What We Can't Find About Jim Tucker

Reuniting abandoned century-old photographs with family is not that much of a challenge, as long as you know at least a few details about the subjects of the portrait. A name or two is definitely helpful, but the location of the studio where the picture was taken can also help. From that point, with two or three facts, all it takes is some time and genealogical grunt work to produce the results—and then the serendipity to locate the family's descendants.

We have most of those initial requirements for working with the photograph I found in northern California of a young James Tucker. For one thing, someone had thoughtfully labeled the reverse of the cabinet card with his name and the additional detail that he was "Maud's brother." This agreed with the research I had already completed for another photograph—that time, the entire Tucker family, taken before 1900 in Wahoo, Nebraska—so it wasn't much of a surprise to discover the watermark on the card itself told us the location of the studio was in Oregon.

There are, however, some missing links in James Tucker's story, and those missing elements may be just what we need to locate a descendant interested in receiving this rescued photograph.

What we can find does flow nicely from the 1900 census entry for Jim's family in Oregon; we can see him there as the oldest child of Samuel and Annie Tucker. Six years later, we learn that this twenty-one year old had already married a woman from Missouri by the name of Edith May Jones. Since the location of the wedding was in Bannock County, Idaho, we can presume Edith had moved there with her parents. Indeed, by the time Jim had registered in 1918 toward the end of the Great War, he stated his employer was someone named Wilbur Jones—possibly a relative of his wife.

That, however, is getting ahead of ourselves. One key stopping place in this research rundown would be the 1910 census, right after the couple was married on December 18, 1906. We can see from the census the corroborating detail that Jim and Edith were married for at least three years—agreeing with the fact that the census was taken in April of that year, only four months past that third year. And we can also see that, though they've been married for at least three years, there are no children in their household. Edith claims no descendants, whether alive or deceased.

Fast forward to the 1930 census, and we see the Tucker household enlarged to three occupants: Jim, Edith, and a daughter named Norma I. Tucker. Though Edith lists her age as forty five, this daughter is only one year of age. Agreed, that age could easily be misread, as it appears that a lightly-inked fraction was crossed out in a bolder stroke, but fast-forwarding another ten years bears out that detail: in 1940, Norma was listed as twelve years of age.

There's another unexpected detail about Norma. Unlike her father who, though born in Illinois and captured in a family photograph in Nebraska as a boy, spent most of his adult life—as far as we know—around the border between Oregon and the Idaho home of her mother, Norma was apparently born in California.

California? Where did that come from?

The challenge is to find just where Norma's parents were in the decade preceding her birth. But there's a problem with that: no matter how I search, I haven't been able to find either James or Edith in the 1920 census. Not in Illinois, where Jim was born. Not in Missouri, place of his wife's birth. And certainly not in the two states where we've already found them, Idaho and Oregon. Could they have made the big move to California, leading up to the stock market crash of 1929?

If there's no way to directly answer that question, at least there are ways to work around this missing census record. We'll see, tomorrow, what can be pieced together about the details we can't otherwise find about Jim Tucker and his family.

Above: Difficult to spot in the original, enlargement of the scanned James Tucker photograph allows us to read the studio imprint clearly enough to determine its location in Ontario, Oregon; photograph currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant.

Clinching the Connection

There's just something about pushing one's genealogical research out toward that doubtful edge: how do we know we are headed in the right direction? If we are researching our own family line, we might have the help of a research partner in the family, who can rein us in when we choose the wrong path towards a person with what sounds like the right name. But when researching strangers, who's to say we're headed on the wrong track?

That's why I rely so heavily on documentation. I want to see the document—or at least an electronic facsimile of the form—for myself. I want to compare all the details on the record, including those extra lines of information that never seem to be included in transcriptions or indexed collections.

As we pursue the trail leading us back to the true identity of the Tucker family featured in the portrait I found in an antique store in Sonora, California, I crave these double- and triple-checks of this step-by-step research process. True, we first found the Tucker family in a tiny place called Wahoo, Nebraska, where the picture was taken. But then, no subsequent sign of them in Wahoo. No sign of them in the entire county where Wahoo is located. There was, however, another Tucker family with all the same given names as those in the photograph. Only problem was, they were not living in Nebraska; they were in Oregon.

The hunt for any record to connect this family with familiar details indicated on the photograph has been on for a while now. We've talked about the son, Frank, who was killed in action during World War I. We've also explored the whereabouts of his sister Maud, and that, as Frank's obituary asserted, she lived in Pocatello, Idaho—and that she eventually gave birth to a daughter who grew up to become a possibility for the "Mom B." mentioned on the back of the photograph.

So, forgive me for a little bit of overkill, while I mention yet another connection to documentation for this branch of the Samuel Tucker family of Oregon, formerly from Nebraska. Maud, as we've already mentioned, married a man in Idaho named Burt Purkey. The youngest of their daughters, Corinne, married a man whose surname qualified her to be known as "Mom B." Maud was born near the end of December in 1888 in a place referred to in her death certificate as Yuan, Nebraska—probably a slight error in reporting, actually signifying the town in the same county as Wahoo, known as Yutan, the very place where we've already learned her brother Frank had been born.

Maud probably lived her entire married life in Pocatello, Idaho. At least, that was where she was living as recently as the 1940 census, and where we find her, a short while after that, when she died in 1944.

Maud's death certificate shows us some details that provide that extra little bit of support I am always looking for. Remember those three daughters? Apparently, daughter Dorothy—the one who married someone named Smith, not Mr. B.—was the informant signing the death certificate. Of course, the record also mentioned that Maud's husband's name was Burt, confirming that we had the right person yet again. And the certificate provided those two bonus details we always look for in such documents: the names and places of birth of her parents.

As we expected, those names would be Samuel and Annie Tucker—but we learn something additional about them. For one thing, we see that Samuel was listed as born in Alton, Illinois, and that Annie's maiden name was Goodman. Annie, as it turned out, came from Nashville, Tennessee.

The more we delve into this Tucker family, the more these details call to mind a number of research pathways we've already trod. As it turns out, we have already worked on these family lines, only from a different direction. As we'll begin reviewing tomorrow, they are people we've already come to know through other photographs found in that same antique shop in Sonora, California. And there's a reason for that.

Learning More About Maud

In researching families with common surnames, we find ourselves double- and triple-checking details to make sure everything aligns correctly. There likely have been, for example, hundreds of Samuel Tuckers out there, adding to the challenge of determining whether we have selected the right identity for the abandoned family photograph I found in an antique shop in Sonora, California.

At the start, all we knew was that the Tucker family was in Wahoo, Nebraska, at least long enough to sit for their portrait at a photography studio in that location. By the time of the next census record—I was guessing this might have been the 1900 census—there was no Tucker family fitting the right description in the whole of Saunders County, let alone the county seat of Wahoo. That's when the hunt began for where Ralph, Jim, Eva, Maud, Frank, Elmer, and Annie Tucker went.

By the time of the 1900 census, a Tucker family including all those names did show up, but they weren't anywhere in Nebraska. In fact, they were half a continent away in Oregon, along with the patriarch of this family, whose name we learned was Samuel. Whether this was the same Tucker family as the one in the photograph from back in Wahoo, we're still pondering.

The past two days, we examined the possibility of whether a hint about Tucker son Frank—killed in World War I—confirmed we had located the right family. Today, we'll look at the second hint provided on the back of the photo. Whoever was kind enough to label the photo had noted, "Maud is Mom B's mother."

Well, there was a Maud in this Tucker family in Oregon, but that's not yet reason to shout the victory. During the decade in which this Maud Tucker was born—census records indicate she likely arrived in the late 1880s—at least 4,200 other girls were given the same name, putting the name Maud seventy-fourth in the top two hundred names for girls born in that decade, according to the "Popular Baby Names" page on the Social Security website. So there could feasibly be some other Maud Tuckers out there.

Let's see what else we can discover about this Maud. We've already learned that she married a man by the name of Burt Purkey, and that their family lived in Pocatello—just as the front page newspaper report of her brother Frank's death had affirmed. In fact, they were living in Pocatello back at the time of the 1910 census, showing us that Burt and Maud had three daughters. Would one of them turn out to marry a man whose surname begins with "B"?

The three Purkey daughters, according to this 1910 census, were named Evelyn, Dorothy, and Corinne. The oldest, Evelyn, was married in 1925 in Bannock County, Idaho, to a man named William Hillard. We can eliminate this couple from our search for "Mr. B."

The next Purkey daughter, Dorothy, also married in her home county, two years after her older sister's wedding. Like her sister, Dorothy married a man whose name did not qualify him as "Mr. B." either. Dorothy's groom was Sam Smith.

Fortunately, our third try produces a winner. At the end of 1929, and still in their home county of Bannock, youngest Purkey daughter Corinne married a man named Edward Brockman. Corinne, then—as long as we have the right Tucker family to begin with—would be the one who could qualify as "Mom B" in our photograph's label.

As it is, the more details that dovetail between what we can find of this Oregon Tucker family and the family who posed for their portrait back in Nebraska, the more likely we are to have identified the right family. This process may seem tedious, but remember here, we're talking about a surname that is very common in the United States. Introducing the additional restrictions of having to match multiple other requirements helps increase the certainty that we have located the right family.

Now that we have more information on just who Mom B was, next week we can look at a few other details that align nicely with this scenario. And then, we can start examining possibilities for returning this abandoned photograph home to family members.

Meet Earl

Among the pictures in the stack of abandoned family photographs I found in a Sonora, California, antique shop was one labeled, simply, Earl Purkey. Since we had already found some other photos with that surname—Purkey—the easy conclusion would be that Earl was part of that same family. Indeed, we had already seen another photo of the Purkey children, and "Leslie Earl" was one of the names on that photo's label.

If this Earl is the same as the young boy Leslie Earl, this is what we know, so far, about that son of Erastus Manford and Rebecca Olive Lewis Purkey. Leslie Earl provided us with the clue that, when his parents left Wisconsin to head out west, they didn't just move to Pocatello, Idaho. They apparently went first to Snohomish, Washington—at least, according to their son's World War I draft registration card, which told us that that was where he was born.

That registration card also let us know that Leslie Earl Purkey arrived in Washington on June 22, 1889—though his family soon moved to Idaho, where his sister Myrtle was born by 1892.

By the time of that same draft registration card, Leslie Earl Purkey was twenty seven years of age and still single—but not for long. An index on Ancestry.com hints at his Oregon marriage in 1920 to someone whom I later discovered, backtracking through records, was named Eva Rawlin—at least, that was what she was known as, subsequent to her previous marriage to Australian immigrant Robert Francis Rawlin. Before that previous 1905 marriage, she was known as Eva Tucker—a surname we'll need to remember for future reference.

Though Leslie Earl Purkey's marriage didn't last long—Eva apparently remarried—one son was born to this union. Whether that son is still alive—and, if alive, would be interested in receiving this photograph—I don't have any way of knowing. But once again, I'm putting it out there: here's one abandoned family photograph from almost one hundred years ago, with hopes that someone in the Purkey family would love to have it just as much as I'd like to find photos of my own ancestors.

Above: Undated photograph labeled "Earl Purkey" from a studio in Pocatello, Idaho; photograph currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant of the subject.

Learning More About Someone Else's Family

Learning that several of the hundred-year-old photographs I've rescued from a northern California antique shop actually are of people related to each other makes me remember to slow down and take my time in identifying these subjects. After all, just as we saw with the picture I described yesterday, it may turn out that I have more than one photograph of the same person.

In this case, it turns out I have another picture of the daughters from the children's photo we saw last week. The two girls from that picture were labeled as Mabel Theresa and Myrtle Ivy Purkey. I'd estimate the younger of the two sisters, Myrtle, born in 1892, was about three or four years of age at the time of that portrait. Since their baby brother (not in the photograph), Verna Louis, didn't arrive until 1897, perhaps fixing the date of the photograph as 1895 or 1896 would make more sense.

With the photograph I began telling you about yesterday, we get to see the girls when they were a little older. By this time, younger sister Myrt looked like a teenager, perhaps ten years or more after the previous portrait was taken.

While the previous photograph—the younger version of the siblings—had no identification of the photography studio, the newer picture did. It was taken at The Black Studio in Pocatello, Idaho, the same town where the Purkey family showed up in the 1900 census—in fact, where the family likely lived, ever since Myrtle's birth there in 1892.

If the Purkey sisters' picture was taken when Myrt was about sixteen, that would mean a date of around 1908. However, her older sister Mabel got married early in 1907—to Thomas C. Pratt in Bannock County, Idaho—and I suspect this portrait might have been something taken before that date, perhaps as a memento of a time when they were both still sisters at home. It's hard to tell, though, because in the picture, both of the sisters have their hands behind their backs, depriving us of a glimpse of any telltale ring. Perhaps they were actually older than my guess, and Mabel was already married.

Still, as this is not my own family—and thus I am not privileged to the family legends passed down through the generations in the Purkey, Pratt, or Brockman families—we won't know for sure until we find a descendant who might be interested in receiving these photos back home again...and filling in the blanks on this family's stories.

Above: Undated photograph of sisters Myrtle and Mabel Purkey, taken at The Black Studio in Pocatello, Idaho; picture currently in the possession of the author until claimed by a direct descendant of either of the two Purkey sisters.

Myrt and Mabe

Oftentimes, when I find an abandoned family photograph in an antique store, it is a one-off event. While I can research the subject of the portrait, based on the clues I find marked on the picture or its frame, up until this most recent rescue mission, I hadn't found any photos that connected with others.

And then I found Rachel Webb, and returned her photo to a direct descendant—before discovering that another family member's photo was in the same batch I had purchased from the same antique store in Sonora, California.

Keeping this in mind, I am proceeding very carefully, as I move through the rest of the photos. After all, so many of the bunch I found in Sonora all came with the same sort of label on the reverse, all apparently written in the same hand. You know there are going to be other connections coming to the surface in this bunch.

When I ran across the photo of two young women, labeled only with what looked like, "Gramp's  sisters - Myrt + Malie," I figured a productive first search would be to revisit the family tree of the Brockman in-law whose other photos I had already identified. That meant looking at the line of the Purkey family descendants from Indiana, Wisconsin, Idaho—and then, eventually, California.

My hypothesis was that "Gramps" was a grandfather of the Brockman descendant whose recent passing in Sonora precipitated the loss of those family photos. Keeping in mind my concept of determining the "voice" of the written records I find, the only "Gramps" I could find who had sisters anything close to those names was actually that Brockman descendant's mother's father, so that would indicate we are talking about someone in the Purkey family—the same line as the lively children we discussed the other day.

Taking a look at the Purkey family tree, it turns out that the two daughters in the family of Erastus Manford and Rebecca Olive Lewis Purkey were very likely the ones nicknamed Myrt and "Malie"—although it turns out I misread that second name, which was probably Mabe. According to the 1900 census, the Purkeys had a daughter named Mabel, whose birth was listed as November of 1883. And the only other daughter—the rest of the Purkeys' six children in the 1900 census were sons—was listed as seven year old Myrtle.

Thus, with a little assistance from a document dating back to 1900—and considering the provenance of the many other photographs I obtained that apparently belong to the same family collection—we can conclude that the photograph of two young ladies found in Sonora, California, were likely that of the two Purkey daughters from Pocatello, Idaho, Myrtle and Mabel.

Above: the only identification provided on the photograph of two young women, found in an antique store in Sonora, California; the type of label and the handwriting similarities point to the likelihood of the same source as the other pictures I had found at that same location.

An Earlier Version

It is informative to compare photographs of the same ancestors over the years. Last week, I had shared a photograph of five children, all part of the Purkey family in Pocatello, Idaho. Thankfully, each of the children was listed in that photo with his or her first and middle names—which helped when I realized I had also found an older photograph of the three oldest of the set, along with their parents. Besides the younger ages—not to mention the addition of the parents' names—the earlier photograph revealed that the family had moved to Pocatello from Menonomie, Wisconsin.

All this is helpful to learn, as it will assist me in my quest to return the abandoned photographs I find in local antique stores, here in northern California, to descendants of the families pictured in these portraits. In the case of the Brockman family—which we reviewed earlier in September—and now with the Purkey family, though, I discovered a slight twist to the usual process: I had already sent a photo home which apparently belonged to this same set of family photos.

The connection is this: the family estate from which these photos likely came was one in Sonora, California—about a ninety minute drive from my home, going up into the California foothills made famous by the 1849 gold rush. Apparently, the woman of that Sonora family was a Purkey descendant. And among those Purkey ancestors was a connection to a photo we've already rescued and returned home.

The photo of the five children we viewed last week showed the family of Erastus and Olive Purkey. They and their oldest three children are pictured below, in the photo from Menomonie. Whoever labeled the photo apparently did so in order from left to right, from toddler "Burt" to papa Erastus Manford, to oldest daughter Mabel, to mama "Rebecca O." to baby Lester in her lap.

We can determine the approximate date this portrait was taken, based on the information found in the 1900 U.S. census. At that time, the Purkey family was living in Pocatello, not Menomonie. That particular census, though, included all the children up through that year, with a statement on the month and year of each person's birth, along with the total number of years the couple had been married (seventeen in this case). Thus, the youngest child in the photo being Lester, his date of birth was given as January of 1888, back in Wisconsin. By June of 1890, when the next son was born, the family had already arrived out west.

It was a good thing the label on the reverse of the photograph identified the wife as "Rebecca O." and not simply as Rebecca. If you noticed, the 1900 census listed Erastus' wife's name as Olive, not Rebecca.

A quick glance over the census details showed that Olive was born in Indiana—as was her husband—and that each of the children had, for their mother's place of birth, an entry with that same state of Indiana.  Still, a bit more verification to insure Mr. Purkey hadn't been married twice would help.

Since the census provided the Purkeys' report of when they were married, a little mental math reveals the year of their wedding to be approximately 1883. And, seeing that both the adults were born in Indiana, I went looking for any indication of the names of this couple in that same home state.

That, I found in the records of Marshall County, Indiana, for the September 10, 1882, marriage of Manford "Purky" and Olive Lewis. Olive in the 1900 census seemed to be one and the same as the Olive in that 1882 document. With "Rebecca O." being the wife in the Purkey family's photo taken around 1888, we can presume the "O." must have stood for Olive.

But Olive? Lewis? In Marshall County, Indiana? We've seen a name like that before...

Above: Photograph of the Erastus Manford Purkey family, taken in Menomonie, Wisconsin, circa 1889; currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant of the Purkey family. Excerpt of the 1900 census, above, courtesy of FamilySearch, as is the section from the Purkeys' marriage record.

The Purkeys in Pocatello—and Menomonie

How helpful it is to find corroborating evidence when puzzling over the identity of subjects in abandoned antique photographs. It is, at least, a good thing that the photo I shared with you yesterday contained both first and middle names for each of five Purkey children. Apparently, when reporting family details to census enumerators, their parents sometimes switched from one name to the other, making it a challenge, in retrospect, to piece together any documentation of their family constellation.

It didn't help that I had estimated the date of the photograph to be much earlier than it turned out to be. The worn appearance of the surface, complete with smudge marks and stains, made the picture look more time-weary than the truth of its years. The narrow margin, coupled with the lack of photographer's imprint, led me to think in the wrong direction.

I was, however, able to come up with a Purkey family containing the five children's names—or at least their variant for the 1900 census. That Purkey family was located in Pocatello, Idaho—an encouraging tip, considering our nexus with the Brockman family was an in-law who grew up in that same town.

But don't send me accolades for research heroism just yet. Remember, I have a second photograph of some of those same children—albeit at an earlier date—along with their parents. Thus, it was a snap to realize the parents of the children we saw in the photo yesterday were named Erastus and Olive Purkey.

Helpful, too, was the small detail on the lower margin of the second photo: the name of the photography studio and its location. Whoever the family of Erastus and Olive Purkey were, they moved to Pocatello from Menomonie, Wisconsin.

It is a really good thing that I had that second photograph to rely on for the Purkeys' whereabouts, for each of the Purkey children was born after the 1880 census—in that research black hole left by the near-total destruction of the 1890 census. How often we researchers are reminded of the depth of that loss.

In this case, without that second photograph, the trail—at least in Pocatello—would have gone cold quickly. But with the names of the parents, we can follow their path backwards in time to learn about some interesting connections to the subject of another abandoned photograph which has since made its way back home.

Above: Label from the lower margin of a second photograph which included some of the older Purkey children, along with their parents. The photographer's studio—if I am reading the writing correctly—seems to read "R. O. Helsom" in Menomonie, Wisconsin. Thankfully, the names of those in the picture were provided on its reverse.