We've Been Down This Path Before

Ever get the sense you've traveled down the same path before? It can be years later, or taken from a different direction, but once the trip is over, you realize this hasn't been the first time you've been down that path.

In our case, this research trip all started about one year ago, when I and my intrepid genealogy guardian angel Sheri Fenley took a drive up to the foothills of northern California. I was on the hunt for some well-labeled cabinet cards at the antique shops of Sonora; she was along for the ride (and maybe a good cup of coffee or a fun lunch spot).

By last September, I was wrestling with the identity of the newlyweds, Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Brockman of West Point, Nebraska. It took us about ten days to discover that, though we figured out the identity of Adolph and Vernie Brockman, the photograph bearing their names probably belonged to another couple—leading to a detailed examination of the extended Brockman and Nieman families.

Disentangling ourselves from that dilemma, in the next month, we moved on to examine another photograph found in the antique stores of Sonora, California. This one led us to the Purkey family of Wisconsin, Erastus Manford and his wife, Rebecca Olive Lewis Purkey. By the middle of October, last year, I had already realized the connection between the Purkey and Brockman families, and had also found the marriage connections between two of the Purkey sons and women whose names were Tucker, which explained another photograph I had found, of an older couple by that Tucker surname, living in Oregon.

That was when I realized that the wife in that Tucker couple had a maiden name of Goodman, and that she likely came from Tennessee. Apparently, she had a sister named Dollie, whose identity I never could satisfactorily trace.

From that point, I moved on to another of the many photographs I rescued from Sonora's abundance of antique facilities. The next photo featured a relative from a different side of the extended Purkey family—Pleasant Fuller and her son—and from there, on to another photograph leading us in an entirely different direction. Soon after that, I set aside the photograph projects to focus on my upcoming Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy class that January, and my subsequent Florida research journey.

I haven't touched those family photographs until now, nearly a year later. From the few photographs I still have left to tackle, I pulled this one on the Tucker family, thinking nothing of all the connections I had bumped into while researching the Brockman, Purkey, and Goodman photographs last year. Nothing from those Nebraska or Wisconsin locations rang any bell, once I began the puzzle of this picture from Wahoo, Nebraska. I had to work my way down this family tree branch before I began to realize I had crawled up this branch from the opposite direction once before. Now, instead of approaching an elderly couple posing alone, I was dealing with a young couple and their many children. Instead of looking at the wedding photo—supposedly—of Adolph and Vernie Brockman, I was now tracing the photograph of the parents and siblings of the mother of "Mom B," wife of Adolph's younger brother.

How was I to know all these in-laws would connect? Of course, I should have suspected that, in one antique store in one tiny town, the chances of uncovering the results of one specific estate sale might be high. But it was not highest on my mind when I purchased all those photos. And they likely won't find their way to descendants who turn out to be related to each other. Each photo represented another branch of an extended and migrating family.

Next on my agenda, of course, will be to figure out who might be a descendant interested in receiving this photo of the young Tucker family. From that point, the next challenge will be to actually make contact and extend the offer.  

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.

A Few Things About Frank

So in California, we've found an antique photograph of a Tucker family, taken over one hundred years ago in a tiny town called Wahoo in Nebraska. We're in luck, because on the reverse of the picture, someone has thoughtfully labeled the names of everyone in the photo, other than "Grand Dad." We've got plenty of clues to work on.

Naturally, the first thing to do, in trying to figure out how to return this picture to descendants of the right Tucker family, is to locate the family in Wahoo, back when the portrait was actually taken. We can build the family tree out from there.

Problem: there was no Tucker family of this size, or these given names, in Wahoo, Nebraska, back in 1900. But there was one in Malheur County, Oregon, with almost all the names the same as those in the photograph. How can we be sure we have the right family?

Fortunately, the label on the photograph included a few other details about the family. One of those facts was that the son named Frank had served during the Great War. We can already tell from the 1910 census record of this household—the closest census before the beginning of World War I—that Frank was then nineteen years of age. In other words, at least according to the census, Frank was born around 1891.

Checking to see what could be found about a Frank Tucker, born around 1891, who served in that war, there was a draft registration card that matched his description—almost. This Frank had a middle name of Ephrom, and was born on November 20, 1891. So far, so good.

This Frank also was born in Nebraska, giving the town of his birth as Yutan. A quick check revealed that Yutan was a town of less than three hundred people, back in 1900, and that it just happened to be in the same county as Wahoo—a good sign for us.

The only problem was that this Frank Tucker registered for the draft in Klamath Falls, Oregon, not the spot in Malheur County where we first spotted this Tucker family. True, this Frank registered in January of 1917, almost twenty years after that 1900 census. But even in the 1910 census, the Tucker family we've had our eyes on was still living in Malheur County, half a state away.

This particular Frank, however, did end up giving his life for his country, dying from injuries sustained in France during the war. A newspaper clipping from the Sacramento Bee, shared by an Ancestry.com subscriber, noted that Frank died on November 25. And sure enough, there was a memorial listed on Find A Grave for a man by the same name, dying on that same date.

That's when the comparison begins to unravel a bit further. I'm not sure this is a case of an over-helpful Find A Grave volunteer, or some sloppy editing on the part of the newspapers from which the two posted news reports were drawn. What we learn about this Frank—if the articles are correct—is that he was the son of "E. W. Tucker" and that he had "come from Nebraska four years ago." Well, we're looking for a Frank, son of Samuel—at least, if we have the right Tucker family—and we already can see that our Frank, as well as his dad Samuel and the rest of the family, had been in Oregon in time to be counted for the 1900 census. Certainly longer than that mere four years.

On the flip side, the posted articles also mentioned Frank's having four brothers and two sisters. That, at least according to a combination of both the 1900 and 1910 census, proved to be true for his brothers. For the sisters, though, either the newspapers were missing that one small detail of one additional sister, or we are not talking about the right Frank Tucker.

Turning to the census enumeration directly following the loss of this Frank, though, we discover that the Samuel and Annie Tucker we had spotted in Malheur County in 1900 and 1910 had indeed moved to Klamath County, proving at least one detail in those newspapers almost correct: "His mother and father live in this city."

Is this Frank Tucker the right one? Did the newspapers slip up and include the wrong initials for his father's name or the wrong date for his arrival from Nebraska? After all, the Frank in the photo was noted to have died in World War I. Still, there are surely a lot of Frank Tuckers out there. We can't settle this issue without following up on the other clue our anonymous label-writing benefactor had provided. 

On to Oregon?

Is it possible to locate a specific large family with four sons and two daughters, if the surname is as common as Tucker?

When I first found this abandoned hundred year old photograph in an antique store in northern California, I thought the answer might be yes. There were two solid reasons for this answer. The first was that the photographer for this family portrait was located in a sparsely populated county in Nebraska. Even if the surname was Tucker, how many could there be in a town big enough to hold barely two thousand people?

The second reason I jumped for the chance to rescue this orphan photo was that someone had carefully provided the names of six of the seven people in the portrait: Jim, Ernie—er, Evie, as we've since realized—Maud, Annie, Frank, Elmer, and baby Ralph. The ample supply of given names upped our chances of zeroing in on the right Tucker family, even if they did move away from their home in Wahoo, Nebraska—or wherever they used to live in Saunders County.

As it turned out, there was a Tucker family with many of those same names, but rather than being located in Nebraska, these Tuckers were living in Oregon at the time of the 1900 census. While that meant a trip of nearly twelve hundred miles from the point at which they had posed for their family portrait, the encouraging sign, at least in this census record, was that all but the oldest two Tucker children in this household were born in Nebraska—all the way down to "Baby," who was born in July of 1899.

If this was the right Tucker family, it wasn't exactly a perfect match. There were some discrepancies. For one thing, whoever labeled the photo expressly indicated that it was baby Ralph who was seated on his father's knee. Since Ralph looked old enough to be a toddler, rather than an infant, that would date the photograph some time after 1901, which seems a little on the modern side for the appearance of the picture frame and style of setting.

But there was another problem. If you size up the list of children in the 1900 census for the Oregon Tucker family, there is an extra child mentioned. His name was Karl, and he was born in 1896, yet there was no mention of both Ralph ("Baby" in the 1900 census) and Karl on the picture's label. Could the person labeling the photo—obviously well after the fact, seeing the mention of young daughter Maud identified as "Mom B's mother"—have forgotten about Karl? Or could Karl have died at a young age?

There are a couple problems with assuming Karl was out of the picture due to an early demise. One would be to mess up the obvious stair-step appearance of this family constellation; the age difference between Elmer (whose year of birth was entered incorrectly) and "Baby" would have been six years, if "Baby" in the census was actually the child called Ralph in the photo. More obvious would be to check the fate of the missing Karl—and sure enough, there he was in the 1910 census, still quite part of the family, as he was, also, in 1920.

Could it be that the label on the photo incorrectly identified that toddler as Ralph, when he actually was Karl? That would place the date of the family portrait as late in 1897 or possibly in early 1898, rather than 1901 or 1902. Still, it seems rather late for that style of photograph, making me wonder about the possibility that a photographer setting up his studio in a town of only two thousand people might not have been able to turn his stock over quite as quickly as if he were located in a more thriving location.

Before we grasp as straws like that business conjecture, let's look at some other ways this Tucker family might well have been the right one.

Above: The Samuel Tucker family, as listed in the 1900 U.S. Census for Malheur County, Oregon; image courtesy FamilySearch.org.

Try Evie, Not Ernie

I'm not much of a numbers geek, but it seems reasonable to think that, knowing a set of six given names belonging to the same Tucker family, we'd be able to narrow the field and perhaps even target the right bunch. But that's me—not a numbers geek, remember?

It didn't take too much number-crunching insight to realize that, for the 1900 census, the sole Tucker family in the whole of Saunders County—the place in Nebraska where our Tucker family had posed for their portrait over one hundred years ago—was not a family with five children. Even considering that one important missing piece to this puzzle—the patriarch of this Tucker family is simply called "Grand Dad"—I'm fairly certain the household of Albert C. Tucker does not fit the description from the label on the back of the photograph I found.

An Iowa native, now a settler in Oak Creek Township, halfway across the county from Wahoo, Albert Tucker lived with his wife Mary and only living child, their twenty-two year old daughter Nettie. No Jim, no Ernie, no Maud, no Annie—in fact, not a one of those names from our abandoned photograph matched up with this Tucker family in Saunders County.

That's when I thought trying to locate a household with a matching set of those names would overcome the impossibility of finding the right Tucker family. Tucker, after all, is a rather common surname. But that search approach wasn't yielding any satisfactory results, either, so it was back to the drawing board: take a second look at those names on the photo's label.

That's when I spotted my first mistake. Did you notice it? Despite the baby on the lap of "Grand Dad" looking more like a daughter than a son—at least, in today's way of looking at such things—there was one more boy's name than sons in the photograph. It turns out that what I thought was "Ernie" was actually written as Evie.

Still, looking for a Tucker family with a Ralph and an Evie didn't yield me much—until I spotted another Tucker family with almost all the right names. If we switch Jim for James, Evie for Eva, and allow that "Baby" might have been Ralph (if he was born in July, 1899), we might have found the right Tucker family. All but the two oldest children were born in Nebraska.

Only problem was...this family was living about twelve hundred miles away from Wahoo, Nebraska. And this Tucker family included another son—named Karl—who wasn't even mentioned in the photograph. Maybe this choice isn't working out so well, after all.

Above: Map of Saunders County, Nebraska, from a railway map of Nebraska, issued by the State Board of Transportation in 1889; courtesy United States Library of Congress Geography and Map Division; in the public domain.

Meet the Tuckers

It wouldn't do us any good to discuss how we are going to rescue the Tucker family of Wahoo, Nebraska, without first being properly introduced. While I already mentioned the names included on a label on the reverse of this photograph I found abandoned in an antique store in northern California, I haven't really given you a chance to see the family.

Let's take a moment to do that right now. That way, you'll see the type of frame the photo was displayed on, allowing the chance to determine the age of the picture. Then, too, you'll notice the missing portion of the bottom right corner of the card stock—the unfortunate break that obliterated the name of the state where Wahoo was located.

For the most part, you'll see a large family with the children displayed in stair-step fashion, with papa and mama serving as bookends to the portrait, with toddler Ralph on his dad's lap, and the girls in their twin dresses.

Our next task will be to locate a family constellation including those names conveniently included on the back of the photograph. Our next obstacle in this process: realizing that, at least in 1900 and 1910, there was no family matching the names of our Tucker family resident in Wahoo, the town where the portrait was taken. Either our Tuckers lived in a community even smaller than Wahoo—at that point, having a population of 2,100—or, like many families of that era, they were still heading west by the time that census was taken.

It would help, of course, if "Grand Dad" had been given a name by the person who was so careful to label the photograph. Although we don't have that useful piece of information, we still have seven other names to guide us. Next stop on this journey, in seeking to reunite this orphaned photograph with descendants of the Tucker family, will be to see where we can find this handsome family at the time of the 1900 census.

Above: Photograph of the Tucker Family of Wahoo, Nebraska, including "Grand Dad" Tucker, Ralph, Jim, Ernie, Maud, Annie, Frank, and Elmer.  Photograph in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant of this family.

Rescuing the Tucker Family

Do you have any Tuckers in your family? If your trees—and your DNA test results—are anything like mine, you likely have a surname like that tucked in your file. Thus, last time I visited the antique stores in the Gold Country of northern California, I nearly walked away from the chance to rescue a hundred-year-old family photograph, despite seeing that it had been carefully labeled. Problem was, the label told me the name was Tucker. What are the chances?

This Tucker family, at some point over a century ago, walked into the Anderson photography studio in a little town called Wahoo. Only problem—for me, at least—was that the bottom right corner of the card stock was broken off, so that all I could see about the state where Wahoo was located was that it started with an "N." Of course, immediately you'll think of Nevada, but don't think too quickly. It could have signified New York. Or Nebraska. Also, remember that we've discussed photos from that same shop in Sonora which I subsequently sent all the way back to Canada. That "N" might represent Nova Scotia.

Fortunately for us, a quick check of towns by the name Wahoo revealed that, other than a fish taco restaurant chain by that name in both New York and Nevada, there is only one location which fits this "N" state category: the city of 4,500 people in Saunders County, Nebraska. And that's a good thing; I can't handle ambiguity.

The great thing about this photo from Wahoo, Nebraska, is that someone took great care to label it. Though it starts out with a less-than-helpful "Grand Dad Tucker," the label includes the names of the rest of the family members in the portrait. We learn from the tiny but tidy script that the Tucker family includes a toddler by the name of Ralph, along with names such as Jim, Ernie, Maud, Annie, Frank, and Elmer. Sadly, we also learn the detail that Frank was killed in World War I, showing us the perspective of the person who wrote the label. The label concludes with the note that "Maud is Mom B's mother," giving us another puzzle piece to manipulate as we search through this Tucker tree.

Despite a surname as common as Tucker, the fact that the photograph was taken in a town of such limited size—at the turn of the last century, the city of Wahoo had a population of just over two thousand, less than half the size it is today—gives us hope that we won't get mired in the dilemma of choosing between several families of the same name. That, alone, would be encouraging—until, that is, we realize that there really wasn't any family by the name Tucker to choose from. At least, there wasn't, at the time of the 1900 census.

There was, however, another possibility for this Tucker family constellation—but we'd have to move all the way to Oregon if it turned out to be the right bunch.

Above: Label from the reverse of an old family photograph, naming the Tucker Family: "Grand Dad Tucker - holding Ralph, Jim - Ernie - Maud - Annie - Frank - Killed in WWI + Elmer, Maud is Mom B's mother." Photograph in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant.

One Last Possibility

While we've been exploring the details regarding three different Iowa men named Albert Roberts to determine which one might have been the man in the antique photo I found, this last Albert is actually the only one who actually lived in the city in which that photograph was taken. Our third Albert Roberts was the one we found whose few newspaper mentions gave us an address right in Council Bluffs, itself.

The only thing is, out of all the gossipy news tidbits we've found for all three Alberts, those newspaper entries for this third Albert also gave us one of the more curious of the accounts. Looking closer at that May 8, 1919, notice in the Evening Nonpariel, shows me that this one will also take some reading between the lines to ferret out the real story.

For one thing, this was not just another sweet story of the now-grown kids coming home to visit family for the holidays. It was an article placed among the legal notices. A notice of referee's sale, it began with the official sounding "In the District Court of Iowa, in and for Pottawattamie County."

The plaintiff was none other than our third Albert Roberts. Part of the public announcement read,

Notice is hereby given that by virtue of a decree of the district court of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, entered on the twelfth day of April, 1919, in the above entitled cause, the property hereinafter described was partitioned and the undersigned was appointed sole referee and authorized and directed to sell the following described real estate at public sale....

The undersigned referee was a man by the name of William Arnd. The property was described by lot numbers in the city of Council Bluffs. The sale was to be held on the seventh day of June "at the front door of the court house" in the county seat, Council Bluffs.

It was the defendants who gave me pause to consider this routine legal notice more closely. The list of names included was long and curious. For one thing, the surname Roberts figured prominently. In addition to a couple, named individually as Fannie Binns and "I. M. Binns, husband of Fannie Binns," there were Dwight Roberts, Emmet Roberts, and Frances Roberts, all specifically designated as minors. One last defendant was listed as "Mrs. Nellie W. Roberts, guardian."

To see the rest of the story, we need to research the family tree of our third Albert Roberts, plaintiff in this case filed in 1919. This Albert, married sometime before he completed his draft registration in June of 1917, declared himself a divorced man to the 1920 census enumerator, and yet was father to his firstborn son, who arrived November 28, 1921—and, unfortunately, died only ten days later. The child's mother—and Albert's second wife—Josephine Anshutz Roberts, was herself, at the time of the child's birth, only sixteen years of age.

Albert—the only one of the three candidates for the Albert Roberts in our photo for whom we had a middle initial—himself was born in Nebraska in 1896, son of English immigrants Henry and Sarah Jane Fletcher ("Jennie") Roberts. Albert Lee Roberts was the youngest of six siblings, three of whom were still living at the time of the 1900 census. His two older siblings still remaining were William Edwin and Fannie Louise, each of them born in the 1870s, long before Albert's arrival in 1896 (or 1894, as both his 1925 Iowa state census entry and his Social Security Application indicate).

Of those two siblings, William Edwin was not long for this world, either. Also born in Omaha, William married Nellie McGill, another resident from that city, returning to her hometown in Des Moines, Iowa, for the December, 1893, nuptials. Over the years, William worked for the railroad, but in 1915, he was the victim of a brutal attack by a drunken man. Though he survived the attack, it left him "subject to spells of absentmindedness, when he wandered about in a dazed condition." From that point on, William was unable to work.

At some point in mid-November of that same year, William did not come home as expected. His Council Bluffs family, concerned for his well-being, put two and two together when they heard reports that a man had been killed by a train in nearby Omaha. His oldest son Dwight, heading to Omaha, confirmed that the reports were indeed of the missing man.

This was not the only unfortunate story in Albert's brother William's brief life. While William's oldest son had indeed remained in Council Bluffs, William's wife had already left him, taking the other children—Emmet, Henry, and Frances—sometime after the 1910 census, returning to her family's home in Des Moines before the state census in 1915, when she declared herself to be divorced.

Not long after William and Nellie had tied their ill-fated knot in 1893, William's sister Fannie Louise had also gotten married. Hers was an event in her home state of Nebraska in September of 1896, when she said "I do" to an Iowa man named Isaac M. Binns. Though they remained for a while in the Omaha area, by 1904, they had returned to Isaac's former residence in Montgomery County, Iowa, where they remained at least through 1910.

Such was the family history of Albert Lee Roberts' siblings. To add to all this woe, by 1917, Albert's mother, Sarah Jane Fletcher Roberts, died intestate. She apparently held property in her own name, for her husband was still alive, not following her until May of 1918. In March of 1918, Isaac Binns filed as principal, along with his brother-in-law, Albert Roberts, and William Arnd, for an administrator's bond to settle Sarah's estate. 

In the midst of all these misfortunes, sometime just before the 1920 census, a question came up about several lots in the city of Council Bluffs which somehow involved these siblings—or their remaining family members. Perhaps precipitated by their father's death in 1918 and the settling of the elder Roberts' estate, the legal notice was posted and the referee's sale scheduled.

No more mention was made in the local newspapers—at least that I can find—of that family difficulty. After that point, there was a brief comment, upon the 1926 arrival of another tiny child of Albert and Josephine Roberts, of how small the baby's birth weight was—followed by the not-surprising sad announcement of the funeral service for "Wauneta Louise" Roberts barely four months later.

It was a photograph placed online by an Ancestry subscriber, combined with the World War I draft registration description of Albert's appearance—medium height, medium build, with blue eyes and dark brown hair—that tended to dissuade me of any possibility that Albert Lee Roberts was the Albert Roberts in my photograph.

But I believe the clincher really is the dates involved in this Roberts family saga. While his siblings—all born in the 1870s—might have played the part in a wedding with the clothing styles of the photograph I found, Albert Lee's likely marriage in 1920, combined with the appearance of his second wife in the Ancestry.com photograph, convince me that, even though he was a Council Bluffs resident, this Albert's arrival on the scene was too late to make him a candidate for the true identity of the man in the photograph I found.

While that conclusion eliminates Albert Lee Roberts from the running, as far as photograph identity goes, it still doesn't answer the question of just who that couple was in the photograph I found. There are a few other options remaining in this search, but since we are so close to Christmas now, I'll set aside that chase for another time after the holidays.

On the Bride's Side

If the hundred year old wedding photograph I found in a northern California antique shop wasn't of a groom named Adolph Brockman—even though that's who the label said he was—then who was he? We're pretty sure, now that we've compared the pictures side by side, that the mystery groom wasn't Adolph's brother-in-law, either. But just in case this picture still ought to be kept in the same family, is there anything we can discover about the bride?

First, let's take a look at the bride from the photo I found in California, and compare her with the one in the photograph passed down through the Brockman family of Nebraska to our contact, Jeff in Oregon.

Just as we saw when comparing the grooms from each of the two wedding photos, these two people do not look alike. Of course, there's the dead giveaway of the bridal veils and gowns, but even the difference of the two hairstyles may provide guidance about differing time frames.

I wondered, just as we had for the comparison of the potential grooms, whether one of the two families might have contained an alternate family member for the bride. After all, we already know that Adolph Brockman's sister Mathilda married Vernie Nieman's brother Frank. Could there have been another such liaison?

I noticed, in the wedding photo provided by Brockman descendant Jeff, that there was another sibling in the wedding party. This young woman was partially unidentified, as she seemed to be a Nieman, but her first name was not listed. Could one of the Nieman sisters be the true bride from the photograph I found in California? Take a look and decide for yourself.

While the tilt of the head and the apparent age difference make it hard to adequately judge, the eyes and eyebrows do seem vaguely similar. But not totally convincing. I tried scouting out other photos to use for comparison on Nieman, Neiman, or Neimann family trees online without any success.

Of course, I happened to also notice that Vernie Nieman and her siblings also had an older sister—Rosa—who was already married and out of the home by the time of the 1910 census we had been looking at. (Interestingly, it turned out that while this Rosa and her husband remained in Nebraska, their oldest son ended up, during the war, working as a mechanic downtown in the same city where I now live in California—and was buried, in 1996, in a country cemetery in my county, though I doubt that had any bearing on how my photo ended up so far from the family's home in Nebraska.)

Could it be possible that the photo was actually of Vernie's older sister and her husband?

Could it be any of the other siblings on either the Brockman side or the Nieman side?

Or could it just be a mislabeled photograph tucked away in the collection of someone who is no longer with us to explain such an incorrect guess?

While it would be disappointing to just leave it at that, there might still be a way to figure this out—but it will take much more time. Remembering that, according to Jeff's hunch, the photo I found in California might have ended up there in the home of another Brockman descendant, I may have some other pictures on hand from that same Sonora antique shop that could help us determine that true identity of our mystery couple.

As it turns out, in researching the family of that Brockman descendant in Sonora, California, the other side of that generation's family included some surnames that are listed on the back of several of the pictures I rescued from that northern California antique shop. It will take some patience, as we go through the stack of photos I found, but perhaps...just perhaps...a clue will surface.

In the meantime, Adolph and Vernie—or whoever they turn out to be—will be headed to Brockman researcher Jeff in Oregon. If we can't figure out their true identity here, perhaps the Brockman family can some day weigh in with their own verdict.



Above: Side by side comparisons of the brides and with the one bridesmaid arranged, courtesy of Chris Stevens, from the misidentified photograph found in Sonora, California (on the left) and two of the women in the photograph of the actual Brockman wedding party taken in Nebraska, provided by Brockman family member Jeff in Oregon; used by permission.

Side by Side, Maybe Not . . .

There was another possibility, in the puzzle of the true identity of the groom in that wedding photo I found in a northern California antique shop. Adolph Brockman—the one identified in both the photo I found and a very different wedding photo sent to me by Brockman descendant Jeff—had married Verna Nieman (or Neiman, depending on the source of the documentation). Like Adolph, Verna came from a large Nebraska family. In fact, if you recall the picture of the wedding party from yesterday's post, two of Verna's siblings were likely in her photograph.

One of the siblings we are not sure about, as the photo, provided by Jeff, left a question mark for the sister's first name, but according to the 1910 census entry for Verna's family, that sister might have been either Nancy or Mary.

The other sibling was Verna's older brother Frank.

In my conversations with Jeff about the possibility of a mistaken labeling of the photo I found, he had a suggestion for the now-unidentified groom in that picture. Since it turned out that Frank soon married his brother-in-law Adolph's sister Mathilda, the thinking might have been that this was the true identity of the couple. As it turned out that Adolph Brockman and Verna "Niemann" were married on Thursday, June 15, 1911 and, according to Jeff, their siblings Frank Nieman and Mathilda Brockman followed suit only a few months afterwards, it might seem logical to assume that was the cause of the switched identities in the photos.

But when we put pictures side by side from about the same time frame, I start to lose my enthusiasm for such a convenient hypothesis. See for yourself what I mean. Here, below, on the left is our mystery man, labeled in the California photo as Adolph Brockman. On the right is the photo of Frank Nieman, at least as he was listed in the photo of the wedding party from Jeff's family photograph collection. I don't think, in the course of only a few months, that Frank's appearance would have changed quite that much—if at all.

Above: Side by side comparison arranged, courtesy of Chris Stevens, from the misidentified photograph labeled Adolph Brockman found in Sonora, California (on the left) and the picture labeled "Frank Nieman" (on the right) from a copy of the original Brockman wedding photograph taken in Nebraska, provided by family member Jeff in Oregon. Even if taking into consideration that hairstyles do change over time, features of each man's face seem too different to conclude that they were one and the same person.

Examining Another Possibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Considerations, Side by Side

To begin with, the photos we've had the privilege to see—thanks to Jeff in Oregon, the Brockman descendant who has sent them to me—all have been labeled according to the information he received from older members of the Brockman family. Now that I've seen other family pictures of Adolph Brockman—the groom in the wedding portrait I found in an antique store in Sonora, California—I'm not so sure the label on the back of the abandoned photo was correct. Perhaps my wedding photo wasn't really representing the event people thought it was.

So that you can see what I'm noticing, let's start with the comparison of Adolph Brockman from his family photograph and Adolph from the wedding photo provided to me by Jeff. As I'm sure you'll agree, we are talking about the same person in both shots.

Next, let's take a look at the Adolph Brockman from Jeff's version of his wedding photo and put it side by side with the "Adolph" from the wedding photo I found in Sonora—the one labeled with Adolph's name.

Granted, lighting differences and maturing of features as young people age will render a slightly different perspective, as will changing fashions and hair styles. But there is a little bit too much of a difference between these two likenesses for me to be satisfied with calling them different versions of the same face.

There was, however, another face in the portraits which made me wonder whether that might have been the true identity of the groom in the wedding portrait I found in California. If we use Jeff's copy of the Brockman family photo as our genealogical "Rosetta Stone," I spy someone else who has somewhat similar eyes, eyebrows, hairline, and ears. Yes, the ears.

See if these two photos don't look similar to you:

On the left is our mystery groom, and flanking him is the picture of Adolph's brother William, from the family photograph. And just in case the details were too fuzzy or poorly lit in that version of William's likeness, here's a comparison of William's family photo with that of his face in the confirmed wedding photo for Adolph and Verna.

So naturally, I began to wonder whether I had found the wedding photo for William Brockman, rather than that for Adolph and Vernie. Jeff, however, informed me of one glitch: William never got married.



Above: All side by side photographs arranged, courtesy of Chris Stevens, from copies of original Brockman photographs taken in Nebraska, provided by family member Jeff in Oregon, plus the misidentified photograph labeled Adolph Brockman found in Sonora, California.

Uh - Oh . . .

One of the things I love about this project to reunite abandoned family photos with descendants, a hundred years later, is all the correspondence that occurs with the recipient. From those emails, I often learn much more about the subject whose photo I am returning.

In the case of the wedding photo labeled "Adolph Brockman + wife," I've been privileged to see several other family photos, courtesy of the Brockman descendant to whom I'll be sending that picture I found in Sonora, California. It's taken me a while to look through all the details, so don't be surprised that it wasn't until last night that something struck me wrong about what I was seeing. I'll start unwinding my thoughts today, but I certainly welcome your input over the next few days as I share with you what I'm seeing. I am wondering whether we are witnessing a case of a photograph being mislabeled.

If you saw the family portrait I posted yesterday, shared courtesy of my Brockman correspondent, you probably were able to pick out Adolph. Not only was he the oldest of the Brockman children, he also appeared to be the tallest. His hairstyle, in particular, seemed to stand out.

So it was no surprise to subsequently discover, among the photos sent to me by Jeff (the Brockman descendant), another wedding picture of Adolph and Vernie. I'll share that below—with his permission, of course. You can see quickly how much Adolph resembled the eldest son in the photograph shared yesterday. If you remember the original portrait I had found in California, however, the comparison begins to pale. Either Adolph got a radically different hair style—not to mention a new set of ears—or we are seeing two different people.

Just in case I'm getting things wrong, I'll provide some side-by-side comparisons tomorrow, along with a few guesses as to what might have happened. I'm sure you will have a few ideas of your own, as well...

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

The Bigger Picture

In order to explain just how a wedding photograph from West Point, Nebraska, might have ended up in the foothills of northern California, it is perhaps easiest to step back and take in the big picture. The big family picture, that is.

Thankfully, the wedding photograph I found in an antique store in Sonora, California, was labeled. We know that the subjects were Adolph Brockman and his wife Verna. We've since found them in census records and discovered that their only daughter, though long-lived, died in 2009 having left no descendants.

Of course, the question in my mind is always, "How did the picture get to the place where I found it?" In the case of the Brockmans' wedding photo, it may very well be a case of family passing along the photo from generation to generation until there was no one to pass it to. That, at least, is the conjecture of one Brockman relative, who shared with me his theory as to how the Brockmans' wedding portrait ended up in Sonora, California.

Before I explain, let's first take a detour to see the big picture of the Brockman family tree. Adolph was the oldest of eleven siblings, ten of whom made it to adulthood. Adolph, born in 1889, had siblings stretching from 1892 when his sister Mathilda was born all the way to 1916 when the caboose of the family, youngest sister Ruth, was born.

Keeping in mind that Adolph and Vernie were married about 1911, all but his youngest sister were already born, true, but at the time of the wedding, half of those siblings were ten years of age or younger. At that point, the distance in age might have rendered the family connection less informal than one would expect from a sibling relationship.

To further increase that sense of distance, after 1916, Adolph's parents—William and Augusta Brockman—moved from Nebraska, where all the children had been born, to Fort Morgan in Colorado, while Adolph and his wife set up housekeeping only one county away from their West Point home, back in Nebraska.

In every family, the rules regarding who gets to keep "the stuff"—those coveted family heirlooms and keepsakes—can be different. Often it is the oldest who is designated to receive many of those treasures. In the case of this photograph of Adolph and Vernie Brockman, however, it may have been one of the youngest sons who passed along the wedding picture of big brother Adolph.

Whether this was so or not, we can't be sure. But one thing I have been advised—through correspondence with a descendant of the next-to-youngest Brockman child—is that youngest brother Edward married a woman by the name of Corinne Bernice Purkey in Bannock, Idaho, and eventually passed away in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Like his big brother Adolph, Edward Brockman left just one child—in Edward's case, a son. And that son, curiously enough, ended up living in...you guessed it...Sonora, California.

Above: The family of William and Augusta Brockman of West Point, Nebraska, including nine of their eleven children—missing Ruth, born in 1916, and Ernst, who died in infancy. Photograph courtesy of Brockman descendant Jeff in Oregon; used by permission.

Just How to Address Them

I've often talked about how I pay attention to what I call "voice"—the way one person might address another. In the case of the photograph I'm about to reunite with a family member—the photograph of Adolph and Verna Brockman, taken in West Point, Nebraska, around 1911—I think it will be important to consider the "voice" used in labeling the reverse of the photograph.

As you may have seen in the comments to yesterday's post, I have found a Brockman family member, and we are working out the arrangements so I may mail Adolph and Vernie back to relatives. That family member—as is often the case, someone who cares greatly for carefully researching family history—mentioned a likely scenario for how the Nebraska photograph ended up in the foothills of northern California.

The possible trail does involve family members moving far from Nebraska. While I'm happy to know the likely story, something is also nudging me to remember that concept of voice.

Consider, for a moment, how you might label a photograph of your family members. Would you, for instance, write something like "Mr. and Mrs. Jones" on the back of a photo of your uncle and aunt? More likely, you'd write at least their first names: "Al and Sally." If you were being very conscientious of the family members tasked, long after you'd be gone, with figuring out just who all those people were, you might add a surname, even though everyone already knew the identity of Al and Sally. To be even more helpful, you might write something like Uncle Al and Aunt Sally, just to make sure your grandkids knew they were looking at relatives.

It would, possibly, take something far afield of kinship to label a photograph, "Adolph Brockman + wife." That, in my humble estimation, might be something included with a wedding announcement sent to a family acquaintance (or worse, merely a business associate) who hadn't actually been invited to the wedding.

But then, the key really is: what did people back in 1911 do when sending photographs of their special family occasions? Perhaps they were more formal. Perhaps this seemed more proper. But I'm not sure it would be something one did when sending a photograph to a sibling's family.

The other problem, though, is that we don't really know when the photograph was actually labeled. There are two different handwritings showing on the back of the Brockman photograph. One may have been entered as a way to tell family, much after the fact, just who that married couple had been. Or perhaps that is the label that mentioned Adolph and Vernie Brockman, including the hint of familiarity of the wife's nickname. But the more formal entry on the top of the photo makes me wonder who would have used that tone of voice in labeling the picture; there seems to be no recognition of family connection at all—at the very least, only a connection to Adolph, but certainly not Vernie.

While I could puzzle over this in endless iterations, I'm glad we now have a family member on hand to discuss an educated guess—and to keep me from going too far astray on these doubtful dissertations.

Above: The various entries of names on the reverse of the 1911 wedding photograph of Adolph and Vernie Brockman of West Point, Nebraska.

Velva? Or Viola?

One of the ways that help me return abandoned photographs to family members is by tracing what became of the subject's descendants. In the case of the project I'm working on right now, though, the only daughter of Adolph and Vernie Brockman of Nebraska has been introduced to us with two different names. In the 1920 census, we learned that the Brockmans' daughter was named Velva—at least, if we can trust the enumerator's handwriting. But in the 1930 census, she was listed as Viola.

The obvious answer was to look for her in the 1940 census, but that was only an option if she remained in the same town in Nebraska with either of two names: Velva Brockman or Viola Brockman. By 1940, the Brockmans' daughter would have been at least twenty six years of age, very possibly a married woman.

It was in our favor that we looked first for her father's entry in the 1940 census. In a reversal of what often becomes the pattern, it was Adolph's wife who had passed away first, dying at the age of forty six in 1938. Adolph was not to follow her until four years later, in 1942—allowing just enough time for us to spot him in the 1940 census.

Along with Adolph, we find his daughter was still living at home. That is good news on two accounts. First, we confirm that her given name was actually Viola, not the overwritten "Velva" of the 1920 census. Second, we get the bonus of discovering Viola's married name, for in the Brockman household were two additional people: a lodger, and Viola's husband, Owen Blair.

Unlike her parents, Viola was long-lived, according to her memorial on Find A Grave. Based on the only obituary I could find for Viola, she may not have had any children—or, if she did, they predeceased her. There was no mention of descendants in the brief newspaper entry.

That presents me with a problem. Apparently, not only did Adolph and Verna Brockman spend their entire lives in the same region in Nebraska, but their daughter Viola did, as well. Gone are any conjectures that the Brockmans' wedding photo was carried off to California by their grandchildren. Though it may certainly be the case that the Brockmans—or perhaps either set of their parents—had mailed a copy of their wedding portrait to friends and distant relatives, it will be unlikely that we'll discover the link that landed the picture in my hands.

In the meantime, there is one more search in this quest: the search for a family member who would be interested in receiving Adolph and Vernie's photograph. While it obviously won't be a grandchild to receive the keepsake, there are still other options. As it turns out, Adolph came from a family with at least seven siblings, and Vernie from a family of seven or more children. Even if none of them removed to northern California, there might be someone who would be interested in receiving this photograph.

Above: Wedding photo of Adolph and Vernie Brockman, taken circa 1911 in West Point, Nebraska; currently in possession of author until claimed by a family member.

The Census Enumerator in West Point, Nebraska

Even small towns can present their research pitfalls, if one knows how to find them. I am talented at stumbling upon such difficulties.

My quest started out innocently enough: I wanted to see if Adolph Brockman's wife was a hometown girl from the same place where Adolph grew up. Since West Point, Nebraska, was such a tiny place, I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to combine a reasonable online search with a modernized version of that pre-Internet habit of flipping through the pages by the place where I found my target person.

As we already discovered, Adolph—the groom in the hundred year old wedding photo I found in an antique store in California—was still living in his parents' home in 1910, when the census reported his age as twenty. What were the chances, I wondered, that his bride-to-be would be living nearby?

Though I hadn't found any entries for a "Vernie"—as her name had been given on the back of the photograph—I had located a family with an unmarried Verna in the 1910 census, living in the same township in the same county in Nebraska. Granted, she wasn't exactly the girl next door—Adolph was on page 8A and this Verna was on page 4A of Elkhorn Township—but I decided to flip back through the pages to see if I could find her by hand.

That's where I got confused.

It turns out that, flipping backwards through the pages, I discovered there was another Verna living nearby, too. Only this Verna was listed on page 6A. I was beginning to wonder if those codes so handily scrawled over the by-then-completed enumeration had tricked me into reading the wrong thing, once again. I took another look. And a second one. Bit by bit, the details emerged. One Verna was a marriageable eighteen years of age; the other was only two. One was in the household of John and Anna Neiman; the other was the child of Albert and Rosia Lierman.

The Neiman and Lierman surnames, in the same handwriting—complete with the now-expected overwritten letters—kept me toggling back and forth between them, wondering if there were really two versions of the same census. That's what comes from working on research after a brain-mangling day working at one's desk.

In the meantime, in all that staring, I noticed one further detail: the enumerator for Elkhorn Township was none other than Albert's father, William Brockman.

Supposing that Verna was the true name of William Brockman's future daughter-in-law, I tried my hand at placing Adolph and Verna—rather than Vernie—together. The first stop at the next census—for 1920—was a rocky road, as well, thanks to the enumerator in neighboring Pierce County having a shaky hand. The entry for Adolph was rather unreadable, though I could find Verna—and their daughter, listed as six year old Velva—living in the very county where I had found the World War I draft registration card for a married Adolph Brockman, born on August 25, 1889. Things were beginning to look up.

It's a good thing I didn't stop there. Of course, I was curious to see whether Adolph and Vernie had any other children, but I think the name change in the 1930 census for their daughter was more likely owing to correct enumeration than one child replacing another. In 1930, the Brockmans' sixteen year old daughter was listed as Viola.

Whether Velva or Viola, I had to know, mainly for one reason: I needed to figure out just how the wedding photo I had rescued in the northern California antique shop had arrived at its unlikely destination from Nebraska. Did Viola—or Velva—inherit the photograph, then move to California? Or was someone else the recipient of the Brockmans' wedding portrait? My next step is to trace Adolph and Vernie's daughter. 

West Point's Adolph

Even if the dates don't line up quite the way I'd like them to, if we have found an Adolph in West Point, Nebraska—location of the photography studio which had captured the wedding memory of a young Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Brockman which I found, one hundred years later, in California—then, I'll at least take a good look.

Admittedly, I'm no expert at dating photographs. I try my hand at following the advice of those who really know their stuff, but there's a wide berth for mistakes in such attempts. I wasn't really sure the boy Adolph I found in the 1900 census would be one and the same as the well-dressed man appearing in his wedding portrait quite a few years later. But with a town as tiny as West Point, what were my chances?

The one candidate that I could find for our Adolph was the first of five children in the Brockman family of West Point. According to the 1900 census, his father's name was entered as "Wm," so naturally my first assumption was that dad's name was William, but when I looked closer, it seemed the enumerator had written the "m" so purposefully with an exaggerated connector from the "W" that I couldn't be certain that the entry didn't signify the initials, "W. M." (As it turned out, I had been thrown off by some codes later entered by census officials which had overwritten the man's name.)

Mr. Brockman—whoever he was—was married to Augusta, mother of the five Brockman children of which Adolph was the oldest. Following Adolph were his seven year old sister Matilda, his five year old brother Willie, his three year old sister Anna, and the baby of the family, a one year old girl whose name the enumerator rendered as "Loesa."

Adolph's father had come from Wisconsin but evidently moved westward—perhaps with his parents—where he eventually met his future bride, Augusta. She had been born in Nebraska. Both sets of Adolph's grandparents, though, were born in Germany.

Comparing that 1900 census listing with other such records turned out to be helpful, for in the 1910 census, we receive confirmation that dad's name was really William, after all, and that Adolph's baby sister's name was more likely Louise. By 1910, the family had been joined by Ida, "Helna" and Edward, and we become aware of another child—unnamed—who was born and died sometime during that decade.

By that point, this Adolph was still single and now twenty years of age. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I had been tricked into following the wrong family, simply because of the small size of the town.

I did have one more trick up my sleeve: on the photograph I found, someone had inserted the name of Adolph's wife. It was penned in on a white label someone had stuck on the back of the photograph, and it didn't appear to even be in the same handwriting as the original written entry. I couldn't be sure of the source, so of course, I couldn't be certain that this was really her name, but it was worth testing out as a hypothesis, if nothing else. Perhaps this would line up as a match for the "wife and child" listed in the World War I draft registration card for the Adolph I found in nearby Pierce County, Nebraska.

What were my chances? Pierce County was, at that time, a little smaller than Cuming County. Plainview, the draft registrant Adolph's home in Pierce County, was certainly close enough to West Point in Cuming County to make this a reasonable stretch. Besides, we now had another clue to help us determine whether these Adolphs were one and the same.

That other clue was only a name—the name of Adolph's wife—but every bit helps. Her name was Vernie.

Above: Label affixed to the reverse of the photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Brockman of West Point, Nebraska. At the antique shop where I found the picture, the store clerk assured me it was added by the store's owner when, upon acquiring such photographs, she would remove them from their annotated albums. In future weeks, I'll be sharing several other such labeled photographs—some which, confusingly, also happen to be of subjects related to those in other photographs. In this case, though, I believe this is the only Brockman family photograph I was able to find in that store.

If You Find a Name, Run With It

What do you do when you find a name attached to an abandoned photograph? You grab it and assume it's the right one. But what if the handwriting makes you second-guess yourself—and the name you were so sure was a keeper? Ah, there's the problem.

I've managed to find enough clues to send home several abandoned family photographs from one hundred years ago, but it's never too soon to learn that things may not appear entirely as they are. That, at least, is turning out to be the case with our latest photograph adventure, the wedding portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Brockman of West Point, Nebraska.

At least, I think it's Adolph Brockman. Or is it Brochman? Or Brochmon?

Couple that with uncertainty about the date of the photograph, and it's no wonder I wasn't finding any leads in this identity puzzle.

I finally tossed all my presumptions to the wind and resorted to using the "*" wildcard symbol in my searches. And gave up on testing any dates at all. Better to find several hits for an Adolph born in, say, 1940 than to have zero results from a too-narrow date range.

It took some playing around with search terms, a generous helping of patience, and a mind open to possibilities that led me to a promising clue. It even took me somewhat afield of the county in which the photograph was taken—Cuming County, of which West Point serves as county seat.

Granted, I did find an Adolph Brockman in Cuming County, but he was in the 1900 census—as an eleven year old boy. At that rate, if this was his wedding picture, it wouldn't have been taken for another ten years, at the earliest.

But what if there were other Adolph Brockmans—or however his surname might have turn out to be spelled—in the state of Nebraska? I took a look and found a World War I draft registration card for someone named Adolph Brockman—or Brockmann, or maybe Brookmann, as the name was written over.

This Adolph was twenty seven years of age on the date in which he registered on June 5, 1917. He gave his birth date as August 25, 1889, and his current residence as a farm in Plainview, Nebraska, a town about seventy five miles northwest of West Point. An encouraging tidbit: this Adolph was married and had a child.

While it was good to see we now have a firm birth date with which to identify this Adolph, it was even better to find the detail on where he was born. Sure enough, it was back in the place we were hoping it was: West Point, Nebraska.

That was enough to make me want to go back and take a second look at that eleven year old boy Adolph Brockman—or however he spelled it—in the 1900 census, to learn more about that Adolph's family and life story. After all, we may not yet be certain about the man's true surname, but at least we have one candidate's exact date of birth.


Images above: "Adolph Brockmon and wife," as the label on the reverse of his wedding photograph was written is followed by the second image, courtesy FamilySearch.org, showing a section of the World War I draft registration card for a married Adolph in a nearby Nebraska town.