When the Party is Over

 

"The party is over," declared CNN Business last week. ABC News chimed in: Tupperware "lifts the lid" on its financial woes as it voluntarily initiated Chapter 11 proceedings on September 17. Known for its "once iconic" plastic food storage containers, developed post-World War II to "help war-weary families save money on costly food waste," the company has faced a combination of financial downturns through dwindling sales and rising costs of raw materials and shipping. 

While readers of A Family Tapestry may not be so interested in the latest financial news, those of us fascinated with family ephemera and material culture may pick out a useful strand in the theme of passing traditions once held dear by our more recent ancestors. How many of us can recall a mother or grandmother who attended a Tupperware party? Or taught us how to "burp" a Tupperware lid? While we are not talking about long-forgotten culture of our great-great-grandmothers, this, too, belongs to the collection of items of day-to-day living that are, before our eyes, passing into the heap of forgotten historic trivia.

While we are chasing those elusive brick-wall ancestors of prior centuries, we can't forget that we may be the missing link to passing along the minutiae of life familiar to the "ancestors" we, ourselves, knew personally. I'm encouraged when I see bloggers like Sheryl Lazarus intent on not only sharing the writings of her own grandmother in her blog, but delving deeper into the day-to-day details of that grandmother's life, surroundings, and culture.

Take, for instance, her focus on a devil's food cake from her grandmother's diary and an updated version, compared in her February 27, 2012, blog post in A Hundred Years Ago. Taking a magnifying glass to the details of our near ancestors' lives may be enlightening—possibly even helping us understand them a little bit more. After all, can you, for instance, name all fifty seven of Heinz's "varieties"? If your life was filled with versions of this Heinz advertisement a hundred years ago, perhaps you could. Surely your grandmother could.

These are the too-little-to-notice details which filled our near-ancestors' days, the ephemeral traces of what life was like for them. Too quickly gone, spotting such details, for the ones who lived them, would bring back memories just as surely as hearing a strain from one of the top-forty hits from your high school years might flood you with an avalanche of reminiscences.

So, yeah, while Tupperware may be having its financial woes—not to mention detractors of plastic manufacturing in general—what we are seeing before our very eyes might be the passing of an era, an institution so familiar to our own parents and grandparents that it became almost invisible for its ubiquity in their lives. While clutching a Tupperware bowl would certainly not bring back to life a cherished grandmother, we can at least vicariously live a small part of her reality through these now-fleeting tokens which once made her life's everyday routine what it was.

The History All Around Us

We are surrounded by the fingerprints of history. The only thing we need to do is learn how to dust those prints—to preserve them.

That lesson was cemented in my consciousness as I struggled to pin an identity on the faces in the mystery photograph album I had found in a local antique store. How was I to know, when I first lifted it from the basement box where it had been stored, that it would connect me, a casual shopper in Lodi, California, with a family five thousand miles away in County Cork, Ireland?

The simple items we find as we make our way through our everyday life may turn out to be much the same as that photo album I stumbled upon. Photographs, old newspaper clippings, even street signs or old houses contain shreds of a saga from our past. We can only read those details if we care to learn enough to recognize the signs and pursue the trail to the past. But that trail is there, bidding those who heed to follow.

Now that I've followed the trail from unidentified faces in a photo album to the now-disclosed identity of the family who once assembled it, I'm remembering other items which had, at some point in the past, seemed to call my name, beckoning me to pursue another micro-history. There were the street signs bearing the name, as it turned out, of some of my family's specific ancestors. There were pieces of furniture once belonging to now-long-gone relatives. There likely are house histories for the places where my family once lived. And, oh, the photographs—some of which are still faces without any names.

The epiphany of this experience has converted me into an evangelist for the ubiquity of history—and, beyond that, to encouraging people to open their eyes to that history and find ways to decipher it, preserve it, share it, and, when possible, return it to its rightful owners.

Perhaps, deep down, I nurse a secret hope that someone, somewhere, will stumble upon a hundred-year-old photograph of one of my ancestors. Or pull out a drawer full of junk in an attic somewhere back east, and find a letter addressed to someone in my family.

I think all of us who finger the strands of our own genealogy harbor those same hopes. Hopefully, we can find ways to step away from the straight path of the typical documents we've always come to expect will harbor our family's secrets, and wander among those other possibilities. I've certainly taken inspiration from the document-poor Irish, who have learned to glean genealogical information from such unlikely sources as century-old dog licenses, for instance. I want to free myself from the restrictions of thinking I can only learn about my family by doing the BMD chase, or sticking with decades of census records. Wandering through old newspapers from the family's hometown may paint a much more interesting picture than those dry vital statistics. What if a gift of a new discovery awaited us as researchers in some of these other, unlikely places?

Better than that, what if we all crowdsourced our discoveries—you looking in your town for the names and faces that, perhaps, would turn out to aid me in my search, while I, on my side of the continent, look for items which conceal just the details you were seeking? It is not that inconceivable, considering we are all surrounded by the tokens of history. While giants like FamilySearch or Ancestry or any of the other genealogical companies do their part in digitizing large swaths of documentation, each of us can do our small part in adding to the data stream with our own discoveries, too. 

Epilogue: Experiment in Context

Every story has a plot, characters and conflict resolution to carry it along. It also—at least if it is captivating enough to be mind-bending—carries a meta-message. This theme sometimes serves to tickle our altruistic—or at least sophisticated—side in tempting us to think the effort we are participating in (trading our precious limited time for a running stream of tens of thousands of words) really is, after all, for a worthy cause. We are educating ourselves. Or enlightening ourselves. Or vicariously experiencing someone else's agony which will somehow make us, afterwards, emerge a better person.

I had no idea, when I took on the adventure of exchanging a few bucks for an old discarded family photograph album, that when it finally left my hands, it would leave me with a message. But it did.

With the first steps I took on this adventure—trying to figure out who the album belonged to—I only saw it as an experiment in applied genealogy. Form hypothesis and test. Use research techniques; document results. Repeat.

By the end of the marathon, I had not only explored the genealogical pathways between Lodi, California, and County Cork, Ireland, but I had received an epiphany of sorts—not about the process of genealogical research, but about the meta level implied by that genealogical process.

Part of that message I already had intuited from years of research prior to this experiment: the roots we untangle in our genealogical research are really the very fine strands of the micro-histories of many, many reiterated lifespans. Genealogy is really history; it's just history of "insignificant" lives.

Plying my trade to this mystery photo album reinforced that message about genealogy. With this album, I held in my hands the keys to the history of a family I had never met.

With that one experiment—the challenge of finding the album's originator and returning it to the family—I re-awoke to the wonder of that meta-message. History is embedded in much of the life we see as we pass, unaware, through it. While we may call that discarded album a bit of ephemera—the scraps of paper from which we may, if we know how, reconstruct the story of someone's life—it is an object within which is embedded history.

History is all around us—micro-history, admittedly, but history, nonetheless. It is our task—much like the sculptor who saw the angel in the marble and carved until he set him free—to release that history from the paper chains of the ephemera in which it is bound and present it to the world, reassembled, to allow its potential message to have its impact on others.

Start of a Journey, End of a Story

Today—likely long after you read this post, depending on the juxtaposition of your time zone and mine—a package will be hand-delivered to the local branch of the United States Post Office on the first leg of its journey home. It's a small package, less than eight inches wide and five inches in length. Inside will be the carefully wrapped album, the pursuit of whose secrets have captivated me for the past four months.

I say the first part of its journey home, because it must make a stop in this country before venturing across the ocean to reach its ultimate destination, when it finishes a round trip begun over eighty years ago. The shortstop is located in the American state of Oklahoma, where someone remembers, as a child, having exchanged letters with the Irish originators of the package. Perhaps this package was once the Christmas gift sent from County Cork by her uncle and aunt, Harry and Alice Hawkes Reid, in 1936. Now, many years later, Rita would like to see the actual photograph album, herself, and wonders if it was, indeed, the very item she thinks it was.

The album will likely reach its destination in Oklahoma in a matter of days. Rita will likely share it with her immediate family—especially with her daughter, Lollie, who has been so kind to help make the arrangements for me to speak with Rita by phone, earlier this month.

And for the rest of the journey? The album will have made its rendezvous in plenty of time for that second part of the trip. Later this year, Lollie will be traveling to Europe, and will hand carry the album back to County Cork, where it will be reunited with the granddaughter of the couple who sent it out, so long ago.

It's indeed been an incredible journey. For me, it's been a chance to travel through history—to learn about the Penrose family and Waterford crystal, then to learn about the Hawkes family's Penrose namesake and their business entities which created variations on those original crystal inspirations, both in the British Isles and in America. It's been a story which spanned two World Wars, three countries, and several generations.

Most of all, it's been an adventure I never dreamed I'd be a part of, back at that crucial moment when I picked up that tiny photo album forsaken in a basement bin of an antique store, and wondered if those three names contained inside its covers—Iris, Ruby, and Penrose—would be sufficient to lead me to the identity of its owners, eighty years ago.

No Longer a Mystery

While Ireland was sleeping, I had sent the twenty-first century's equivalent of a message in a bottle. By the time I retired for the night—and while Ireland was just starting to awaken—someone five thousand miles from me was sending a message back.

It's been two weeks since I've mentioned anything about the family photograph album I had found in a northern California antique shop. Just because there's been no report doesn't mean I haven't had anything to report. On the contrary: a lot has transpired behind the scenes. This week, I'd like to share some updates.

As a recap, here's what led up to my last post on the subject on the nineteenth of March. From the time of my original entry introducing the photo album back at the end of December, I had posted the day-by-day journal of my suppositions about just who might have created the album and who the pictured family members might have been. My goal had been to determine the full identity of those included in the album, and then, using that information, to try and return the album to a living descendant of the family.

Since I had started out with only the first names of a handful of players, plus some other vague hints, it took me almost daily postings to talk through the problem. This went on from the beginning of January through the third week of February. By that point, with no further clues—or nibbles from any members of the mystery family, themselves—I decided to set the project aside.

If you know me, you know that had to be a difficult decision. I so wanted to see that project through to the end. I wasn't going to be satisfied until I could send that little photo album home to Ireland, to the family of the couple who originated it.

Of course, I couldn't even stand to abide my own decision. With Saint Patrick's Day coming up, my mind wandered back to that Irish album, and I decided to give the quest one more attempt. Only this time, I tried a different approach: crowdsource the solution.

I sent out a request for Facebook friends and Twitter followers to pass the word along, linking back to a post I wrote explaining this one last plea. Two days later, I already had a suggestion for a possible contact—someone who was likely a direct descendant of the couple who created the album. The very next day, after sending a message to that person online, I received confirmation that that was the right connection.

Since that time, we've exchanged a lot of emails. The real treat, though, was getting to talk with this descendant over the phone. Both of us are now working to piece together a fuller picture of the family tree. And that question of just how the album from the Reid family of County Cork, Ireland, showed up in California is a puzzle we are better suited to unravel as we work on this together.

Best yet is this descendant's willingness to share more of the Hawkes and Reid families' story, including some marvelous photographs. She's granted me permission to share with you some of the details from our conversations, and we'll begin with that in tomorrow's post.

I am still in awe over how modern social media, as well as online research capabilities, have facilitated allowing two total strangers to connect. In the past, this might have been as likely as finding a message in a cast-off bottle—and then being able to trace the message back to its originator. While the exercise, despite its twenty-first-century boost, is still not what you could call effortless, it is vastly more possible with today's connectivity than ever before.

Above: "Lost on the Grand Banks," 1885 oil on canvas by American landscape artist Winslow Homer; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

Branching Out From History

Researching one's family history can reawaken that sense of wonder inspired by hearing ancestors' stories. I don't know about you, but I can be taken up by the stories unfolding as I research my family's history.

Sometimes, that rapt attention can take me far afield of the strict confines of genealogy. Knowing some streets have been named after particular ancestors in my tree, I find myself wondering how it came to be that a certain street received its name. I know others have fallen in love with house histories, learning more about the succession of people who once lived in the home owned by an ancestor.

This past weekend, I spent some time at a place inspired by someone obsessed with learning the history of one particular accoutrement of a bygone century's daily life. As much as our generation—indeed, the entire past century—has been taken up with automobiles, prior centuries' transportation needs were answered, not by horsepower of a machine, but by the power of horses.

The place I visited was a museum dedicated to exhibiting and explaining the history of the various contraptions devised by man to be pulled by history's workhorses. From humble wagons to the dress chariots of royalty, this particular museum examined the many variations that form of transportation has taken over the centuries.

The location is The Grand Oaks Resort and Museum in Lady Lake, Florida. Within the peaceful spread of the property is the Carriage Museum, featuring the collection of European and American carriages of all types, assembled by Gloria Austin, author and founder of the Equine Heritage Institute.

Though the facility itself is rather plain, the array of carriages housed in the collection is impressive. Each display includes a descriptive plaque to inform visitors on the self-guided tour of the collection. Included, where possible, is the provenance of each carriage—although, admittedly, there are some notable parts of the collection for which no explanation can be provided as to how the piece ended up where Ms. Austin and her advisors discovered it before its acquisition, such as the gala coupe of Franz Josef, former head of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Walking through the exhibit, my mind wandered to thoughts of just how enthusiasm for specific topics can branch out into fervent pursuit of related fields. Just as the love of equestrian sports surely inspired the questions that led to such an impressive collection of carriages, how could genealogy inspire related pursuits of collectibles? Each family may have specific interests which could evolve into a passion for an expanded collection.

It's not quite as if we collect people. Of course not. But some families may have members who love music or have old instruments from significant sources. Or that may love needlework or quilting and have a collection that can tell a more detailed story about the family members who once loved them or created them. I often look at the bookshelves in my living room and bedrooms, stacked double, and wonder what someone might glean about the inhabitants in our home, or what they might surmise we are like, based on the titles we own.

Each of the members of our family tree had artifacts that, themselves, could tell tales about the people who owned them. Granted, many of those tales were subsequently lost by too-enthusiastic de-cluttering descendants. But those who have been fortunate to inherit antiques from bygone generations in their family have sometimes also obtained the stories behind those prized pieces.

No matter what collectibles we might find ourselves branching into from the original pursuit of our family tree, those items, themselves, can reveal more about the very people we are trying to research. It is as if our ancestors left the fingerprints of their lives on the items that passed through their hands—and eventually to us. Learning to capture those otherwise invisible records—and learn how to properly interpret them—is an acquired skill that can augment our genealogical pursuits.

While Ireland Was Sleeping

Communicating with another side of the world—something which might have taken months, back in some of the eras in which we've been pursuing our families' histories—is now simply a matter of a tag team approach. While Ireland is sleeping, I dispatch an email or post a comment on social media, call it a night, and while I'm sleeping, Ireland wakes up and sees my message.

Add that to the many benefits of attempting genealogical research in the digital age. It is certainly accelerating my quest to locate a living descendant of the couple whose Christmas 1936 photo album ended up five thousand miles from their home by 2015, the year I found it in an antique shop in a neighboring town in northern California.

After that rapid volley between members of the Cork Genealogical Society on their closed Facebook page in response to my Saint Patrick's Day query, one of the participants suggested that I take a look for a particular name on Facebook. I did. Of course, there were five or six options from which to select my candidate for contact. One never knows whether the first choice will turn out to be the right choice, but the only way to proceed with this quest is to take the step and make at least one choice.

This option, of course, would greatly speed up the possibility of a response. I went ahead, selected one of the names on the Facebook list, put in a friend request and added a private message. Just as I had started Saint Patrick's Day—with a post to the Facebook group at midnight at the start of the holiday—I ended it with a tentative message direct to the person I hoped would be the right one.

And wished for a graceful reception to my brazen intrusion on someone's privacy.

Just as our family was finally collapsing into bed that night—after frantically packing for a cross-continental flight in the morning—my husband heard a little "ding" come from my phone. I was already oblivious to the noise, so he simply mentioned it the next morning, figuring it was just a text about our trip the next day.

The next morning, after running to get to the airport on time, we finally settled in at the gate. While awaiting boarding, I remembered his comment and decided to check my texts before powering down my phone.

I was surprised to see I hadn't received any.

Instead, there was a notification that I had received a note via Facebook Messenger.

There, in the midst of the rush and noise of a busy airport, it seemed like being suddenly transported to a different world. I wanted to jump and shout, but remembered to keep my composure in such a public setting. This was, after all, an airport. No sense in causing undue alarm. Besides, this was a good jump and shout episode.

While Ireland was sleeping, I had sent the twenty-first century's equivalent of a message in a bottle. By the time I retired for the night—and while Ireland was just starting to awaken—someone five thousand miles from me was sending a message back.

It was a good message. She's the right choice. After eighty years, the album Harry and Alice Hawkes Reid sent as a Christmas greeting will soon be going home.

The Lightning Speed of Social Media

Like money burning a hole in my pocket, the mystery photograph album I found in a northern California antique store has been yearning to be set free and sent back home. You may recall that, just the other day, I decided to do something about that. After all, I've had that album for at least two years, and have blogged extensively on it for two months—without a nibble of inquiry.

So, I put out the plea for genealogically-minded friends and family to help me spread the word. I want to see that album returned to family, even if that family is still back in County Cork, Ireland.

I posted on Facebook, asking people to share the post with their own network. A few of my friends and family members—ironically, only the ones who haven't been smitten by the genealogy bug—were kind enough to oblige.

I put up some tweets on Twitter—strategically posted throughout the day, especially during times in which Irish readers might be online—but heard not a peep from the few retweets I was able to glean.

Perhaps switching tactics might do the trick, I thought, and went looking for logical places to seek aid in this search. Realizing that the entire genealogical world has shifted from utilizing the old forum settings of the 1990s (even if they are still hosted at Ancestry.com), I started looking at the social site genealogists now call home: Facebook. There, as Gail Dever of Genealogy a la Carte has often pointed out, there are thousands of Facebook groups dedicated to pondering local genealogy questions.

Of course, one of those groups was located in County Cork. Perfect. That's exactly where our Hawkes and Reid families once lived. The goal now was to try and connect with a descendant of that family.

I requested admittance to the closed Facebook group on Saint Patrick's Day and sent my rather long-winded query. By early afternoon the next day, I was receiving all sorts of hints and direction about what could be found on the family from the Irish side of the research equation.

Long story short: I now have a name and a possible address. Next step: take in a deep breath and reach out to see if I can connect. Hopefully, the answer will be yes, and that little unassuming family photograph album will soon be finding its way back home.

Putting Six (Irish) Degrees of Separation to Work

I've been thinking of the Irish a lot, lately. Yes, yes, of course it's Saint Patrick's Day tomorrow. People worldwide claiming a ride on the coattails of the Irish Diaspora will use that opportunity to shout, "Kiss me, I'm Irish"—tomorrow.

Today, though, I'm hoping to ride the coattails of some connected people in the genealogical social media world. The goal is to see if a friend of a friend can help me get a long-lost item back home to the descendants of its rightful owners.

Those owners, by the way, just happened to be Irish. And this little object which I've come into possession of managed to travel from someplace in County Cork all the way to an antique store in northern California.

The journey this package made began with a Christmas delivery in 1936. If you have been a regular here at A Family Tapestry, you will remember my introducing the little treasure in a post last December. From that point, it is still a mystery how the item moved from its intended destination to the location in which I found it, just a few years ago.

In the meantime, during the months of January and February, I was able to delve into the notes left on each page of the family photo album to figure out, first, where the family lived—a place in the country called Bride Park House—and, eventually, who some of the family members (and friends) were. With that knowledge, I was able to trace part of the Hawkes family tree, and ultimately figure out who the mystery couple was—Harry and Alice Reid—who had sent the album as a gift.

Of course, it would be wonderful if I could locate the descendants of Henry Reid and Alice Hawkes Reid. And I know there is someone out there directly related to that family, simply because I located a person who posted the family's pedigree on Geni.com.

Alas, there's been no answer to my attempts at direct contact. Though thanks to reader Intense Guy, I've been able to connect with a researcher concentrating on a distant branch of the Hawkes family tree—who has, incidentally, been very encouraging—I otherwise haven't had one nibble to my inquiries.

And you know how impatient I can be.

So while everyone is turning their mind to the Irish this week, I thought perhaps a friend of a friend of a friend could help me connect with some good folks in County Cork, Ireland—someone who might know how to get in touch with the descendants of Henry Reid and his wife Alice, or any one of the family of John Pim Penrose Hawkes and his wife, Sarah Ruby.

On the face of it, this seems like a monumentally impossible task. After all, the distance from origin to final landing is almost five thousand miles. There is no telling—at least, so far—how this family photograph album made its way from start to unintended finish.

There is, however, that little theory—most commonly called "six degrees of separation"—in which the distance between any two given strangers may be as short as a connection of six or fewer steps. That's where the friend of a friend of a friend idea comes in.

With all the interconnectivity we now experience thanks to devices like social media, those six steps may be rather easily taken. While you may not know anyone in County Cork, you may know someone else who does have a connection in Ireland. If so, won't you consider becoming that Some Kind Soul who forwards this post with a request to pass it along to someone else who might be even closer to our target?

Whether you help pass along this request to someone you know in Cork, or someone you know who is associated with the Reid or Hawkes family—their cousins in Canada, the United States or wherever they now are—if you could spread the word that I have a family photo album that I'd like to see sent back home, I'd be quite grateful.

And if you could see the process completed in six steps, consider it your validation of our little science experiment. If you beat the odds and complete the process in five steps or less, all the more support for the idea that our world is growing ever smaller.

If nothing else, you'd know that you helped return a family treasure back to the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the couple who lovingly compiled those photos, back in 1936. I'm sure they'd appreciate having that treasure returned back home, no matter how many steps it takes.

   

Of Beauty Queens and Presidents

What do you do when the end of one story comes before you're ready to take up another? As you can probably tell, I've been mourning the inability to connect with family members who could claim the mystery photo album I found in a town near my home. Of course, reaching out to connect with someone in County Cork, Ireland, is a challenge from California, but up to this point, we've done our best.

Now, it's time to move on. What next?

Well, behind the scenes, while that Hawkes family story was unfolding, I couldn't stop working on my own family tree. I have several long-term projects I'm working on, both on my trees and on those of my husband.

For the most part, routine genealogical research isn't something you write home about—unless you want to subject all your relatives to that "my eyes glaze over" reaction. So I just keep connecting documents to names on those trees, one dreary click at a time, during spare moments like lunchtimes alone or while standing in long lines in town. That's the type of work that goes on, behind the scenes. You can tell how much drudgery has been accomplished in any given time period, based on my biweekly reports—but other than that, it's mostly silence to which everyone owes some gratitude. Not every family story is scintillating.

In the past few months of plugging away at this, though, I did run into a couple interesting stories. One involves a distant cousin who apparently won a significant beauty contest and found herself in the running for a chance at becoming Miss America. Another story led me down the descendants' trail from a colonial ancestor to a woman who married a man with a familiar surname—I kept thinking, "Wasn't that the name of a senator?" As it turned out, yes, a descendant in that line did indeed turn out to become a senator, and before even that, someone who had married the daughter of a President.

So, while we await any news of connections with the descendants of Harry and Alice Hawkes Reid—if we even hear at all—we'll use the opportunity next week to explore the stories which have popped up during that routine, behind the scenes, research I've been doing to round out that family tree.

Above: "Washington Arch, Spring," 1893 painting by American artist, Frederick Childe Hassam; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

The Glacial Pace of Genealogical Research

There is something about hearing family history researchers confidently declare their "research goals." Yes, it's nice that you want to pursue your roots in Sweden back to the 1600s. Whether you achieve your goal of finishing that project by next fall may not be entirely within your own control. There is the little matter of those other parties out there who may or may not operate on your timetable.

So then, the question becomes, what to do while being unable to complete those genealogical goals. Despite the well-meaning advice I've heard about not being all over the board with my research pursuits, I find it necessary to have a Plan B project in that back pocket for such dilemmas. Since it is near-impossible to force one's correspondent to answer an email or send a requested document in rapid response, researchers sometimes need the grace to know when to retreat or change directions.

While nobody is answering, where to turn next? In our case of being so close to presenting that mystery photo album to a direct descendant of the woman who created it, the story is almost all told—all, that is, except for the storybook ending that could have been, if the right people answered the call. Our only remaining option is to settle for a waiting game. Also out of our control, that wait may take a few more days—or months upon months. It may never see that hoped-for closure.

In the meantime, I'll put the pages back in the proper order, wrap up the covers in the ribbon which so neatly tied them all together, and tuck the album into a safe place. But I won't just wait; I'll be on to a next project.

And you know there's been one in the wings. Not as fascinating, admittedly, as the one we're wrapping up (literally), but you know it will be a genealogical pursuit that comes with a story. There is always a story, when you delve deep enough into the lives of ancestors.

Yet, it will be hard to say goodbye to the Penrose Hawkes family, and to Alice Hawkes Reid, who brought us—unsuspectedly—so many weeks of interesting tidbits about her extended family. Though it wasn't even concerning my own family, it's been a journey I've been glad to have stumbled upon. If nothing else, it's opened my eyes to the treasures stored in unexpected places—sometimes, quite far from the place family once called home.

Maybe the Neighbors Know

If, in my quest to find a living descendant of the couple who mailed off a photo album from County Cork, Ireland, back in 1936, I can't make any connections via the usual family history means, perhaps reverting to the tried and true FAN Club principle may bring results. I'm willing to try anything at this point.

The FAN Club, if you haven't heard of the term coined by genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills, is a cluster of people in the milieu surrounding a mystery ancestor, and may present some viable clues about those research brick walls we struggle to overcome. The acronym FAN stands for friends, associates and neighbors.

With the discovery in that mystery photo album, last week, of a friend (or neighbor or associate) of the Hawkes and Reid families known as Chris, we also had been introduced to a place labeled simply as "Chris's bungalow." In my mind, the term bungalow can be easily interchanged with the label cottage. And it just so happened, back when I was searching for any online clues about Bride Park House, that I came across some entries for a place called Bride Park Cottage.

Could Bride Park Cottage have been Chris' bungalow?

Fortunately, there are many leads to the current day Bride Park Cottage. Apparently, the current owners have a custom of offering their home to host an annual charity fund raiser during the holidays. Thus, I was able to find a write up on their place in the November 11, 2016, edition of the Cork Evening Echo (in which, by the way, a photograph toward the end of the article displays a "water garden" reminiscent of the one attributed to Chris in the 1936 photo album). An article on the event in an earlier year—that one published in 2012 by the Irish Examiner—included a photograph of the cottage exterior.

Although a quick visit to Google Maps showed Bride Park Cottage to be a mere one minute walk's distance from Bride Park House, from the photograph, it is apparent that Bride Park Cottage does not look like the bungalow shown in the photo album. Though it apparently isn't Chris' bungalow—whoever Chris was, and wherever her bungalow might have been—it provides yet another vehicle to use the "neighbors" in the FAN Club principle to track down more information on the Hawkes and Reid families.

I went on an online hunt to see if I could locate anything further on Bride Park Cottage. I discovered another photo of the place put up on the website known as Flickr—which, in an almost eerie coincidence, turned out to be placed there by the very researcher (Damian Shiels) who has recently written the book, The Forgotten Irish, that I mentioned in my January book post. Far predating the time period in which the Hawkes family had lived in the area, Bride Park Cottage was once the childhood home of Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, who eventually attained the rank of Major General in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

While none of that further informs me about the Hawkes or Reid families—or even about Chris or the whereabouts of her bungalow—it does remind me that, even if I never hear back from the people I've contacted about connecting with a living descendant of Alice Hawkes Reid, I can try a second approach in finding some answers. Part house history, part crowdsourcing attempt through local media, perhaps reaching out to the neighbors may yield some answers I might not otherwise be able to access through traditional paper-based research. We are, after all, shifting from history to current events with this next move.

Above: Revisiting Chris' bungalow—not appearing to be one and the same as the Bride Park Cottage seen in current newspaper publications.
   
  

No Mail . . . Yet

I'm not very good at waiting. Snail mail—not withstanding its ability to connect people, no matter how far removed they each are—lost its allure for me, once email was invented. When it comes to correspondence, I prefer instant gratification.

So, yes, I realize I'm letting myself grow impatient over a message I only sent out this past weekend. But perhaps you understand my perspective. I'm awaiting an answer from a person who may well be the grandchild of the Harry and Alice Reid who, eighty years ago, sat down and addressed an envelope carrying a family photo album sent as a Christmas greeting.

There has been progress on another front in this attempt to contact people mentioned in that mystery photo album. Taking a chance that an email address, posted online over ten years ago, was still a good address, I composed an introductory note to another person researching the extended Hawkes family. To my great surprise—and partially owing to the distance between time zones of sender and recipient—I awoke after sending my late night query to find it had already been answered!

That connection is leading to yet another person who may lend a hand at helping that family photo album find its way back home to County Cork, Ireland. I am excited to see where that correspondence will lead. There is nothing like interviewing the people who have firsthand knowledge of the subjects at hand. Wouldn't it be perfect if all this assistance leads to the ability to connect with a direct descendant of Alice Hawkes Reid? That, at least, is my hope.

Meanwhile, the note I most hope to see answered—that message to a woman who may well be a granddaughter of Harry and Alice Reid—had to be sent through a genealogy website to which she last had made contact nearly a year ago. If I can receive an answer from a ten year old email address, what are my chances that contact information from a mere nine months ago will still be viable?

In answer to my own question, I don't know. But I hardly can stand the wait to discover that answer.

 Harry, Mother + Self - Aug. 1936.

To Do or Not to Do: That is the Question

Some people live or die by their to-do lists. Me? Not so much. I do, however, keep a general idea in the back of my mind regarding where I intend to go with a project—a more free-form approach to getting things done.

That approach may have been a bit too free-form for you to determine just what I was up to, last week, so I feel a recap is in order. If you were wondering about my Saturday morning musings over which other genealogical services I should use to upload my family tree, this will hopefully provide somewhat of an explanation. And it will also help tie in to my Friday comment about striking out into the "real" world to see if we can locate any clues as to that mystery photo album I found and just whom the intended recipient might have been, back in December of 1936.

I may be slow at arriving at my goals, but I do eventually get there—even without a strict to-do list.

Over the weekend, I attended to that task of uploading my family tree to my new subscription at FindMyPast, so I can check that off my list call that goal done. There wasn't too much angst over whether I should do that or not; fishing in one more pond is definitely to my benefit, if my goal is to dangle more cousin bait out there, in hopes of connecting with fellow family researchers.

Where I did face that angst, though, was when I finally came to the question of whether to tinker with a family tree at Geni.com. There are, in my mind, several drawbacks to that research tactic. For one thing, it always seemed to me to be one of those universal trees, where others can "correct" entries that I have spent considerable time confirming. I don't like the arbitrary feeling in that sort of milieu.

The second main concern I have is that there is no possibility to simply upload a GEDCOM and be finished with the task in a matter of moments. I understand the reasons why, of course, but it can be a rather daunting task to add the nearly ten thousand names, for instance, that I have on just one of my trees.

As the weekend was drawing to a close, however, I figured I may as well take the leap. I didn't transfer the entire monstrosity of my maternal tree, of course, but strategized to come up with a choice that would get me uploaded without too much work: I selected my paternal tree. That one, if you remember from my biweekly stats, happens to be the smallest of the trees that I manage. It also happens to be the one with the most international connections. Keeping in mind the symbiotic relationship between Geni.com and MyHeritage—a company with a widely international customer base—I thought my Polish roots might bring up some interesting connections. What did I have to lose there?

I did have, however, an ulterior purpose for uploading a tree to Geni.com. It has nothing to do with being able to make connections with distant Polish cousins. But it does have to do with the family tree we've been speculating about, ever since I began writing about the mystery photo album I found in that northern California antique shop.

You see, bit by bit, as I was writing, some kind readers have been feeding me hints gleaned from astute searching on the Internet. Some of those hints were posted directly below my entries, in the comments section. Some were emailed to me privately—and for good reason: they have to do with living persons, whose privacy we must respect.

As you may have guessed, that connection with a possible living descendant of Harry and Alice Hawkes Reid has much to do with my decision to painstakingly enter portions of my family tree at Geni.com. Posting a tree and becoming a subscriber entitles one to permission to connect with other Geni users. And one of those users—as I found out, thanks to Iggy—just happened to post an entry on one of the Hawkes family members. Now, that's a researcher I want to talk to!

Now that I've settled that question of whether to post my tree on Geni.com, I have a new question gnawing away at me. Will this new research contact answer my email? Or not?

I can hardly stand the wait.

Ruby - playing robbers - June 1936.

Snapshot of Life at Home

While some family photographs don't provide the specifics a genealogist seeks, they can round out the picture concerning what life was like for family members during certain times.

Though this photograph from the mystery album—sent somewhere in the United States by Alice Hawkes Reid from County Cork, Ireland—doesn't help to explain just who some people are, we can get a good idea of what was important to the one woman called, simply, Chris. The description of this next photo, enclosed toward the end of the album, almost makes me wish it wasn't a composition set only in black and white.

 Chris's water garden with heather + shrubs round it + Tim Connell reading.

Sadly, there isn't much more in the album to divulge the identities of Chris or Dolly—let alone the O'Malleys or even Tim Connell, despite having his surname appended to every mention of the man. Even after all these pages, I'm still not sure who the other Alice was. All we've managed to do is figure out who Penrose Hawkes was, and through quite a bit of effort, uncover the identities of the Harry and Alice who signed their Christmas wishes to that unknown recipient of the album, back in December of 1936.

What's left, at this point, is to strike out into the wide unknown real world and see if any connections can be made with those now living in the area who may once have known about this Hawkes family from Bride Park House in County Cork, Ireland. We'll commence on that part of the journey next week.

A Bit More About Chris

Sometimes, we can march right into the unknown with our research, having the faith that adding just one more bit of information will lead to discovering another clue.

Sometimes, we keep adding...and nothing seems to materialize.

Try as I might to figure out who, from yesterday's photograph in that mystery album, Chris and Dolly might have been, I am uncovering no clues. However, we can learn a small bit more by observing another photo.

Included toward the back of the photo album, the writer—whom we now know was Alice Hawkes Reid of Bride Park House in County Cork, Ireland—inserted this detail about the woman she listed as Chris.

Chris, Alice, Dolly + Lizzie O'Malley with Tim Connell, in one of Chris' fields.

Though that one entry doesn't tell us much, it does provide additional information. No matter how infinitesimally small, we'll store each clue in the hopes it will lead to something. Whether that turns out to be the case, we can't yet know.

Let's take a look at what we've gleaned from the addition of this new photograph. Though we still don't know who Chris or Dolly were, we find they were joined in this photo by two other people. One of those people brings up that O'Malley surname we've run into in the past—once, back at the beginning of this chase, when we were introduced to Alice's traveling partner, Mr. W. O'Malley, and again for an H. O'Malley when we discovered the names of the witnesses to Harry and Alice Reid's wedding in 1927. Still, neither of those occurrences mentioned a Lizzie O'Malley. But knowing we've found other instances of that O'Malley surname may mean something about a connection between the O'Malley family and the Hawkes or Reid family.

The other name was for Tim—or perhaps Jim—Connell, the man standing atop one of the horses. Though the women seemed dressed for a pleasant outing, Mr. Connell appears dressed for work. It is my guess that he was the one who actually handled those horses. If, as was sometimes the case during that era, he was a servant residing on the family's property, he may become our one clue, through census records, to help determine just who Chris might have been.

The other clue, of course, belongs to Chris, herself, in Alice's note mentioning the place they were visiting in the picture was "one of Chris' fields." Chris, apparently a landowner, was likely situated in County Cork, perhaps near the Hawkes' own Bride Park House. Although I have yet to find any such indication, perhaps she was another Hawkes cousin.

Alternately, she could have just been a good friend of Alice Reid. This last thought, however, I tend to doubt, remembering the voice Alice would have been employing for the intended recipient of the album. If the album was intended for someone who knew both Alice Reid and her brother, Penrose Hawkes, it seems more likely that offering photos of Chris and Dolly, sans surnames, suggests a familiarity with all those named by the album's intended recipient.

A Matter of Handwriting

In perusing the notes in the family photo album I found, there were some quirks that showed up in the handwriting on some pages. One of those pages involved a listing of names, which I was keen to decipher. Before sharing one example in particular, we need to make a detour to discuss handwriting.

Those of us who learned our cursive hand under the strict attention of our grade school teachers may think that, of course, everyone had to write the same way. Not so, as we broaden our exposure to what others learned while sitting under the noses of their school teachers.

Couple that with the experience of school children in a country like Ireland—where, while we don't often give this a thought, the place was actually a land of two languages—and we introduce yet another influence over just how children were taught to form their letters.

So, what becomes of the handwriting of an Irish student whose every exposure to the written word had two kinds of print—both English and Irish? Consider, for a moment, the header to the 1950s form upon which we had found the death record for Alice Hawkes Reid's mother. Notice the two languages and their very different fonts.

I'm thinking, in particular, of the letters D and B. If you click on the example above, you'll notice both of these letters have unusual ascending lines—something we don't, at least in America, include in the formation of those letters. For instance, observe the handwritten portion on the top line to the far right, indicating the District of Bandon, a town in County Cork.

Now, let's shift gears and take a look at one of the photos Alice Reid had included in the family album we've been studying. Here, she shares a picture of three women, and provides their given names. But is it Chris, Alice and Bolly? Or should we make that Dolly? It does include an oddly-formed first letter for that third name.

Chris, Alice + Dolly - at the sitting room window of Chris's bungalow.

Of course, we can be fairly certain that the Alice in the middle of that threesome was the other Alice we had already met when she and Mr. W. O'Malley were "off on a spree" with Harry and Alice Reid. In fact, though we have yet to figure out just who she was, this Alice figured quite prominently in the pages of the album.

But now we have two other women introduced in the collection of Hawkes friends and family. And I'm not sure this addition makes it any easier to determine just who they were.

Still, the use of the word "bungalow" was a tantalizing hint. Intimating a smaller place—at least than Bride Park House itself—it caused me to wonder whether there were any other buildings close enough to the original property to be considered part and parcel of the same estate.

Another Detour

You may have been wondering, in helping me puzzle over the source for that mystery photo album I found in a local antique store, whatever became of Penrose Hawkes after losing his wife so early in their marriage. After all, perhaps that might be the route for the possible nexus.

While it was true that Penrose lost Marion before they had even reached their seventh anniversary, Penrose was, after all, forty four years of age when that happened. Any hopes that they had children who might have carried the photo album forward was nipped in the lack of any such mention in Marion's obituary.

Still, when I found a subsequent wedding announcement in the September 25, 1950, Dallas Morning News, for whatever reason, I had in mind a, well, younger sort of bride.

Apparently not. The former Pauline Parker was evidently forty seven at the point at which the couple exchanged their vows in New York City. While it is possible the couple could have left children, I doubt it—though it is hard to tell, as each seemed to be rather private people, leaving not much of a mention at their passing.

Penrose, himself, passed away in Corning, New York, sometime in October, 1972. Pauline Hawkes remained in Corning, her husband's adopted hometown, for many years afterwards, dying there on March 20, 2001. A transcription of her obituary—the only version I could find online—noted,

Pauline P. "Polly" Hawkes, 96, of 249 Wall St., died Friday, March 30, 2001, at Corning Hospital. She was a Corning resident for 51 years.

The only survivors listed were a great nephew and great niece, likely the descendants of Pauline's one sister who had lived in Houston, Texas. There was to be "no calling hours" and private services were to be "held at the convenience of the family."

If you had been thinking a second marriage would have provided the explanation for just how that Hawkes family photo album made it across the Atlantic from County Cork to New York—or somewhere—to, eventually, northern California, kiss that thought goodbye. Yes, it might have been a possibility. But now that we know the rest of the story, we need to be realistic and discard any such romantic notions, no matter how convenient a solution they might have presented.

Ruby + Iris - Off for a ride.

Hearing the Voice

Other than a few remaining pictures—which may or may not resolve the remainder of our questions concerning the mystery photo album I found here in northern California—there is not much of a "big reveal" left to discuss. We've determined that the pictures were taken in County Cork, Ireland, and that they mostly have to do with the family of Mrs. John Pim Penrose Hawkes of Bride Park House. The dates were provided to us: the summer of 1936.

In the course of studying the family, we learned that a number of Mrs. Hawkes' in-laws (her husband had twelve siblings) had emigrated from Ireland. The most interesting of those settled in the New York area, most notably Thomas Gibbons Hawkes, founder of the cut glass manufacturer bearing his name. Mrs. Hawkes' own son, also named Penrose, eventually moved there and became a key figure in the company's success.

Mrs. Hawkes' only other child was a daughter who opted to remain in Ireland, marry and raise a family. It was she who turned out to be the one creating the photo album and sending it as a Christmas gift—but to whom?

This is the question that will take some quiet contemplation. Almost as if we are listening to her voice, we need to glean the clues from her album notes. For one thing, because she addresses her brother in the third person—"Penrose, looking very cross!"—it is unlikely that the album would be sent to him as a memento of his visit. And yet, it had to go to someone for whom the dig would have elicited the same response as his sister's.

Because the sender also addresses the other Alice in the album in the third person, it is unlikely that the album was meant as a gift for her—if, indeed, my guess is correct that that Alice is T. G. Hawkes' daughter, who made regular trips from New York (and later Canada) to Ireland.

I have already discussed another possibility—my initial thought that perhaps the album was meant for Penrose's wife. That, however, we've long dismissed, as Penrose and Marion weren't married until well over a year later.

The label on the photograph of the tea party guests threw me off, not including any relationship labels for the Hawkes family members in attendance. This made me think the album was not meant for a mutual family member. The more I think about it, though, perhaps Alice was merely cataloguing names at that point. Perhaps I shouldn't read so deeply into every action.

We'll take a look at a few more photographs in the next few days. These bring up some names we haven't yet considered—although whether they offer us any further clues, I can't say. Still, it would allow us to put some closure to the rest of the album, regardless of whether we ever solve the mystery of how a family photo album mailed from County Cork, Ireland, in 1936 ever ended up in California when none of the family had moved here.

Iris - doing "la grande dame"! - June 1936

A Little Tea Party

Whether it was on the occasion of Penrose's travels across the ocean to visit his homeland or for a different reason, in July, 1936, the Hawkes and Reid families decided to host a tea party at Bride Park. Too late to capture the full group at the close of the event, one of the hosts thought to gather the remaining guests together for a group photograph on the lawn. Thankfully, Alice Hawkes Reid had the foresight to label the names of those present for the impromptu portrait, thus giving us one more significant listing from that mystery photo album to help guide our research.

Whether this additional page will advise us in our quest to determine just who the photo album was sent to as a pictorial greeting that next Christmas, I'm not sure. But for now, let's take a look at some of the friends and family of Harry and Alice as we close out this week's research attempts.

The photo was labeled—in Alice Reid's handwriting, as we've now learned—"A little tea-party at Bride Park when Penrose was home - July 1936." Along the right side of the photograph, Alice provided the names of all included in the photo, by the three rows of their seating arrangement.

Back row -

Harry, Laddie Nicholson, Self, K. Allen, W. Hawkes, Mrs. Allen, Mr. Nicholson

Middle row -

L. Hawkes, Mrs. Nicholson, Vicky Allen, Mother

Front row -

Ruby, Sonny Nicholson, Daireen Foott, Iris, Alfy Allen

One thing that stands out right away on this list is the appearance of two people with the surname Hawkes. Unfortunately, only initials were provided for first names: W. Hawkes and L. Hawkes. Perhaps, because the album was intended to be received by a family member—or at least someone familiar with those in the extended family—Alice felt no need to spell out their given names. On the other hand, if the album were intended for family members, wouldn't she have labeled the two other Hawkes family members by terms of their relationship, along with a first name—uncle William, for instance?

Almost as an afterthought, Alice added, "Other guests gone home before this was taken." Too bad. It would have been quite informative, for our purposes, to learn who else might have been included in the guest list.