The Last Son

 

The last in a long line of sons of Lyman Jackson and Deidama Dunham was Norman Landon Jackson. The tenth son and eleventh child born to the Jacksons, Norman likely made his 1801 appearance in upstate New York before the Jacksons' final move to Erie County, Pennsylvania.

While his parents and a few brothers chose to remain in Pennsylvania, Norman was among the Jackson siblings who decided to move west. For a while, he could be found in Knox County, Illinois, along with his brothers Obediah and David Bardsley Jackson. However, he eventually settled farther west, in Minnesota territory. There, in the 1857 territorial census, Norman Jackson and his wife, along with his son Eli's household, were listed in a place once known as Jackson Lake in Blue Earth County. 

Left behind in Illinois were his two daughters. Back in Knox County, Lois married Andrew Tapp in 1847, and shortly afterwards settled in Black Hawk County, Iowa, before the 1856 state census.  Her sister Louisa followed suit, marrying John Ferris and settled in Black Hawk County, Iowa, before the 1860 census.

As for Norman Landon Jackson, he died in the place where he had settled in the 1850s. His memorial in Blue Earth County, Minnesota, bears the dates 1801 and 1869, spanning a life which took him from upstate New York, to Erie County, Pennsylvania, then westward through Indiana to Illinois, and eventually onward to what was once known as Minnesota Territory.   

One Hundred Years Ago

 

Much as some people might celebrate a friend's birthday—say, their fortieth, or some other mere decade's amount of life—by buying a reprint of the front page of that exact day's newspaper, I thought I'd do the same today for my mother. Today would have been her birthday, one hundred years ago, and I was curious to see what the world might have held for her family that day.

Since my mother was born in a tiny farm town called Oelwein, Iowa, I couldn't pull up any copies of the local paper from archival collections. Perhaps there wasn't any local newspaper. After all, at the time, Oelwein boasted not quite eight thousand residents, although ever since the arrival of the railroads there at the turn of the century, it had seen a growth spurt. To read the news of the day, I had to rely on the publication at Cedar Rapids, an hour's commute to the south.

There, The Evening Gazette focused mainly on leftover news from a recuperating Europe after the Great War had subsided. Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, inaugurated that day as President of the German Republic, made three separate appearances on the Gazette's front page, as did French General Charles Mangin, who died that very day. Lawsuits and murder trials rounded out the day's news, as well as an announcement of big plans to bring a replica of Cheyenne, Wyoming's Frontier Days to town. To round out the day's news, an ominous mention of a bank failure in nearby Mason City, juxtaposed with reports of the state's banking situation being "in fine condition," pointed to history yet to be made.

My grandparents' brief stay in Oelwein—a railroad center grown out of a corn field bought from the town's namesake farmer—was an odd juxtaposition of my grandfather's current employment and my grandmother's oddly out-of-place roots as a southern lady whose impetuous marriage to a tall, dark, and handsome eligible bachelor brought her where she never expected to be. The stories of those farm-based days when my mother was born I know well. After all, it was my mother who passed on the family stories from her own relatives; why not share stories of her own parents' lives? But the stories providing the context of her young life and what blend of news mixed to create her own social environment I hadn't before explored.

Sometimes, in addition to gaining the right details about birth dates and places and the names to which they belong, it is helpful to spend a moment surrounded in the news of the day. To see what has yet to come down the road for an ancestor—those newsworthy items which to us are "old news"—can open up new vistas to us and help gain an appreciation for what shaped those family members from past eras.

Above: Headlines from the front page of the May 12, 1925, Cedar Rapids newspaper, The Evening Gazette; image courtesy of newspapers.com. 

Another One Who Didn't "Daughter Out"

 

If there is anything a researcher in search of matrilineal descendants wouldn't want to see, it would be to discover that the line of interest didn't "daughter out." That, however, is exactly what unfolded as I looked at what became of the two daughters of Sarah Mitchell. Sarah, if you'll recall, was herself a daughter of the recently-discovered extra matrilineal descendant, Rosanna Jackson Mitchell, who in turn was daughter of my mother-in-law's third great-grandmother Sarah Ijams Jackson.

With that youngest daughter of that newly-discovered matriline, Sarah Mitchell, I was at first elated to discover she had had two daughters of her own. Anna Nugent was the oldest of Sarah's daughters, born in 1881 in Chickasaw County, Iowa, where Sarah's parents had originally settled after their move from Ohio. 

After her widowed mother moved the family to nearby Wright County, Anna met and married a twenty eight year old railroad man from Indiana by the name of Orville S. Carr. Their wedding was performed by a Justice of the Peace and recorded in Wright County on December 12, 1900.

As had many of the rest of Anna's family, Anna and Orville Carr moved from Iowa to California. They can be found in the 1910 census in San Joaquin County, on Roberts Island, just outside the city of Stockton, along with their two sons, Cecil and Leo. Ten years later, Anna, though still listed as married, had moved with her children to live with her mother in nearby Sacramento County. Though she now was mother to three children, not a one of them was a daughter. Checking her obituary, published only months after her mother's passing in 1939, we can see that Anna was confirmed as having been survived by three sons: in addition to Cecil and Leo, there was third son Bernard. No daughters.

Anna died at the home of her sister in Roseville, Placer County. Her obituary mentioned that she had resided with her sister for the past three months. It is quite possible that illness obligated her to reside near someone who could care for her in her last months of life.

Her sister, Mary Elizabeth, had married someone before 1918 who was alternately referred to as Thomas F. or Francis T. Harrigan. Though this will come as no surprise to learn at this point, Mary's 1947 obituary confirmed that this daughter of our matriline also died leaving only sons: Virgil and George Harrigan. Where were those daughters we were hoping to find in that next generation?

Striking out on our matrilineal tour with this youngest daughter of Rosanna Jackson Mitchell, Sarah Mitchell Nugent, we still have one other option among Rosanna's daughters: the middle daughter Martha. Tomorrow, we'll see whether we can hold out hope for potential mtDNA matches from any descendants of Martha Mitchell.

Still Out There

 

It is always helpful—albeit puzzling—to find that I've missed an entire branch of the family tree. Such was my challenge over the weekend when I discovered I had never even realized there was another daughter of Sarah Ijams and her husband John Jay Jackson. Exciting as that discovery might have been—after all, that adds another possible set of matches to my mother-in-law's matriline—it was quickly followed by the next discovery: there's another possible branch still out there for me to find.

It was partially thanks to a stray DNA match claiming to descend from another daughter of Sarah Ijams—one I hadn't yet realized belonged to our matriline—that I discovered this omission. Out of the forty eight DNA matches for Sarah's line linking to my husband's results at Ancestry.com, there was only that one match who claimed this missing Jackson daughter as an ancestor; all the rest either descended from Sarah's daughter Nancy, or her two sons Joseph and Robert.

That missing daughter's name was Rosanna. She was born about 1821 in Ohio, but had closed out her years in Iowa. Marrying Walter Mitchell in Perry County, Ohio, in 1840, Rosanna and her husband had several children before moving to Chickasaw County in Iowa. Using the 1860 census as a guide, I could see locations of her children's place of birth indicate that the Mitchell family must have made the move to Iowa just before 1859.

While it might be tempting to think that Rosanna ended up moving so far from home due to her husband's wanderlust, looking at the broader perspective of her extended family helps paint a different picture. Rosanna's brother Robert, after his 1851 marriage and birth of his first two children, had moved his family to Chickasaw County, Iowa, in the mid-1850s. But before either of those two siblings' families made the move, their brother Joseph was in nearby Lansing, Iowa, having moved his family there right after the 1850 census.

The suspected trigger point for all these decisions to leave their home in Ohio—at least, this is my guess—was that all the children of Sarah and John J. Jackson who lived to adulthood, with the exception of my mother-in-law's direct ancestor Nancy Jackson, opted to move out of town rather than remain close to their father's household after his marriage to his second wife. The only one who remained—Nancy—had married into another family with deep roots in Perry County. Perhaps the rest of Sarah's family wanted to separate themselves from reminders of a lost mother, as well as to get a new start in life for themselves.

Reviewing all these details this past weekend after discovering the existence of Rosanna's line, however, opened up another possibility: there is likely another Jackson line out there yet to be discovered. While working on this puzzle, I looked far and wide for another record I had yet to find: the obituary for their father, John J. Jackson.

As it turns out, John J. Jackson had a small but noteworthy claim to fame, himself: he was said to have been the oldest surviving soldier in Perry County from the War of 1812. His funeral, it was noted in newspaper reports, was attended by military representatives from much younger ranks than his own long-gone comrades. I finally managed to find the actual obituary, a long, wordy review of his life's story.

Obituaries from that era can disappointingly omit the very details we seek—names of survivors would be a nice touch—yet from that record, I noticed one mention about his surviving children. Explaining that Sarah, John's first wife, had died young, the obituary mentioned that her husband was survived by four of Sarah's seven children. While I was aware of Nancy, my mother-in-law's direct line, plus sons Joseph and Robert, and daughter Elizabeth who died unmarried in her early twenties, adding in the discovery of Rosanna still left me two children short. Looking at it another way—checking those who still survived their father's death in 1876—I had to remove Rosanna from the list, since she died in 1862. From that perspective, too, there was one child still missing from among the survivors.

Who that one Jackson child—or two—might have been, will likely need to be a project reserved for another year's research quest, as we're nearly at the end of this month's project. That will need to be item number one on the to-do list I draw up tomorrow to close out the month.    

Effie Aurilla's Great-Grandmother

 

Our task, as family historians, is to push back ever so tentatively through the years from where our known ancestors used to live to their earlier records. So far, in exploring the Williams line of Maude Woodworth Bean's ancestry, we traced her mother, Effie Aurilla from her 1890 marriage to William Woodworth in Iowa to records of her earlier years in the Dakota Territory household of her father, Eugene Williams. But what about Eugene's earlier years?

Despite Eugene's claim to have been born in New York, we found a possible candidate for this young man in the 1860 home of Martin and Mary Williams of Marcellon, Wisconsin. Since Eugene was born in 1846, I wanted to see if I could find him in the 1850 census. Sure enough, there was a family which included a four year old boy by that name—but the family lived in New York, not Wisconsin.

Leading off at the top of the page for a town in Allegany County called Centerville, I found the impossible scrawl of a hasty enumerator who had jumbled ten people with two different surnames into the same household. The head of the household was fifty five year old Solomon Williams, but in addition to baby Frances and her four year old companion Eugene, the household included a ninety one year old man by the name of Philo Hawley and a female companion of the same surname trailing Philo by only a few years.

Somewhere in that same household was the name we are looking for—Martin Williams—exactly ten years younger than the age we had found him at in the 1860 census so many miles to the west of this New York location. Still, that would not be too alarming, considering our Eugene had claimed through most of his life that he had been born in New York. Perhaps this was home and Solomon was Martin's father.

What attracted my attention to this household was not just the jumble of names or the spread of ages, but the particular name of the woman listed right after the line for the head of this household. Her name—and I'm presuming this would turn out to be Martin's mother and, eventually, Effie's great-grandmother—was Aurilla.

Now, before you go regaling me with warnings about coincidences, let's just take a look at one thing—or at least as close a thing as we can get to actual documentation. Consider the name Aurilla. How often do you see a name like that? 

Just in case, I did a little exploring. I checked the name data tucked away in a fun little corner of the U.S. Social Security website. For the earliest year I could find listed on the site—the decade of the 1880s—Aurilla did not even make a showing in the list of the top two hundred names for girls. Looking at this from another angle, for a baby girl's name in 1885, the earliest date I could bring up on another website, the name Aurilla ranked 881 in popularity for that year. If families routinely named their babies after older relatives, those stats echo a quite limited number of honorary namesakes.

That said, while I consider this to be a promising sign that we are on to something with the household of Solomon Williams, you know we can't just stop there. We'll have to do some more exploring to confirm this hypothesis that Eugene Williams' dad was the Martin Williams who used to call Centerville—and more importantly, the household of Solomon and Aurilla Williams—home.

Maude's Mom

 

It may have been a stash of family photographs found in a local antique shop which prompted me to tell the story of their previous owner, Marilyn Sowle Bean, but it was the tragic legacy bequeathed upon Marilyn's husband, brother-in-law and, eventually, her own son which has me searching through Marilyn's mother-in-law's family tree.

Maude Woodworth Bean apparently was a carrier of a once-deadly disease known as Marfan Syndrome, the cause of the untimely deaths of the men in the Bean family. Prompted by that—plus the serendipitous discovery of those family pictures—I've been trawling through the Bean pedigree to see if I could pinpoint which branch of the family might have contributed the unfortunate tendency.

We've already explored the paternal Bean family briefly, but having discovered the same malady in the descendants of Maude's brother's family, we've lately been seeking signs in Maude's own Woodworth family. Though over a century ago there were some childhood deaths on the Woodworth side, there certainly were also some long-lived relatives, as well. But what about Maude's mom? We need to explore that branch of Maude's story, as well.

It was thanks to Maude's father's obituary—a personal history encased within a funeral announcement—that we can glean the timeline of when William Woodworth married his wife. Though as a teenager, William had moved to southern California with his parents, Lafayette and Eliza Smith Woodworth, he did not forget the sweetheart he had left behind in Sioux City, Iowa. He returned there to marry her on October 27, 1890, and bring her home with him to Covina, California.

From the actual record of their marriage, we learn that William's bride—eventually, Maude's mother—was named Effie A. Williams. Though I've been able, from other family records, to determine that the middle initial "A" stood for Aurilla, I have yet to discover any other first name than what seems to be more nickname than formal given name.

According to the Sioux City marriage record, Effie was twenty years of age at her wedding, having said her nuptial vows on the same day as her birthday. However, from other records, it looks like she was actually nineteen at the point when she said "I do."

There was another discrepancy on the marriage register in Sioux City which caused a bit more research difficulty than the year of Effie's birth. Her father's name—Eugene—might have been clearly inscribed in the register, but her mother's maiden name looked like Elizabeth Ferrard. Or was it Ferrara?

Elizabeth it may have been—we can see that thirty years later in Elizabeth's own obituary. Unfortunately, though Mrs. Williams' obituary named her pallbearers and even the names of the soloists rendering her favorite hymns at the funeral, not one mention was made of the deceased's survivors, other than the daughter—"Mrs. W. C. Woodworth"—in whose home she had passed. It took quite a bit of exploration to realize that neither Ferrard nor Ferrara was her actual maiden name.

To explore the possibility that Marfan Syndrome may have made its appearance in Effie's family, rather than Maude's paternal Woodworth line, of course we don't need to start with her mother's pedigree. We can search first among the Williams kin. That will buy me more time to explore the possibilities for Elizabeth's maiden name. In the meantime, we'll examine what we can find on the paternal side of Maude's mother's family.

 

Above: Inset from register of marriages from Woodbury County, Iowa, showing the October 1890 entry representing Effie A. Williams, bride of William Woodworth; courtesy Ancestry.com.

California Calling

 

What brought our ancestors to a new hometown? More to the point, just how did individuals come to the decision to uproot from their home and head elsewhere to seek their fortune? Did they make the move one by one, en masse with family and neighbors, or one after another in a serial migration?

Family stories may illustrate one of the three styles of migration—or, in some cases, more than one variety of migration before the family's story was completely told. In the case of Maude Woodworth Bean's ancestors, what at first glance might have seemed a lump sum proposal—all her grandparents' families moving at once to the same location—turned out to be more of a serial installation. It was interesting to track who in the family arrived in California first, and who trailed long afterwards.

According to his obituary, Maude's father William Woodworth arrived from the midwest when his parents made the move to California in 1886. The Woodworths had originally lived in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, but three years prior to their westward migration had settled in Sioux City, Iowa.

At the time of the move to California, William Woodworth was about nineteen years of age. As he was not the oldest, the question becomes: who else in the family accompanied their parents, Lafayette and Eliza Smith Woodworth, to California.

The only child besides William to make the move directly with his parents was the baby of the family and his father's namesake, then fourteen year old Lafayette Woodworth. In California, the junior Lafayette Woodworth married a fellow immigrant from the midwest, Olive Hostettler, and raised their four children in the vicinity of the southern California property where his parents settled.

As one might guess, oldest daughter Frances was already married to Charles Larabee and mother of three children long before her parents decided to leave for California. The web tightens when you realize that Frances' younger sister Emma was also married to a Larabee—Gilbert, whose father Eleazar was possibly older brother to Frances' husband Charles. With an "interwoven thicket" like that for a family tree, it wasn't likely that either Woodworth daughter would follow her parents to California.

Other than those two exceptions in the family, the rest of the surviving children of Lafayette and Eliza Woodworth did, indeed, follow in their parents' footsteps—but not all at once, and certainly not right away.

Second-born Woodworth daughter Mary married a man by the surname Vincent, taunting me with the possibility that his was the namesake of the street running by the property where the Woodworths settled in what eventually became the town of Covina. That, however, was not the case. In digging into this line further, it became clear that Mary and Lewis Vincent were married back in Wisconsin where their four children were born. It was not until the 1900 census that we find the couple in California, living next to one of their now-married sons.

Even later than his siblings was the arrival in California of Woodworth son Joel. According to his obituary, Joel's move from Sioux City, Iowa, preceded his death by barely six months. And the first sign I can find of remaining son Harvey Woodworth was not until well after the 1920 census, when he and his wife—by then, both well into their sixties—showed up in a Pomona city directory in 1928.

Tracing the Woodworth family from Wisconsin to Iowa and then, eventually for some, to southern California helped me see that some time frames do not quite follow the assumptions we might have about how families remove from one location to another. Digging into the history of the region helped reveal the story behind why so many people from the midwest during the 1880s might have made the decision to choose southern California as their life's destination.

We'll take a look at some of the resources I unearthed in the process of trying to answer the question of what made the Woodworths decide to move. The first stop, however, will be to explore what can be found online for the maps of that time period showing the names of local landowners. Spoiler: not finding the Woodworth name launched me into a search for a timeline regarding how—and when—people settled in the region which eventually became Covina, California.   

Digging Deeper for Details

 

Sometimes, the answer we're seeking to our family history research question is buried in the details. Right now, I'm wondering just where the hereditary disease known as Marfan Syndrome might have first manifested itself in the family of Marilyn Bean, the woman whose photographs surfaced at a local antique shop after her death seventeen years ago. Most of those details point to Marilyn's mother-in-law Maude Woodworth Bean as the carrier. But was that legacy bestowed upon her and her brother from the Woodworth side of the family, or from their mother's Williams family line?

In trying to answer this question, there are complications in the research process. Who's to say what the cause of death was, barring access to the details in an actual death record? 

In searching for any sign that others in Maude Woodworth's extended family showed signs of the deadly Marfan Syndrome—either in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, where many in that family were born, or Sioux City, Iowa, where they stayed before emigrating to Los Angeles County in California—there were very few family members who died of any cause at a young age.

True, for deaths of that time period and location, it would take that old-fashioned research route of sending for a death certificate if the record wasn't digitized at any of our usual go-to genealogy websites, so we'd still have to wait for an answer. In the meantime, though, it seemed quite a few of Maude's relatives made it at least to retirement age, or well beyond it.

For those who did die far too soon, it is hard to determine whether the underlying cause might have been an as-yet not widely understood disease like Marfan Syndrome. Besides, in the time periods we're examining—Maude's father William was born in 1867—there were any number of diseases which could have claimed a child's life, or that of twenty-somethings, for that matter. Not to mention, just as we're experiencing right now, there were epidemics which felled large numbers of people, children and adults.

With that in mind, family history might have as its corollary research requirement the knowledge of the history of contagion. Perhaps not in all cases, but especially in ours, being aware of the ebb and flow of contagious diseases could help clarify signs of the goal we're focusing on. 

For instance, in pursuing this question of the cousins who met an early death, there were a few whom I wondered about. Take, for example, the instance of Helen Vanderburg Standard. Cousin to Maude, Helen was only twenty eight years of age when her husband put out an emergency call after midnight for assistance at their home. She died that March 3, 1942, still at home. What was the cause of death? Was it sudden? Was it lingering? Was it unexplained?

Another sad loss in the extended Woodworth family was that of Charles Sumner Woodworth. He would have been Maude's uncle—if he had lived beyond childhood. A clue to his brief life is carved right into his headstone, listing his name as "Charlie" Woodworth. The now-old memorial is difficult to read, and it is likely that the age marked on the headstone may have been transcribed in error as a younger age than Charles was at his passing. No matter: here was another Woodworth relative who may have been lost simply because of Marfan Syndrome.

Or was he? It is hard to tell without more information. But not even a death record from 1861 could have completely informed us—even if we could locate such a record at all.

One detail I did unearth as I was building out the Woodworth tree: Maude's grandparents had plenty of company when they made the decision to uproot their family in Iowa—including Maude's dad William—and move to California. Before we examine the roots of Maude's mother's family, let's take a look at just how many from the Woodworth side of the family made the move to California—and see what drew them to that vastly different region of the country.

Missed by Moments

 

Do you ever discover—only too late to do anything about it right now—that the place you're passing by once held significance for your family history?

Too late to reroute plans now, I've just discovered that not only does a location barely half an hour's drive from my overnight stop represent the land farmed by particular members of the town's "pioneer" settlers—Maude Woodworth's parents and paternal grandparents—but that its history is apparently well preserved by the region's own historical society.

Yes, unfortunately, I and my hard-working husband are headed in an entirely different direction and are on a timetable. Rest assured, I've already written yet another "note to self" to contact the Covina Valley Historical Society to see what they might have contained in their collection regarding the Woodworth family. I may have missed by moments the decision point for visiting the Society's archived collection today, but there will be another trip in the future.

It was from one of those obituaries we all wish we could find more of that I gleaned a fairly complete history of Maude Woodworth Bean's parents. After her father's passing in 1928, the Covina Argus published an informative obituary for the "Well Known Valley Pioneer." From that came a straightforward timeline of William C. Woodworth's life.

Maude lost her father on May 22, 1928, when she was thirty years of age. Granted, by then, she was married to Samuel Bean, but she doubtless was still close to her father, with whom she had claimed a fairly close relationship before she left to attend the California School for the Blind in northern California.

At the time of his passing, W. C. Woodworth was sixty years old—a respectable age, given the time period in which he lived. Though his obituary gave no hint of the illness which caused his death, it is doubtful it would have been related to the Marfan Syndrome which later felled two of his grandsons at a much younger age. Still, the obituary mentioned that three of his children predeceased him, a clue to follow next week.

The obituary also revealed that William Woodworth came to California with his parents in 1886, settling on "the ranch on Vincent Street" in Covina which eventually became his responsibility for years, until it became the property of the Reynolds family. Finding a plat map of the region will help bring that picture to life, as "Vincent Street" has undoubtedly undergone massive changes since that bucolic era.

Soon after the Woodworth family moved to California, William returned to his former home in Sioux City, Iowa, to seek the hand of Effie Aurilla Williams in marriage in the fall of 1890. Yet even Sioux City had only been his residence for three years, as the family came there from the former town of Bristol in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, where William was born, twenty five years before his wedding.

As obituaries often do, William's last mention in the Covina newspaper was well endowed with names of surviving family members, as well as giving honor to his by-then deceased parents, Lafayette and Eliza Woodworth. This will give us working orders to help delve further into the question of whether Marfan Syndrome made its appearance in the lines of any of Maude's siblings or ancestors as it had in her own children. We'll take a closer look at the details next week. 

 

In his Brother's Footsteps

 

Item: I give and bequeath to Joseph Henry Harrison my nephew and son of [J.] H. Ijams all the balance of the proceeds of my real, personal or mixed estate of which I may be possessed at my death and which shall remain after paying the above specified legacies as named in this will.

It was 1845 when Isaac Ijams drew up his will, granting legacies to his wife and her son—Isaac's stepson, as he had no children of his own—and bequeathing the remainder to various nephews living in the extended Ijams family's adopted home in Fairfield County, Ohio.

Not forty years later, the youngest of his brother Joseph's sons—also named Joseph, who received the most generous proportion of his uncle's estate—was dead. But in that dash between the junior Joseph Ijams' birth in 1840 and his death in 1882, he lived a life which gave to others in three widely removed locations. His was a legacy which sprang from following in the footsteps of his own brother's example. And, oddly enough, it is likely from that younger Ijams descendant's life that we even know how to pronounce that unusual surname.

At the time of his uncle Isaac Ijams' passing, the junior Joseph was barely five years of age. How his uncle would have been prescient enough to foretell the child's future, I can't say—or perhaps specifically due to the generous legacy the younger Joseph was about to receive, it made such a future possible for the boy.

As it turned out, not only his uncle's generosity, but the influence poured into his life by others in his family likely shaped his shortened life. For whatever reason, by the time of the 1850 census, Joseph Henry Harrison Ijams and his family had left Fairfield County, where the extended Ijams clan had migrated from Maryland, to settle in Ohio's Morgan County. There, as had occurred to his older brother, the family of Joseph's future spouse had also settled—although by 1850, his future bride was a mere three years of age.

Predictably, when Joseph's family later moved from Ohio to Iowa City, Joseph moved with them. By the time of the 1860 census, Joseph was in his brother William's household, along with the extended family. At age nineteen, he was listed as a student, and we discover from other records why: Joseph H. H. Ijams was attending classes at the University of Iowa.

At the close of the upheaval of the American Civil War, Joseph could be found in Washington, D. C., where he was in the employ of an organization then known as the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. That was in 1865, after he had been appointed as an instructor and moved from his teaching position at his brother's school in Iowa City to the nation's capital.

The Columbia Institution was then under the direction of Edward Miner Gallaudet, son of the renowned educator, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, for whom the college-level division of the Columbia Institution later took its name as Gallaudet College and, eventually, Gallaudet University.

Joseph did not remain at his instructor's post in Washington, D. C., for long. An opportunity beckoned when, at the close of the war, a similar institution in Tennessee decided to re-open its doors. By 1867, Joseph was listed as principal of the Tennessee School for the deaf in Knoxville.

On June 29, 1868, in Knoxville, Joseph made some matrimonial promises to the young girl who had, back in 1850, lived in the same county in Ohio as Joseph's family. 

The wedding vows were solemnized, likely, by Mary Aiken's father William, a Presbyterian minister.

The young Ijams family grew with the addition of their firstborn son in the following year, and three more children by the time of the 1880 census. For the youngest, however—Caroline, born in June of 1882—Joseph would not even amount to a hazy memory; by the Christmas holiday of that same year, her father would be suddenly gone.

Above image of Isaac Ijams' will courtesy of Ancestry.com, and images of the Joseph Ijams and Mary Aiken marriage record courtesy of FamilySearch.org.

A Generous Gift

 

Item: I give and bequeath to my niece Caroline Elizabeth Ijams daughter of [J.] H. Ijams four hundred dollars.

 

Isaac Ijams may have seemed generous—not to mention, practical—when he drew up his will in 1845, in bestowing upon his nephew William a horse with bridle and saddle, until we realize what he had granted to William's younger sister.

For Caroline Ijams, born about 1834, her uncle Isaac may have been not much more than a dim memory, for at his passing, she would only have been eleven or twelve years of age. Furthermore, in order for the amount to be given to her, Isaac's possessions would first have to be liquidated, then managed by a trustee—Isaac named another brother, Frederick, for this purpose—until his niece attained legal age to receive the gift. That four hundred dollar gift, however, would be the equivalent of granting your own niece fourteen thousand dollars in today's economy.

Within four years after Isaac's death, Caroline's parents had moved their household from the Ohio county where the extended Ijams family had settled to nearby Morgan County. It is there that Caroline likely met the man she eventually married. Though I can find no marriage record—yet—for Caroline Ijams and Dana F. Stone, together they made up a household in Iowa City, Iowa, by the time of the 1860 census. That they married back in Ohio is almost certain, as Dana could previously be found living in the same Morgan County, Ohio, where Caroline's parents had settled by 1850.

Dana and Caroline did not move to Iowa alone. In that same 1860 census, both her older brother and his wife and their parents were residing in the same city, in a household along with several others. While in 1860, Caroline's husband was listed as a "land agent," by the time of the draft leading up to the Civil War, Dana Stone was listed as a teacher—possibly at the same school which had been co-founded by his brother-in-law William Ijams.

Between that date and the time of his death, I can find little on either Dana Stone or his wife, Isaac Ijams' niece Caroline. Even the listing, online, of their burials is only by transcription from other records. It is only after Dana's 1882 death that I find any record of Caroline—but not in Iowa.

To find the rest of what little there is available concerning Caroline, we need to move from Iowa to Tennessee, not exactly a simple move to a nearby neighborhood. There, in a death register for the city of Knoxville, we find the November 29, 1884, entry for Caroline E. Stone, widow, reported to be about fifty two years of age. As we already know, she was listed as having been born in Ohio, but as for the mention of any relatives, there was none provided. The only other snippet of information given was under the heading for "Place of Death." There, in a miserable scrawl was what looked like the word "Union."

Fortunately, Ancestry.com has several city directories for Knoxville in their digitized collection, but in the 1884 directory, I could find no entry for a Caroline Stone, nor even for a Dana Stone with any remark that she was his widow. I did, however, check one other entry in that same directory on a hunch: that there might have been an Ijams family member listed in the same volume. Sure enough, there was one entry under that surname, pointing to the same Union address where Caroline spent her last days.

It was for the widow of Caroline's brother Joseph.

Above images of Isaac Ijams' will and the Knoxville city directory courtesy of Ancestry.com.

"A High-toned Christian Gentleman"

 

Item: I give and bequeath to my nephew Wm E. Ijams Son of [J]. H. Ijams one riding horse, bridle and saddle if living...

 

While William Edwin Ijams was not the first of his siblings mentioned in his uncle Isaac Ijams' will, he was the oldest, thus first, at least, in our review of the family. By the time his uncle Isaac drew up his will—signed by Isaac on 12 September 1845—William would have been not quite fifteen years of age.

I like to think that perhaps that gesture of kindness from an uncle contributed to the life story which unfolded for this nephew. It certainly echoed in the story of William's younger brother, as we'll see in a few days.

Born December 16, 1830, to Isaac's brother Joseph and his wife—likely an Ijams cousin—Mary Ann, William spent his early years in the same county in Ohio where his father and uncles had settled after leaving their home in Maryland. Before the time of the 1850 census, though, Joseph and his family had moved to Morgan County—a matter of only two counties to the east of Fairfield County, but enough of a distance, perhaps, for Isaac to be unsure whether his younger brother's son was still living.

From the Joseph Ijams family's residence in McConnelsville, at some point William entered school across the state border at a Pennsylvania institution which eventually became known as Washington and Jefferson College. From a biographical sketch published on the occasion of his graduating class' quarter-century reunion in 1877, we learn that William was considered "a high toned Christian gentleman...quiet and unobtrusive, yet sociable and genial" as well as "an excellent student." He had apparently entered the class in his junior year.

By the time of the 1860 census, William had married—to Elizabeth Culbertson in 1856—and relocated to Iowa City, along with his parents and younger brother, also named Joseph. There, William was listed as a teacher.

That detail, however, tells only part of the story, for William was in Iowa by at least 1854. During that earlier year, William had opened a private school in Iowa City for deaf students. Looking closely at the 1860 census, you can spot on the far right column the coding "D+D" for the two students lodging in the Ijams home, indicating they were deaf.

During that year of 1854, William presented his students at an Iowa Hall of Representatives assembly and, along with the politically active deaf advocate Edmund Booth, lobbied the state to establish a school for the deaf. Early the next year, the state established what is now known as the Iowa School for the Deaf, and William served as the school's superintendent for nine years.

Following that service, William turned his attention to the studies of theology, and was ordained a minister in 1865. He served as pastor at several locations, first in Presbyterian congregations, eventually accepting positions in Congregational churches. Though his ministry led him as far as California, he returned to serve in a congregation in Iowa City by 1879.

Even though William died childless in 1893, it is quite certain he bestowed a legacy through his service, as we'll see when we continue with the story of his younger siblings, particularly with the history of his brother Joseph next week.

An Easy Job Made Difficult

One would have thought, finding a second photograph of a candidate for the Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts whose likeness I found in a California antique shop, that it would be an easy matter of comparing and contrasting. Nope: too much contrasting. The details are driving me to distraction. I've reviewed everything I had found on each of the three candidate couples from Iowa—ruling out the third for a vastly different time period and ages at marriage—back when I first wrote about the couples in December and January. And I believe the best course to take at this point is to move forward, blindfolded.

Yep. That's right. My eyes are likely deceiving me. Let's look at the numbers. Albert number one, living in Fremont County, was born in 1869—well, at least that's what it looked like when we consider his father's report in the 1880 census when Albert was eleven years old. Albert married widow Alice Dooley Eachus in 1889, listing his age then as twenty. She was possibly twenty six, as the register reported, and considering the 1900 census gave her date of birth as October, 1864, that would approximately support the other date.

Okay, taking a peek here, I have to ask myself: does the groom in the original photograph look like he was barely twenty? Did his bride look six years older than he was?

I suppose the answers to those questions could be debated. But here's the clincher: considering that Albert number two was married eleven years later—on New Year's Day in 1900—does that original photograph include garb which looks like something a bride and groom would wear to welcome in that new century?

Scrolling through the fashion plates of 1900 through 1909, those examples hardly look like the new threads our Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts might have been photographed in for their momentous occasion. Even if Council Bluffs, Iowa, wasn't exactly on the cutting edge of high society fashion, the silhouette cut by Mrs. Roberts' outfit doesn't even seem to be a throwback to the previous decade. Her style looks much more in place with the date of Albert Roberts number one's wedding: 1889.

Which begs the question I posed yesterday: could Albert and Alice have aged that much between the time of their 1889 wedding photo and the date of their family portrait? When was that family portrait taken, anyhow? In 1893, before baby Eva made her appearance in April? Perhaps that was why Alice seemed heavier than in her bridal pose.

Then, too, a time span of only four years seems to have weathered poor Mr. Roberts quite a bit, considering the change in his appearance from the wedding picture to the family portrait. Was that twenty year old already sporting a comb-over? Could he have gone that prematurely bald as young as his mid twenties?

These nagging questions push me to wonder whether the Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts whose photograph I found in California might well have been a totally different couple who just happened to stop in at the Sherradan studio to sit for their portrait on their way to an entirely different destination. For all I know, this could have been a couple spending the weekend in Council Bluffs from Omaha. Or Sioux City. Or Des Moines.

Some suggestions which arose from the first time I explored this question included checking other online resources for family trees and seeking other sources for family photographs. I'm in the process of exploring trees at MyHeritage, FindMyPast, FamilySearch, WikiTree and Geni, especially seeking anyone with family photos of the second Albert Roberts. While I certainly have not completed that process, I haven't yet gotten any leads. And though the Fremont County Historical Society has been kind to allow me to post my query—as well as the photo I found—on their Facebook page, I haven't found anyone there yet who has other family photos, especially for that under-represented second candidate for the Roberts couple.

It appears this is still a work in progress...

What About the Children?

Here we are, still puzzling over the identity of an antique photograph found in Sonora, California—despite the Council Bluffs portrait being labeled with a specific name: Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts. But now, we have another photograph, thankfully supplied by a descendant of one of the Iowa men by that specific name, with which to help determine the correct identity of our Mr. and Mrs. Roberts.

While we can't yet be certain, with this new version of our couple, whether we are looking at a portrait of the right Albert Roberts family, there are other ways to solve this identity puzzle than by relying on a side-by-side of either adult. After all, besides the issue of the effect of aging on appearances, different photography studios could have specialized in techniques that produced wildly different results, through lighting, positioning or placement of subjects. Different lighting can make eyes seem more deeply inset, for instance. Broad shoulders or a wide forehead can seem much less imposing when the body is angled slightly away from the camera lens.

In the photo we viewed Tuesday from a descendant of the first candidate for Albert Roberts—the couple from Fremont County, Iowa—not only was the opportunity to view the picture a gift, but the portrait came with three bonuses: the three young children included in the portrait.

If those girls were indeed Lillian, Mayme and Ola, as indicated on the back of the cabinet card, we certainly can find out more details about them. This, however, requires us to do a brief review of the personal history of Mrs. Roberts, who happened to be a widow before she married Albert Roberts.

Alice Roberts was the former Mrs. John W. Eachus. Together, they were the parents of Lillian Eachus, born in California in 1884, and her younger sister Mayme, who arrived in the Eachus household in 1887. Those girls were but five and two years of age when their mother married Albert Roberts in 1889.

The third child in the photo—nicknamed Ola, but born Ruby Viola Roberts—joined the ready-made family in the spring of 1890. Thus, if Ola was the little cherub dangling her feet from the lap of her father in the photo we viewed the other day, figuring out her age—two? three?—and that of her older half-sisters would help us fix a date for the photograph. And if that date we devise seems to align reasonably with the style of the cabinet card shared with us and appear to be a few years more recent than the style of photograph we viewed for the Roberts' presumed wedding photo, we might be able to claim relative confidence from simply the dating of the two photographs.

The main reason I say that: the other option for Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts would not be quite as cooperative a fit as this option. You'll see what I mean by that tomorrow.

Above: Inset of a young Lillian Eachus from the family portrait of Albert and Alice Roberts, undated, taken in Riverton, Iowa; photograph in private possession of a Roberts family descendant; used by permission.

Side by Side

In determining the correct identity of a couple whose photo was labeled only as "Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts," there aren't many easily found clues to guide us. Thankfully, an Ancestry.com subscriber and fellow researcher has shared the photo of the Roberts couple from Riverton in Fremont County, Iowa—not far from the Council Bluffs photography studio where the picture I found was taken. We've had a chance to take a look at that family portrait and compare it with the one I found in an antique store in northern California. But I still have my doubts.

Since I first posted the picture here at A Family Tapestry long before the winter holidays, even I had to go back and review what I had found. I checked my notes on candidate one for Albert Roberts, as well as candidate two and candidate three. In the end, I admitted I was partial to the possibility that the right couple was the first couple, Albert and Alice Roberts. But I still wasn't sure.

There are little nagging thoughts, like the one Wendy mentioned yesterday: it would help to have two photos of the subject facing the same direction for the side by side comparison. It's really hard to determine what is hidden by a camera angle.

Another thought is that, of the couple in their younger years, it seemed the one with the darker eyes was the wife, whereas in the subsequent pose, it was the husband. Other aspects had changed as well—for instance, those...ahem...few pounds we all tend to put on, moving from eligible bachelor or young ingenue to married couple, making slender faces look more rounded. And yet other comparisons can lead us astray, such as the detail of the pouf of curly hair framing the face of a woman—indicator of hair quality? Or sign of the hairstyles of the era?

Just to help settle the issue in my mind, one step I take—well, to tell the truth, that I have my computer-graphics-inclined husband take—is to view a side-by-side comparison of the subjects. Sometimes, that helps. In other cases, it doesn't leave us any worse off than we were before. Take a look and see if this helps you move your opinion in one direction or the other. Same woman, different year? Or different women?

Above: Photo on left from Sherradan photography studio in Council Bluffs, Iowa, found in Sonora, California; photo on right courtesy of reader Jim from his family's private collection; side-by-side comparison courtesy Chris Stevens.

The Problem with "Mr. and Mrs."

Finding an antique photograph with a name is always an enticing moment for me. I wonder: with just the name—and perhaps the location of the photographer who created the portrait—can I find a way to return this abandoned item to descendants of the family?

In many cases, since I've taken on this challenge a few years ago, I've been able to do so. See, those genealogical research skills come in handy.

And so it was, last summer when a friend and I drove up to the foothills of northern California—think Gold Rush country—and found a stash of such specimens at an antique store in Sonora. My only mistake, at least with one candidate I found to purchase, was relying on the name of the husband without any regard to how helpful a wife's name might have been in the process.

You know that old-fashioned etiquette: a woman wouldn't dare let herself be seen outdoors without cover of that title, Mrs., along with (at the very least) two initials representing her husband's given names. To be called by one's own name? Scandalous, at least for a proper married woman.

And so, I picked up the photograph of a young Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts, never dreaming that the Council Bluffs, Iowa, portrait could represent one of three different Albert Roberts couples living in the vicinity of that midwestern city.

Granted, I made a valiant attempt at isolating the right Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts. I scoured newspaper entries. And more entries. I hounded local historical societies for dates of the photography business. I borrowed likenesses from Find A Grave volunteers. And, of course, I stalked other Roberts researchers at Ancestry.com.

One such researcher was gracious enough to answer my unusual request. I wasn't sure that my photo's Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts were one and the same as those in his family tree, but what I did know was that if he had any photos of his Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts, it might help me determine whether to rule out one of the three possible couples in the Council Bluffs area.

At first, this respondent doubted that anyone in the family even had a photo of this ancestor couple of theirs. But then, as Life has a habit of doing, circumstances changed. In the wake of an unfortunate loss in his wife's family, she had been sifting through old family photographs in preparation for the funeral, and came upon a photograph she never thought she had. You guessed it: it was a picture of the Albert Roberts family.

Though the photo was taken of a somewhat older couple—by then, with three children—the clothes seemed to indicate they were from about the same time period. The names of the children match up with one of the Albert Roberts families I had researched, as well.

Oh, for access to one of those computer programs that creates a graphics sequence of "aging" a face of a younger person. All we have to go on, here, is our imaginations, but see what you think. Here, with permission of their second great-granddaughter and her husband, is a photograph of Albert and Alice Roberts and their daughters Lillian, Mayme, and Ola.

 

Back to Work

There's nothing to restore normalcy, after a tumultuous episode, quite as effectively as just getting back to the old routine. As it just so happened, while I was hissing and moaning about the woe-is-me blow-up last week, I had not one but at least three contacts who replied to my ages-old inquiries. While one was a likely distant cousin wanting to compare research notes, two others were from strangers—well, fellow genealogy fanatics whom I haven't yet met—who replied to my messages inquiring whether an antique photo I rescued might be of interest to their family.

I'll take my cue from one reader who kindly nudged me with the tempting proposition to explore whether his family's Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts might be one and the same as my mystery Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts. Now that I'm done—hopefully—with sulking and pouting, I'm following up with his suggestion to check out the photo his family found. Maybe this is the right couple...and maybe it isn't. Hopefully, you will get a chance to weigh in on that verdict this coming week.

The other contact was someone related to another photo I had found in an antique store up in Sonora, California. I had contacted this researcher via the Ancestry.com messaging system back during the winter holidays. That being such a busy time of year, I wasn't surprised when I didn't receive any reply to my (admittedly odd) request. But when I got no answer in January, then February, then March, well, I figured that was a bum lead. Not so, judging by a message I received just this weekend. Now I have another story to go back and review, in the process of answering this new message.

There are other photographs I had purchased from that Sonora antique shop—photos yet to be shared with you on A Family Tapestry—but between preparations for my southern research course at SLIG and then my research trip to Florida, there just wasn't any place to insert posts on mystery photos. No matter how fun it is to help these abandoned photos find their way back home to family, I had some other stories to tell. Maybe at this point, while I'm catching my breath and re-establishing my genealogical and organizational equilibrium, following up on these timely messages would be just the thing.

We'll revisit the story of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts from Iowa, tomorrow.

Finding a Friend at Find a Grave

It is never easy to foretell how complicated the path will be from rescued photograph to reunion with family members. Having a name and a location may seem to be the golden ticket, but as we've seen with Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts of Council Bluffs, Iowa, it hasn't helped much so far.

While digitized documents, easily accessible online from virtually everywhere, make the search infinitely easier than it ever has been in the past, there is only so much you can do, in the case of dual candidates for the same name. That's why, now that I've checked all the census records, vital records, and newspaper entries, it's time to move on to less typical resources.

One resource I've found helpful is to trawl through all the posted family trees I can find online. I look for direct descendants, of course, but I also keep an eye out for more photographs of the ancestors I'm seeking.

One such photo I ran across wasn't on Ancestry, though. I found it on Find A Grave. It was a photo of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Edwin Parkison. While it is unlikely that you've followed the minutiae on another person's family tree closely enough to recognize that Parkison name—actually, two Roberts descendants married someone by that surname—this particular Mrs. Parkison was the former Ruby Viola Roberts, also known as Ola.

Looking at the photo of Albert and Alice Roberts' daughter Ola, I wasn't sure she resembled either of the people in the photograph I had found, out here in northern California. But just in case I was mistaken in that first assessment, I decided to write the Find A Grave volunteer who had posted the portrait. My main reason for contacting her was to see if she had any other photographs—a picture of Ola's parents would be just what would do the trick—but I also asked her for permission to post the photograph of Ola and her husband here. That way, you can see what you think for yourself, so take a look below.

Of the few Find A Grave volunteers I've contacted, there has always been a prompt reply. Reaching out to connect with fellow researchers at Ancestry.com has not been quite as productive. Still, there are time—many times—when I need to connect with a direct descendant of the subjects of the photos I've found. All I can do is reach out and hope.

There is, for instance, a photo posted on Ancestry of what might be the father of the second candidate for our Albert Roberts. But since I haven't heard back from the researcher who originally posted the picture, I haven't received permission to post it here. You can, however, take a look at the original site, if you are a member of Ancestry.com. See if this picture resembles our Albert Roberts enough to peg him as Albert Marion Roberts, son of James Roberts.

Of course, I prefer any researcher who actually answers messages. This puts me in the odd position of hoping that the identity of the photo I found of Albert Roberts turns out to be the oldest of the three Alberts we've discussed so far. But I can't just conduct a thorough search based on such likeability factors. It's likely this search will find itself grinding on in the genealogical equivalent of sausage-making. And you know what I've said about that...

This Albert Roberts, whoever he is, will likely have to wait until those interminable behind-the-scenes searches finally draw to a conclusive end. Moving beyond any Roberts identities, as for what we'll be discussing next week, I have some travels planned.

Above: Photograph of Albert and Alice (Dooley) Roberts' daughter Ruby Viola Roberts and her husband, Charles Edwin Parkison of Riverton, Fremont County, Iowa; used by permission of Find a Grave volunteer and second great-granddaughter of Alice Roberts' brother, George Dooley. His family photo, also shared with us thanks to this same volunteer, is posted below, with Ola's Uncle George seated on right.

Doh!

I can't say how many times I've seen the list of photographers in one particular blog I follow daily. Do you think I'd remember that resource when struggling to identify when a specific studio was in operation? All together now: "Of course not!"

After all this time of working on the portrait of a "Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts" taken in Council Bluffs, Iowa, it finally occurred to me that I should seek out more details on the studio in which the picture was taken. Locating a sequential collection of city directories for Council Bluffs was not giving me the stretch of years I was seeking, so I turned to the local library's reference desk for answers.

In reply to my question, Ben Johnson, a Council Bluffs librarian, informed me that, according to the 1894-1895 city directory, a Mr. Charles H. Sherraddan and family were living at 625 Willow Avenue, but that the studio in question was called Riley & Sherraden. Mr. Sherraden apparently had a partner, C. A. Riley.

With that tip, I was off, searching for any details I could find on both Charles Sherraden and C. A. Riley. It wasn't long until I realized the partnership was not a long-lasting one. While some photographs in several different online collections contain labels with the two names together, there are several with just the Sherraden name, as was the picture I found of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Roberts.

Remembering that the blog I follow—The Cabinet Card Gallery—includes an index of posted topics, specifically kept by photographer's name, I scrolled through that blog's listing to see if either Charles Sherraden or his former partner, C. A. Riley, were listed.

Unfortunately, they were not. But that didn't keep me from searching for other such locations online. Just as I discovered for the many Facebook groups dedicated to rescuing abandoned photographs, there are several online resources sporting information on photographers of the earlier decades of the craft.

One such resource is the similarly-entitled Cabinet Card Photographers, where I found an entry for Charles Henry Sherraden, as well as a separate listing for his former partner, Clarence A. Riley.

The twin timelines published there served me well. For one thing, they allowed me to isolate the dates in which the photographs taken by Sherraden would likely be labeled specifically and only with his own name.

Those dates, however, are all across the board. Charles Sherraden, for instance, was listed as a photographer in Council Bluffs in the 1880 census, and likely operated his own studio up until his partnership with Clarence Riley in 1893. By 1895, though, Riley had opened a separate studio, and we can presume that Charles reverted to use of the Sherraden name for his studio following that date.

One item of particular note on the Sherraden timeline is his departure from Council Bluffs for Salt Lake City in 1900. In that year, he was listed both in the census for Council Bluffs in June, and in the city directory in Salt Lake City (though not as a photographer). From that point until his death in 1908, he remained in Utah.

During a span of business operation as lengthy as Sherraden's, his studio labels certainly changed a great deal. Examples of Sherraden studio labels can be found in a number of locations—Council Bluff's own library's collection, and in unexpected other places like the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum in North Bend, Washington. There, three samples, undated, of unidentified women, may come from different time periods in the Sherraden studio's history, with one, in particular, seeming to bear a similar label to the one in our Roberts portrait.

Still another resource led me to more photos taken at the Sherraden studio. Archives West, the Orbis Cascade Alliance, pointed to three Sherraden pictures in the Couch-Derickson Family photograph collection. The three of interest to us were dated from 1890 through 1898.

Now that I was on a roll finding bits and pieces of Sherraden work, how could I stop without checking out ArchiveGrid? Once again in this little here, little there story, I found a reference to a Sherraden photograph now held by the Sonoma County library, not far from me here in California. Though the photo itself bore a different logo design than the one in my possession, it was similar in layout—simply the surname on the left of the lower border, with the city listed on the lower right. Unfortunately, the archive had dated the photograph as having been taken anywhere from 1881 through 1900, not providing us any help in determining how to date our own mystery Sherraden portrait.

It may seem as if each detail is so small as to be insignificant, but collecting enough of these clues may lead us to an answer if we are persistent enough. We can't just rely on gathering the history of this one photographer, of course, but there may be other tidbits of information we can find, if we continue digging deeper with those local resources.