me on a page in a census record with a clue that nearly reached out to slap me in the face. Besides that, we have one more baby picture to examine before we arrive at that step.

In the meantime, let me introduce to you a young Ralph Pollock—yet another person whose likeness was sent with Thirza's name written on the reverse.

Above: Photograph of a young Ralph Pollock, from the collection of Thirza Cole. Undated and without any indication of location, this photograph is currently in possession of the author.

Meet Mildred

How to explain the winding path I followed from my research question to the answers I've found...

This project I've taken on to send the pictures of Thirza Cole and her (presumed) relatives back home to family has turned out to be more complicated than I thought it would be at first. Granted, despite having found her photograph in an antique store in Jackson, California, I already knew it would be unlikely that she was a resident of that area. Besides, one of the pictures I found along with hers, clearly marked "To Thirza," came from Greeley, Colorado. Whoever Thirza was, I figured she had relatives back in the then-tiny town of Greeley.

My first step, once purchasing all these photographs containing Thirza's name, was to research each of the identities indicated on the front of each picture. I tried to locate the name on the Greeley photograph, for instance, in the census records for Greeley. Some of the other photographs, though, didn't even have geographic indicators anywhere on the photograph, so I'd try searching for the name, then seek out a family connection with Thirza.

When those attempts failed me miserably, I tried another approach: just build a family tree for Thirza, herself. This was a challenge for two reasons: for one, thanks to handwriting difficulties, I wasn't sure whether her name was Thirza or Thiega; and secondly, I still had to verify whether Cole was her maiden or married name.

With all those challenges, I just kept poking through documents in several directions, grasping at any possibilities and noting them, just in case.

Now, to try and reconstruct how I found out what I've discovered about Thirza—or at least a likely candidate for her identity—I'm not sure I can replicate the search, step by step. Complicating the matter—at least for those needing a straightforward explanation—is the fact that my mind does not work like the sequential path of a reasoned outline with step one leading to step two and only then moving to step three.

My mind, unfortunately, works more in a scattershot mode. It's similar to the technique known as mind-mapping, a process co-opted by genealogist Ron Arons in his recent book, Mind Maps for Genealogy, but I assure you, I've been following that process for much longer than Ron has been teaching the method.

The challenge is to translate my haphazard mind-mapping discoveries into a logical, blow-by-blow explanation. I'm not sure I can adequately complete that task. So for the next few days, I'll just give you the splat on each of the photographs in Thirza's collection, but just be aware that I've not yet uncovered the nexus. There are still many unanswered questions.

Today, we'll start with Thirza's copy of a baby picture. The photograph, as I mentioned, is from Greeley, Colorado. It was taken by photographer F. E. Baker—although checking in Greeley publications for any indication of that studio, all I could find, much later than the time of this photograph, was an ad for F. E. Baker, the realtor and land investor. Perhaps photography as a business just didn't work out for him.

The picture's subject was named Mildred Rigg. At least, that's what the handwriting seems to say. It also looks as if the name were either over-written, or erased and then redone, or that the ink was possibly not working well on the pen. Fortunately, it was relatively easy to locate a Mildred Riggs in the 1900 census and the 1910 census, both of them in the same county—Weld County—as the town of Greeley.

This Mildred was the daughter of Millard and Josephine Riggs, and happened to be born, according to the 1900 census, in January of 1898. Thanks to some online newspaper editions of the Greeley newspaper, plus some other documents found at Ancestry.com, I was able to locate a few more details about this Mildred, but not anything to sufficiently explain her link to our Thirza. Of course, that is provided that Mildred Rigg and Mildred Riggs are one and the same Greeley resident.

Above: Undated photograph of baby Mildred Rigg of Greeley, Colorado; photograph currently in possession of author.

Thirza's Photograph Collection

In seeking to return abandoned photographs to family members who will cherish them, I try to pay attention to all the details clustered around that photograph. Any names or locations mentioned or indicated, of course, would be prime items to research, but in the case of Thirza—or Thiega—Cole, I not only have the clues from the back of her portrait, but a welcome cache of other pictures with at least her first name attached to them. I suspect what I have is a part of her collection of family photographs—which, for our purposes, is a good thing.

Today, I'd like to introduce the main characters from this collection, as best I can read their names from the various handwriting samples found on their pictures. Some of them are part of this collection for sure, guaranteed by the name "Thirza" added to the reverse of each picture. One, at least, is likely part of Thirza's family, though I can't tell for sure; the name is so common, and besides, her name isn't added to the back.

Only one of those photographs has a studio imprint affixed to the front. It happens to also be the picture with the name that I have the most difficulty reading. It's a baby picture taken in Greeley, Colorado by the photographer F. E. Baker. The name above the baby's head looks like Mildred Rigg.

Another baby picture, this one without any mention of a location or studio imprint, simply bears the name Louise, though there is a note on the reverse for Thirza.

Yet another photograph looks to be the oldest of the three. It's a faded image of a young man, with the handwritten name above his head reading Ralph Pollack.

The only thing the three of these photographs have in common is the fact that the name Thirza is handwritten on the back. At first, I hoped that these were three individuals related to our Thirza, but now that I've been thrashing around the Internet's vast array of genealogical records, I'm not finding any such connections.

I'll begin by introducing each photograph in turn, one each day, and noting any possibilities for subjects. Of course, if a link to Thirza manifests itself in this cursory review, I'll make note of that as well. Meanwhile, I have plenty of work to do to prepare the rest of the story about Thirza, herself. If I have the right person, she is turning out to have an interesting life, indeed.

Above: Inscription from the back of one of the baby photos I found at a northern California antique shop. This is the clearest handwriting of all those pictures which include that name, which in this case is clearly Thirza, not Thiega. This inscription was written on the back of a photograph from Greeley, Colorado; the front has the name Mildred Rigg written above the baby's head in a different hand.

Taking a Peek Behind the Scene

There is a lot of guesswork involved in returning an orphaned photograph back to family. And, in juggling the information attached to multiple possibilities, the search also requires a way to organize all the findings. But to shelter those potentially false leads from a gullible genealogy public, the search also needs to proceed under cover—somewhere hidden so that others won't be tempted to copy those false leads as if they were verified truth.

In other words, I need a hiding place to park my trees-in-progress.

I learned this tactic from my mystery cousin, the adoptee who turned out to be an exact match to my matriline. If you remember, shortly after this cousin contacted me three years ago, thanks to our mutual mitochondrial DNA test results at Family Tree DNA, he was able to figure out—and subsequently meet—his birth mother. He explained to me what he learned from the volunteer "search angels" who helped him with his research: adoptees build several tentative family trees, actually plugging into a pedigree chart several possible, though not yet proven, names.

For the most part, this hypothesis-testing process serves to trigger "hints" for Ancestry trees, which then can be evaluated for plausibility. Obviously, more hypotheses end up being discarded than kept. But because they are not true family trees, all this guesswork needs to be done under cover. That's why adoptees—and the search angels who help them—often set up private trees, rather than public ones, on Ancestry. To add one more layer of protection, they change the privacy setting on the tentative tree so that it can't even be found in search results.

Taking my cue from my mystery cousin—who has since gone on to help many other adoptees, himself—when I work on sending an abandoned photograph home to family, I use the same process. So, for Thirza Cole—or whoever she turns out to be—I set up a private, unsearchable tree on Ancestry and started building her pedigree. In addition, I set up a file folder in my computer for pictures, and another file folder under documents for any auxiliary material I find on the family. That way, as I chase after all the possibilities, I have a place to park the photos and documents I run across.

As it turns out, there was someone by the name of Thirza Cole. The surprising first discovery about Thirza was that, despite my traveling to the foothills of northern California to find her, she turned out to live in the same town as the first antique store where I had begun my quest to reunite orphaned photographs with family. Since that place is so close to my home, I've had ample opportunities to head to the very place where Thirza lived and worked for most of her adult life.

Not to put a wet blanket over that enthusiastic discovery, but just in case, I also did a search for the alternate name I found on the photographs—Thiega. If you, as I did, thought that there would surely be no such name, think again. Apparently, Thiega is a thing. There were several hits for that term as a given name, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. To do a thorough search, I'll need to attend to that due diligence requirement to ascertain which of the two names this really turns out to be—or whether I should be looking for two women instead of one.

Meet Thirza

We're about to explore the possibilities for identifying another mystery photograph subject. This time, our task will not be simply to return one old photograph back to family members, but four—and possibly more. The key will be to determine whether the name added to the back of each of these photographs is one and the same, and whether several different handwriting samples were all referring to the same woman.

There's no way to gradually introduce the suspected subject of this search, so I will start out with the splat: the photograph of the one woman which included not only that unusual given name—Thirza—but a surname as well. As I mentioned last Friday, I suspect the name which links each of these photographs will either refer to one person or to two. The handwriting on some clearly spelled out Thirza. The shaky hand on the others sometimes looked like Thiega.

I found all of these photographs in an antique shop in Jackson, California, a northern California town sometimes remembered for its former glory days as part of California gold rush country. One of the photographs came with the imprint of a studio in Greeley, Colorado; the others had no geographic location specified. The time span represented by these pictures likely included more than one generation of a family—if, indeed, these are photographs from the same extended family. The earliest one I'd guess to be from the 1870s or possibly earlier. The most recent one was a portrait of Thirza with a handwritten note on the reverse, "about 1920."

That, unfortunately, was one of the pictures with the name that looked more like Thiega than Thirza, but the handy thing about it was that it came with a surname: Cole.

I decided my first attempt at identifying the subject was to go with the name from the majority of the other photographs, and start out with the assumption that the person I want to research was named Thirza Cole. Whether that will turn out to be a false lead, we'll soon find out. Kept in balance by the handwritten names affixed to the front of the other photos, I'm going to trust in the FAN principle—Friends, Associates and Neighbors—to either corroborate my assumptions or rule them out entirely.

Above: Photograph of a woman named either Thiega or Thirza Cole, with the added notation, "about 1920." Found in a northern California antique store, the photograph was evidently removed from a frame to which it had been taped. The photograph as shown here is cropped from its original size. The damage visible at the top of this scan of the original was mild, compared to the damage across the lower border. Photograph currently in possession of the author.