Examining Another Possibility

There are some states which provide genealogists with exactly the information they are seeking: scans of documents with full information on, say, the two parties who are about to say, "I do." As I'm finding out, Nebraska is not one of those states.

It would be handy to be able to look up the marriage record for Adolph Brockman and Verna Nieman—or, in some cases, the spelling shows up as Neiman—but, barring a quick trip to the brisk clime at Nebraska at the start of autumn, we have no other recourse.

Yes, it would be helpful to know the exact date when Adolph and Vernie tied the knot, but it would be even more helpful if we could browse through the records in Cuming County, Nebraska, to see if, by chance, any other Brockmans had gotten married at about the same time. More to the point, it might also be helpful if we could peruse any entries for the Nieman family, too.

Here's why. Let's revisit the wedding photograph shared with us by Jeff in Oregon, labeled with Adolph and Vernie's names. Remember when we first saw that and realized the Adolph in Jeff's picture wasn't quite the same as the man whom our label had told us was Adolph Brockman? The young gentleman in our photo looked similar to the man standing to the far right in the wedding party for Jeff's photo.

That man was Adolph's brother William. The only problem was: I can find no marriage records for William Brockman. He is listed as single in the 1920 census, the 1930 census (as W. E. Brockman), and the 1940 census. Besides, he reported himself to be single in the draft registration for the first world war, and for the second world war, we can infer the same from his listing his mother's name and address as closest contact, rather than a wife or child. Even at his burial place at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver, I don't see any indication that his headstone also bears an entry for a spouse.

To complicate matters, there was another William Brockman in Nebraska. Born in Cuming County, Nebraska, a little over a year before our William, this William did get married—to Verda, a name almost too similar to our Adolph's wife Verna's name—and was living, by the time he registered for the draft, in Pilger, Nebraska.

However, following the whereabouts of our Brockman family, we know the parents and the younger Brockman children moved from Nebraska to Morgan County, Colorado—and that our William ended up in the same location, as well. Whoever that other William Brockman was—and he could likely be another relative—we can be certain our singleton William was a different person.

When I brought that photo identity puzzle up to Jeff—after all, he is a Brockman, and should know a little bit more about his family than a stranger like I am—he suggested an alternate identity. You see, Adolph married a woman from a neighboring family in Cuming County, whose surname I've seen spelled, alternately, Nieman or Neiman. By the time of the 1910 census, Verna Neiman had two older brothers and two younger sisters.

If you notice from the wedding photo Jeff shared with us, there were some Niemans listed in that wedding party, namely one unidentified sister, and Verna's brother Frank. Jeff posited that perhaps the wedding photo I found in that antique store in northern California might have actually been that of Verna's brother's wedding, rather than her own. That may be a possibility—or perhaps Verna's other brother might have been the one. We'll take a closer look at that, tomorrow.

Above: Wedding photo of Adolph and Vernie Nieman Brockman of Nebraska, shared by Jeff in Oregon, a Brockman descendant; used by permission.

Photo Updates

The verdict is in: yes! Ralph is going home, too. Well, I mean his photo, that is. I heard from the Pollock descendant who gave me all that fascinating detail about Ralph's life after he left his childhood home in Colorado, so now I have directions on where to send young Ralph's photograph.

Out of all the photographs marked "Thirza," I have yet to track down a Van Noate descendant for the hundred year old picture of baby Louise. I mentioned the other day about posting baby Louise's photograph on our local genealogical society's Facebook group, and I did get a few general suggestions, and one member sent me a rather complete copy of the family's tree. But as for how to contact a living descendant, well, the best suggestion was to try poking around on Facebook.

So I did. And found someone. The problem is, no matter where I look, I can only find rather distant relatives. The same went for the trees on Ancestry.com. There were about six different Ancestry subscribers who had Louise in their family tree, but every one of those trees was posted by someone who must be much like me—a little bit too enthusiastic about their genealogy. And what I'm seeking is a close relative, not a seventh cousin twice removed. But, using another tactic, I found that possibility.

The nexus is a grandchild of Louise's husband's brother. At least, I think that's the connection—and, trusting that the trees where I found the family line are actually accurate, it looks like that's the closest I'll get to contacting someone who might know how to get in touch with Louise's grandchildren.

Of course, that leaves the squishy part of contacting a stranger, out of the blue. It is definitely so much easier to research dead people. Even sending an email to a living descendant of a dead person isn't too difficult. But going straight to a relative of a relative of a relative—who doesn't even show the slightest interest in genealogy—well, that's a challenge I'm not sure I'm up to. Yet.

Give me a couple days and we'll see whether I chicken out. Baby Louise may just have to remain in that folder on my desk until a closer relative stumbles upon this post via our research assistant, Google.

  

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.

Still Stuck

Whatever technical glitch locked up my longstanding account at Ancestry, I'm not sure, but I do know—at least after ninety minutes of phone conversation—that it is a problem which will take at least another day to resolve, if not more. I can guess about the source of my difficulties, but hey, I'm not the tech expert.

So I wait.

Meanwhile, Thirza's father Thomas Browne continues to elude me. It didn't help, of course, that he didn't quite make it to the 1900 census. But it wouldn't have hurt, either, if those other census records could have provided a consistent report. Right now, I'm not sure which one to believe.

I already knew something was suspect with the 1880 census. Granted, the Brownes were nearly newlyweds, with their daughter Thirza only one year of age, as reported in that census year. And yes, their home in Weld County, Colorado was home to a town—Greeley—which had been established only eleven years earlier as an experimental utopian society and didn't gain official city status until 1886. With a history like that, it would not be surprising to learn that residents had come from all over.

Thomas Browne's entry, however, seems to have been left blank in the original. The handwriting for the report of his place of birth—as well as that for each of his parents—seems to be quite different from that of the rest of the enumeration sheet. All three blanks were entered in a different hand than the rest of the form, with the abbreviation "Ill." Yet, for both his daughters, the spot for their father's birthplace was left blank. One wonders what the case actually was for this scenario.

Waiting to verify with the next census does us no good, as we've already discovered Thomas' likely demise by 1892. And trying to find him in the previous census, as a single man with the oft-bemoaned common surname Brown would be next to impossible. Even taking the presumptive move of searching for a Thomas Brown with parents Timothy and Caroline brought up nothing of use.

There was one other solution, though—and one I'd already begun exploring. Remember the 1885 Colorado state census? The one where I got baited by the 1880 discovery of next-door neighbors Harvey and "Baby" Pollock and went off on a rabbit trail to discover whether "Baby" was Ralph? Well, I forgot to go back and see if I could find Thirza's family whereabouts in 1885.

So now's the time to check that out.

With this one document, I now have the only other resource upon which I can pin the birth location of our specific Thomas Browne. Hopefully, this one was a more accurate report. Whether it was or not, though, one thing is certain: neither Thomas' father nor mother were reported born in Michigan. The verdict on this pursuit, according to the 1885 tally?

Thomas was from Ohio, and both his parents from Pennsylvania.

While it doesn't cement any connections between the younger Browne and his (potential) parents in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this 1885 record at least provides us a picture of the entire Browne family—sans the one child lost in infancy—in one place.

Above: Excerpt of 1885 Colorado state census for the city of Denver in Arapahoe County, showing Thirza Browne Cole's childhood household. Image courtesy FamilySearch.org.

Finding Ophelia

Remember back last month, when I was wondering how to find Thirza—that woman whose abandoned family photographs I found in a northern California antique shop—and opted for searching in census records for her name plus parents, instead of looking for the younger siblings with the more common given names?

Well, I should have looked for Nellie and Mabel Browne, too—because they were the ones who held the key to figuring out what happened to Thirza's parents.

Amend that: I still don't know. Not really. Not the whole story. But I did find some convincing records, based on Nellie and Mabel being in the same household as someone named Ophelia. Only she wasn't still called Ophelia Browne. She had gotten married again.

It was the timeline in Thirza's own obituary, years later, which told me I might have the right family. After all, according to Thirza's obituary, she had moved to Sargents, Colorado, in 1892—"with her parents," the obituary had stated. And there, eight years later in the 1900 census, was a family with a Nellie and a Mabel "Brown" listed.

Only thing was, they were labeled as step-daughters to the head of the household, someone named Henry C. Allen. It would be logical to assume, then, that Henry's wife, Ophelia Allen, would be the mother of those two teenagers.

If Ophelia was the former wife of Thomas Browne, Thirza's father, then what happened to Thomas? The 1900 census said Henry and Ophelia were married for seven years, giving us an approximate year of 1893 as the date of their wedding. As it turns out, there was a marriage performed by a judge in Cañon City, the county seat of Fremont County, Colorado, on January 18, 1893. The two parties, aggravatingly, were listed simply as H. C. Allen and O. E. Brown, but their respective ages of fifty four and thirty seven seem to line up with the ages in the census seven years later.

Thanks to my brilliant deductive powers, that leads me to believe something must have happened to Thomas Browne during the year of 1892. As for proving that assertion, I have nothing yet to go by: no record that I can find—at least online—of his death or burial. All I have is the presumption that, since his wife remarried, she had been left a widow. Back in that time period, such logic could sometimes be held up—though not always.

As for Ophelia Ellen, formerly Browne, now Allen, there was a better "paper" trail. With a headstone boldly proclaiming her name as Ophelia Ellen Allen, Thirza's mother was buried, back home in Greeley, Colorado, in June, 1908. 

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.

Back to the Babies

With the explanation of who Ralph Pollock was—and a glimpse into how he might have been connected to Thirza Browne Cole, the woman whose photo collection included Ralph's young likeness—I'm ready to send young Ralph off to a waiting descendant. More on that next week.

In the meantime, we have two baby photos from Thirza's collection to dispatch to their rightful owners, as well. We haven't really talked much about one of them—labeled Mildred Rigg—so let's take a closer look at what can be found about her today.

Mildred's photo, if you remember, was the only one of Thirza's collection which included a studio imprint with location. That was our first and only hint that there was a family connection to Greeley, Colorado—helpful, since I had first found Thirza and her family in California.

A note on the back of Mildred's photograph said simply, "To Thirza," but I have yet to figure out just how the families were connected. For one thing, while the Riggs family did live in the same county as Thirza's parents—Weld County—the 1900 census showed them living in Crow Creek. In 1910, they were still in the same county, but this time listed in Lucerne. In contrast, I could only locate Thirza's parents—Thomas and Ellen Browne—in Weld County in the 1880 census. Where they went after that, I've yet to discover. So why did the Riggs family send Thirza Mildred's baby picture?

Mildred's parents, Millard Riggs and Josephine Miller, had married in Greeley in 1897. Mildred was their firstborn, arriving almost exactly a year later and followed by a brother and then a sister.

On August 7, 1918, Mildred married Earl Stanley in Greeley, and the couple could be found there in the subsequent census enumeration in 1920. The Greeley Daily Tribune recalled that wedding in a column entitled "Nineteen Years Ago" when it reprinted the newspaper's original announcement of the wedding:

A very charming childhood romance was that which culminated Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 7, in the wedding of Mildred Mercedes Riggs and Earl Stanley. The young couple had known each other since school days and the marriage was the happy result of a long friendship which ripened into love.

Baby Mildred was now about to have a baby daughter of her own: Mercedese Earline Stanley, who was born in 1925. Like Mildred's own childhood family, her daughter Mercedese in the next generation was followed by a son and then another daughter for Mildred and her husband Earl. But before that second baby could arrive in the Stanley household, the family moved from northern Colorado to southern California. By the time of the 1930 census, pipeline welder Earl Stanley had moved his family to Long Beach.

Finding the family now in California makes researching Mildred's descendants a bit easier, as any Ancestry.com subscriber who has searched for family in that state can attest. I was quite surprised to discover that one of Mildred's grandchildren had actually shown up in one of those Ancestry public records databases giving an address in the same city where I live. Of course, that was over twenty years ago, but what are the chances? Better yet, I also found out that same person is an Ancestry subscriber. You can be sure I sent that Riggs descendant a message!

Mildred, herself, lived eighty nine years, dying in Los Angeles in 1987. She was buried in a cemetery in Whittier, California, according to a memorial at Find A Grave, though there is no confirming picture accompanying the entry.

While I may never learn just what the connection was between Thirza Browne Cole and the Riggs family of Greeley, Colorado, there was obviously some reason why Millard and Josephine Riggs decided to send a photo of their newborn to Thirza. Perhaps that is an unspoken token of just what kind of person Thirza was. I am beginning to worry that I might never learn what the significance of such gestures actually meant, but I am seeing a person take shape in my mind who believed in keeping connections alive with those who meant something to her in her earlier years.

Above: Photograph of baby Mildred "Rigg"—actually, Riggs—from the photography studio of F. E. Baker in Greeley, Colorado. Based on Mildred's date of birth—26 January 1898—that makes this picture one hundred twenty years old. Photograph currently in possession of the author until claimed by a family member.

The Rest of Ralph's Story

In trying to learn about this young man portrayed in an abandoned photograph I found, figuring out who Ralph Pollock's parents were may have resolved one question, but that obviously led us to other questions. Mainly, if Ralph's father was still alive—not to mention, remarried—why wasn't Ralph still living at home? Why was he living with an aunt and uncle, even as early as the 1885 Colorado state census record for Greeley, just four years after he was born?

If Ralph's father, John Pollock, had been in such a rush to remarry, the presumption would be that he was seeking someone to serve as surrogate mother to his infant son. Yet, by the time John married Flora Forrest, Ralph was nearly a year old. Perhaps Ralph was already under the care of his aunt and uncle, long before John had remarried.

Then, too, there have been moments in history after a father remarries when the subsequent wife declares that she is not willing to raise the unfortunate step-children. Perhaps seventeen-year-old Flora was of that persuasion—though I doubt it.

Another possibility is that John Pollock's location might have been farther out in the country than would be of benefit to a bright young man interested in advancing his education. On the other hand, Franklin Pollock, Ralph's uncle, lived in the city of Greeley, at least in his later years.

In the 1900 census, when Ralph was nineteen years of age, he was listed as a student. Even later, he was still living with his aunt and uncle in Greeley and listed as a student in the 1906 city directory. By that time, Ralph would have been twenty five years of age. Since Greeley was home to the University of Northern Colorado, I suspect by that time, Ralph was well along in gaining an advanced degree from the then-seventeen-year-old college.

That may well have been the year in which Ralph graduated, for the next time we find him, he was exchanging wedding vows with one Irene Dorothy Gazelle in Alameda County, California. That was on February 18, 1909. By the time of the 1920 census, the couple was living in nearby Contra Costa County—strangely, the same place where many of my orphaned photographs originated—and Ralph was working as a chemist. The family had now grown to three, with five year old Carleton joining Ralph and Irene—although introducing a family mystery of his own with a listing showing his father to have been born in Spain, not Colorado.

From that point on, Ralph remained in California, though eventually moving to the southern part of the state, where he continued working as a chemist for a "research" organization, according to the 1930 census.

Long before that point, Ralph's father John had moved his second family from Greeley to Seattle, Washington—likely by 1904, judging from the birth of John's youngest son as given in the 1910 census—making me wonder whether Ralph even kept up much contact with his father.

Eventually, at the age of ninety three, Ralph Pollock passed away in San Bernardino County, California. As an interesting coda to Ralph's life song, I noticed he was not buried nearby, in one of southern California's many sprawling cemeteries, but was returned back to his hometown in Greeley Colorado. There, his headstone can be found in the Linn Grove cemetery, included in the family plot of the Pollock family.

Above: From an undated photograph in the collection of Thirza Browne Cole, labeled Ralph Pollock. Photograph currently in possession of the author.

Didn't Look Far Enough

Our task for today: find out whether the "Baby" Pollock of the household next door to Thirza Brown's family was one and the same as the Ralph Pollock whose picture was included in Thirza's photo collection, years later.

I'm not sure why people would actually name their baby something as obvious as "Baby" but that, apparently, is what some people did in the old census records. In our case, however—trying to locate the true identity of one Baby Pollock in the 1880 census for Weld County, Colorado—the frustration of not knowing will impel us on a chase through a few census records to determine not only who Baby really was, but what became of his father, Harvey Pollock.

Not only had we already discovered this Baby Pollock next door to the Browns in 1880, but we had located a Ralph Pollock in the 1900 census. Only problem: that Ralph was living in the home of his uncle Franklin Pollock. If Ralph was really "Baby," what happened to his dad Harvey? And if Ralph wasn't "Baby," then whose son was he?

Let's first take a look at the household of Harvey, father of "Baby." This family included Harvey's wife, Mary M. Pollock, two daughters and four sons, including "Baby." In case something horrible did befall Harvey before the 1900 census, that meant we'd be searching for a family constellation including at least the latter part of the string of names of the children: Lawrence, Florence, Alvin, Franklin, Baby, and Rosa May.

Thankfully, the state of Colorado had taken a census in 1885—a much more helpful gap than having to wait the twenty year span to 1900. I began searching that record set, using the names of the oldest children first. While I couldn't find anything for the eldest, Lawrence, I did locate a Florence Pollock in that census and pulled up the result.

The census taker hadn't done this page justice. Besides applying occasionally abysmal handwriting—prime example being the head of household for the Pollocks—he had mixed a boarder right into the midst of the family entry, and then, hadn't even written the names down in age order. Still, that result left us with a Lawrence, a Florence, a Franklin and a Rose. Close enough for me.

Upon a second look, I realized that the 1885 entry for Wilbur might have been the same as the 1880 entry for Alvin W. Pollock, so it seemed we located the right family—all except for one discrepancy. The wife of the missing Harvey—whom I noted was reported as a widow by this point—was not listed as Mary M., as she had been identified in 1880, but as Margaret. Well, at least I think the handwriting said Margaret. Perhaps it was wishful thinking.

Still, how many Mary Ms do you know who turn out to be Mary Margarets? All the family's ages seemed to be in the right ballpark for this to be the late Harvey Pollock's family.

And the one who would have been the right age to be Baby? The one listed as a two year old son in the 1880 census would have been seven years old in the 1885 Colorado state census. There was a seven year old in this household, too: his name was Harvey, the perfect explanation for why the family preferred to call him Baby, back in 1880. He was named after his dad, who had apparently died in 1883.

If Baby wasn't Ralph, then who was Ralph's dad? Not Franklin Pollock—we already know that Franklin was his uncle. Not the deceased Harvey, either. Not any of the brothers, as we determined yesterday, based on where those brothers' wives were born. Something was not adding up here.

Since only one of the Pollock wives had come even close to being born in Maine—as Ralph's mother was reported to have been, according to the 1900 census—I decided to try my hand at locating other documents which could reveal anything further on that suspect wife, Flora, wife of John. As it turned out, John and Flora were married on New Year's day, 1882. He was thirty two at the time; she was seventeen and required her parents' consent.

This pointed out a problem: our Ralph—at least, if we can believe the documents we'd already reviewed—was born in 1881, according to the 1900 census. Forget the problem about Flora coming from Connecticut instead of Maine. She was likely not Ralph's mother, simply according to the dates. In fact, the oldest child in John and Flora's household in 1900 was a daughter named Marion, born in May, 1884.

Where was the mother of Ralph Pollock? My guess was that, since all the Pollock men from the previous generation—except, obviously, for the late Harvey—were still living by 1900, it wasn't Ralph's father who had had a tragic demise, but his mother. Perhaps the sudden need for a wife to serve as surrogate mother of his baby had impelled one of the Pollock men to marry again—quickly. My guess was that that would be John, and that the 1882 wedding was marriage number two for him.

Looking back at the marriage records for Weld County, Colorado, sure enough, I found that there was an entry for the 1879 wedding of John M. Pollock and Emma J. Carleton. This would be the one.

But wait! If they were married in 1879, wouldn't they have shown up as a couple in the 1880 census?

Looking back to that census record, sure enough—and even on the same page as his brother Harvey's household and the family of our Thirza Brown—there was the entry for the young John and his wife Emma, way on the bottom of the page.

Added bonus: notice where she said she was born. Yep. It's Maine. 




Above: Excerpt from the 1885 Colorado state census for Weld County, showing the household of widow Mary Margaret Pollock. Image courtesy Ancestry.com.

What About Ralph?

Possibly discovering yet another photograph subject from Thirza Brown Cole's collection right next door to her own family in her childhood hometown was too great a coincidence for me. I had to check it out.

I decided not to go the route of "too good to be true" skepticism, but to play a research game of "what if."

What if the two year old child labeled simply "Baby Pollock" in the 1880 census turned out to be Ralph Pollock, the young man in Thirza's photograph collection? The census entry, right next door to the Thomas Brown household, put his age as two. I decided to play along and see if I could find a Ralph Pollock, born 1878 in Colorado, listed in the next census for Weld County, Colorado. Just in case the previous enumerator might have gotten Baby Pollock's age wrong, I built in some wiggle room with a two year range, plus or minus, from 1880.

As it turned out, I did find such a Ralph Pollock, but he wasn't in the home of Harvey and Mary Pollock, as he—the presumed Ralph—had been in 1880. This time, he was included in the household of someone named Franklin B. Pollock.

At least we got the Pollock right.

There, Ralph was listed as a nephew of Franklin and Susan Pollock. This being the 1900 census, I could also tell that, other than Ralph, this was a childless household; Susan had reported having no children of her own.

One other thing I discovered: this Ralph wasn't born in 1878 like Baby was. Ralph was listed as having been born about 1881.

So...who was Baby? And what happened to Ralph's parents?

I began imagining horrible scenarios befalling the hapless Ralph. We've seen these tragedies before, in family history research. Life wasn't exactly perfect in pioneer territory.

My task, first of all, would be to find both Franklin and Harvey Pollock in a previous census—hopefully even in the household of their own parents, assuming they were related to each other. Then, check all the brothers in that Pollock household to see who would be the actual father of the presumed orphan, Ralph Pollock.

Fortunately, it didn't take too long to locate a Pollock family with both a son named Franklin and a son named Harvey. Because I had already seen that Harvey's oldest son was born in Indiana, it was no surprise to locate the 1860 household of Robert and Fanny Pollock in Fulton County, Indiana, complete with sons Franklin, Hiram, Harvey, and John, as well as lone daughter Mary.

Because the 1900 census entry for Ralph Pollock had indicated that his mother was born in Maine, I fervently hoped that wasn't an enumerator error and began searching for which one of the older generation Pollock brothers married a wife from the Pine Tree State. I already knew Franklin's wife, Susan, wouldn't be the right one, but just for the record, she was born in Ohio. Hiram married another Ohio gal, Rebecca Zimmerman, as had his brother Harvey, as we'd already noticed from the 1880 census.

That left the baby of the older family, John. According to the 1900 census, John's wife, Flora, had been born in Connecticut. Could someone just have gotten their New England states mixed up, when it came time to provide those pesky details to the census taker?

As far as I could tell, there were no other Pollock sons from the older generation available to include in the tally. Taking a look at all the sons' sons before that 1900 census entry revealed that there weren't any named Ralph. The only Ralph I could find at any time was the nephew in the home of Uncle Franklin and Aunt Susan. Besides, if Ralph were actually born in 1881, he wouldn't have been showing in the 1880 census, anyhow.

But what about Baby Pollock? Who was he? I had to take a closer look at the family of Harvey and Mary, the ones we had originally spotted in the household next to Thirza's parents, Thomas and Ellen Brown. Could Baby Pollock also have been a Ralph? If so, where was the Harvey Pollock family? After 1880, I couldn't find him in any census records.

Above: Excerpt from the Weld County, Colorado, U.S. Census for 1900, showing the household of Franklin Pollock, including his nephew, Ralph C. Pollock. Image courtesy Ancestry.com.

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.
    

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.

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.