Time to Search for Family

Sometimes, the to-do list piles up so much, the mess can be paralyzing. I now am searching for descendants of the subjects in several family photographs. If I don't intensify this effort, I'm afraid I'll get lost in the pile-up of surnames.

So far, I'm looking for descendants of Samuel Tucker and his wife, Annie Goodman—and especially anyone who can solve the mystery of just who "Dollie" Goodman, sister of Annie, might have been. I'm also looking for another Goodman child, daughter Eva, whose first husband Leslie Earl Purkey was the subject of another photo I found.

In fact, if I could find anyone related to the Purkey family, that would be grand. I have photographs of Erastus and Rebecca Lewis Purkey and their children which I would love to send home, too. Not to mention, there are the photographs of Fuller family descendants of two generations, starting with Pleasant Purkey Fuller and her firstborn son Tarance, to Pleasant's daughter Tressa and her babe, as well.

I do not have the patience to just post a photograph online and hope someone finds this "cousin bait" and comes calling. Instead, I go searching through family trees online and go knocking on the electronic doors of fellow researchers who have included such names in their family trees. I send them a message and then wait, holding my breath. (At least, that's what it feels like.)

And then...wait some more.

Hopefully, later this week, we'll hear from someone with a tip on where I can mail the photographs. I know some of the researchers online have well-researched trees, but most of the trees I've found belong to people who are, at best, more distant relatives. Perhaps I can enlist them in the search to send these photographs home. Or maybe it will suffice to send the photos to people who appreciate the rich heritage of their family associations.

In the meantime, there is more to explore in the photograph collection I stumbled upon in that antique shop in Sonora, California. On to more Purkey family relatives.

More About Tarance

One of the challenges of returning antique photographs to family members is to correctly trace the lines of descent for the specific individuals identified in the pictures. That involves building a family tree for the subject, then following that family down to the present time.

In the case of the baby Tarance Fuller, whose picture we viewed on Wednesday, attempting to follow his history caused me to stumble upon some unexpected details.

One of the first places I visit, when researching such families, is Find A Grave. The reason for this is simple: anyone showing up in a hundred year old picture is likely no longer with us—even a baby. Find A Grave is a quick way to locate those who are likely to be found in such a condition. The drawback is that it is a volunteer effort by many kind people, some of whom can make mistakes. I am wondering if what I found on some of the Fuller and Purkey records contain such errors.

We've already learned that Tarance was the son of John and Pleasant Purkey Fuller. We met his sister—listed in various records with either the name Theresa or Tressa—in the photograph I shared yesterday. Along with Tarance and Theresa, the Fullers had another son, whom they named Harold.

The first problem I spotted in the Fuller records at Find A Grave was in the memorial for Tarance's mother Pleasant. Someone had provided a statement indicating her parents were Jacob and Helen Fuller. Well, of course that was wrong—we've already discussed her spot in the family of Jacob and Mary Ellen Kincade Purkey. Just that one error reminded me to step carefully in working through this family tree.

But when it came to finding the memorial for Pleasant's son, Tarance Fuller, I noticed that his rather plain grave marker, similar to his mother's, did not appear to be the military marker he likely was entitled to have received. While he was much too old to have been drafted for World War II, Tarance, as I had discovered through an application for headstone made on his behalf, had enlisted in the army shortly before the end of the first World War, and received an honorable discharge as a corporal in January of 1918.

The headstone he was to have received, incidentally, would have been a flat granite marker. If the marker shown in the photograph accompanying Tarance's Find A Grave memorial was indeed granite, however, it was in terrible disrepair. Bad enough to have the volunteer read his rank as private rather than corporal.

A few clues might lead us to understand why the grave site looked so neglected. I noticed, on Tarance's World War II registration, that he listed, for closest relative to contact, his sister "May"—the one whom we now know as Theresa Fuller Hanson of Spooner, Wisconsin, the mother in the photo we saw yesterday. At fifty five years of age, Tarance provided no name of any wife or children to enter in that slot for contact information of closest relative.

And at the point of ordering Tarance's headstone, the relative who signed for the request was someone named Laverna M. Fuller Jaquith. It didn't take too much sleuthing to discover Laverna's identity. Remember Tarance's younger brother Harold? One of his daughters was named Laverna—and she eventually married Harold Kenneth Jaquith. Two days after Tarance's death in 1953, the closest family he had to attend to his affairs was not a wife or a child, but a daughter of his younger brother.

Sometimes, when I find the family to which rightfully belongs a photograph I've rescued, it is a happy reunion of the family memento with descendants—particularly if it is a person who, like the rest of us, cares deeply about family history.

Other times—and I'm afraid this instance of Tarance's photograph will find itself in this situation—there is really no one left to send the photograph to.  

Mother or Child?

Some photographs come with labels which are helpful guides to those viewers who don't personally know the subjects of the pictures. Other photographs—well...

Yesterday, we took a look at a mother and child portrait which we could easily determine was composed in 1887. How did we know that? From the label, which stated the mother's married name plus the name of her infant son. Though the photo contained no clue as to location of the studio where it was taken, we were fortunate that the mom's name was rather unusual, and that she chose a lesser-used spelling for her son's name.

In today's photograph, we are given the label, "Theresa Fuller, Burt Purkey's cousin." By already having researched the Purkey family for the several abandoned photographs I rescued from an antique shop in Sonora, California, I was able to pinpoint just who Theresa Fuller might have been: younger sister of the infant we saw in yesterday's photograph.

But the question nagged me: was Theresa Fuller the mother in the photograph, or the baby? One key was that Theresa's maiden name was Fuller; she was the daughter of Pleasant Purkey Fuller and sister of baby Tarance, the infant we saw yesterday. It would make sense for the family to follow up the mother and child photo of baby number one with an encore for their second arrival.

However, the style of paper used to frame Theresa's photograph—whether she was the mother or the child—was a style I'm accustomed to seeing when I view baby pictures from around the 1920s. Unlike the cabinet card we viewed yesterday, this photograph (which I've cropped and adjusted, due to its faded condition and different size format) came in a three-fold heavy paper stock with a marbled brown background.

If the baby in this photo was Theresa Fuller—or, as I've seen the name listed elsewhere, Tressa—then the photograph would have been taken around 1889, only two years after the picture we viewed yesterday. The style and setting of photographs wouldn't have changed that dramatically over a two year period.

If, however, the mother in the portrait was Theresa, then we would be viewing Theresa Fuller Hanson, wife of Seymour William Fredrick Hanson of Washburn County, Wisconsin. According to what I could find in the 1930 and 1940 census records, that baby would have been their only son, Leslie S. Hanson, born about 1921—a date much more in line with the cardstock photo cover I'm accustomed to seeing during that time period.

Researching the Hanson family was somewhat challenging, not only because no enumerator seemed able to correctly enter Theresa's—or Tressa's—name, but because Leslie's name was mangled as well. Thanks to the addition of a middle initial in the two census records I found, I was able to locate an enlistment record for Leslie for World War II, and a Wisconsin death record and corroborating SSDI entry showing he passed away in February, 1972. Yet, despite his military service, I was unable to locate any burial information or even an obituary for the man who was once the infant in that portrait.

I suspect there won't be any direct descendants to claim this one photo from the Purkey-Fuller family tree, if Leslie was the only child of Seymour and Theresa Fuller Hanson. There was, however, another hopeful sign: I found a family tree on Ancestry.com for this same family, which included another photograph of Theresa, her brother Tarance, and a younger brother Harold. It's time to go visiting other researchers to see if any of them are close enough relatives to be interested in having some of these Fuller family photos.

Above: Photograph, circa 1921, of Theresa Fuller Hanson and her son Leslie S. Hanson; photograph found in an antique shop in Sonora, California, and currently in possession of the author until claimed by a direct descendant of this family.

Pleasant Remembrance

From an unnamed photographer's studio in an unnamed city in America, we have the picture of a young mother and her baby. We can guess about the date this portrait was captured, based on the style of dress of the mother, or even by her hairstyle, but if it weren't for the thoughtfulness of an unnamed family member's dutiful listing of the woman's name, we wouldn't know whom the picture represented.

Thankfully, someone wrote on the reverse, "Pleasant Fuller + Tarence." And since I've already found other photos with the Fuller surname from the same antique shop in northern California where I found this one, I had at least a few clues with which to direct my search.

If I assumed that this Pleasant Fuller would have been listed in, say, the 1900 census, I'd have at least six possibilities to choose from—plus an additional one with the first name entered only as "Pleas"—which isn't too difficult a quest to conquer for genealogical purposes. Having a secondary clue of a child named Tarence helped narrow the field to one.

Learning that young Tarence was born in 1887—February 10, to be precise—helped us zero in on the date of his infant photograph. At that point, his mother Pleasant was about twenty four years of age, and had been married to John Fuller for about three years.

John and Pleasant Purkey Fuller went on to have at least two other children by the time of that 1900 census: Theresa, whom we'll meet tomorrow, and Harold.

When I went to look for any further information on Pleasant's firstborn, the son in this photograph, I ran into some other puzzling details, which of course demand that I follow through and find the correct information. So, after we meet Theresa Fuller through the photograph I found with her name attached, we'll move on to the puzzle of what became of Tarence.

Above: Undated photograph labeled "Pleasant Fuller + Tarence" found at antique shop in Sonora, California; currently in possession of author until claimed by direct descendant of Pleasant Fuller.

Fuller Than I Thought

It's one thing to go down a genealogical rabbit hole, looking for collateral details on a specific ancestor. To try and follow the trail for an entire surname is something else—and if that surname happens to be as common as Fuller, look out!

While I was working on what is turning out to be an entire photograph collection from the Brockman family of Sonora, California, I realized that one of the pictures was labeled with the surname Fuller. Of course, as I worked my way through another surname—letting Purkey lead me to Tucker and then to two different Goodman families—what should I see in those Goodman family trees but that very surname, Fuller.

It seems that Burt Purkey's wife's father's maternal grandmother's maiden name was Fuller. (Is that going too far?)

I raced back to that safe place where I've stashed all the antique photographs I'd found in that northern California antique shop—the ones I'm hoping to return to interested descendants—to pull out that picture labeled with the Fuller name.

This one, I thought, was going to be an easy catch. The given name for this Fuller family member was Pleasant. She was a young mother, and in her lap was a baby. The back of the photograph, besides mentioning Pleasant Fuller, had a second line which added, simply, "+ Tarence."

Common surnames may give researchers grief, but uncommon given names will hopefully make up for that fault. I started looking around in the family tree of Samuel Tucker's maternal grandmother to see what I could find. After all, the Goodman wife's maiden name was Fuller.

I kept looking.

I started looking for Fullers in the other Goodman line. No Pleasant.

Finally, I went back to the beginning and started thinking this out, all over again. Perhaps this Fuller woman belonged to another part of the Purkey universe. I looked through the rest of the photos in my stash from Sonora, seeking guidance through any other labels including the Fuller surname. After all, I couldn't be sure that Fuller was Pleasant's maiden name or married name.

A second drawback was that this photograph didn't come with any clue of a location. Where a studio imprint could have been included, the only item offered was the information, "Cabinet Portrait." Well, that seemed self-evident.

As it turned out, my solution did come when I returned to that collection of photographs I rescued from the Sonora antique shop, rather than poring through census records. There, I looked through all the rest of the pictures to see who else was labeled with this same Fuller name—and what clues I might draw from them. The answer came with another mother-and-child photo, this one labeled "Theresa Fuller, Burt Purkey's cousin."

I was off again, looking through census records and other documents to locate anyone in the Purkey tree who might be the suspected Theresa Fuller—and, to hope that the line of Theresa Fuller also included someone named Pleasant who had a child named Tarence.

The answer came almost immediately: Theresa was sister to Tarence. Their mom was named Pleasant, all right, but Fuller was her married name. Pleasant was born a Purkey, next youngest sister to Erastus Purkey, Burt Purkey's dad. Thus, of course, her children Tarence and Theresa would have been Burt's cousins.

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at the photograph of Pleasant Purkey Fuller and her baby Tarence, and follow that up the next day with a glimpse of a very faded photograph of Theresa Fuller. Whether she was the mom or the babe, I've yet to determine. But first things first. On to introductions.