Heading Home so Soon?

Well, that was quick! Thanks to the shared effort of our two helpful translators Per and Martin, it looks like the photograph of the Rosby family will be heading home as soon as I can get it packaged up and in the mail. As you may have noticed from the comments to yesterday's post, Susan, the third great granddaughter of "Mrs. J. T. Andersen," the woman to whom the photograph was addressed, has contacted me and we've finalized arrangements so I can mail the photo to her.

As far as I can tell, it looks like there are no living direct descendants of this particular couple or their daughter. The older woman, as we learned from the translation provided last Friday, was named Rønnøg Rosby and her daughter was Maria. Apparently, all three members of the family were born in Norway, and they arrived as immigrants to the United States about 1867, according to this 1900 census record for Polk County, Minnesota, where they settled.

By the time of the 1910 census, not only had their daughter Maria—apparently their only child, according to census records—lost her father and her mother, she had also been married and widowed. In 1878, Maria had married E. K. Overland—likely Eivind Overland—in Freeborn, Minnesota, but the couple and their family can be found back in Polk County (location of Fertile, mentioned in Maria's notes) by the time of the 1880 census. By 1909, though, Maria's husband was gone, passing on December 2, 1909.

That was confirmed by the 1910 census, which also showed us Maria's three surviving children: Obert, Cora and Rosa. Of those three, each of the daughters died young—Cora in 1915 and Rosa in 1920. Best I could tell about the Overlands' son Obert, he eventually moved to California, where he worked at the San Francisco waterfront for a shipping company. While Obert may have married and had children, I cannot find any such record, nor can I even locate an obituary for him. Obert Overland died in San Francisco in 1951.

One connection I could find, however, was to the aunt that Maria had mentioned in her notes written on the reverse of the photograph. Not knowing the maiden name for Maria's mother, Rønnøg, I looked first for the siblings of Maria's father, Ole. He did, apparently, have a sister named Bertha, who married a man named Jacob T. Anderson—the "J. T. Andersen" mentioned in Maria's inscription on the photograph.

That couple, in turn, had a son named Anton, who in 1891 married a young woman named Julia Bakke in Winnebago County, Iowa. It was a descendant of this Anton Anderson whom I found through the public trees posted at Ancestry.com, and emailed her to see if she was, indeed, related to the sister of Ole Rosby. With an immediate response, she confirmed that she was, and off the photograph will go to Susan, another diligent family history researcher who cares as much for old family photographs as the rest of us do.

Above: Closeup of the three subjects of a photograph found in a northern California antique shop: Ole Rosby, his wife Rønnøg, and their daughter Maria, taken in Fertile, Minnesota. Photograph on its way home to the third great granddaughter of Ole's sister Bertha, wife of Jacob T. Anderson of Iowa.

A Photo From Fertile, Minnesota

Thanks to the help from readers Per and Martin, the seemingly inscrutable inscription on the back of a hundred year old photograph has been translated. As you will see, the message not only makes a lot of sense, but contains enough clues to help us target a specific family—and, hopefully, locate at least one direct descendant who would be interested in receiving the photograph.

But first, the message itself. Apparently written in Norwegian, a transcription of the original—provided through the collaborative efforts of Per and Martin—is here below, in case you, too, can understand the original:

En hilsen ifra den döde og av
Mrs. Rønnøg O. Rosby og
Maria, Fertile, Minn

dette Portraet er taget efter ett gamelt. Til Tant J. T. Andersen.
Fader och moder har ingen feil i [øyne?], men
det er en feil i Printingen.

The consensus regarding the translation, thanks to our two interpreters, is as follows:

A greeting from the dead one, and from
Mrs. Rønnøg O. Rosby and
Maria, Fertile, Minn.

This portrait is based on an

old one. To Aunt J. T. Andersen.

Father and Mother has nothing wrong with their eyes, but
there is an error with the printing.

So, just what might Maria have been referring to when she informed her aunt that her parents had "nothing wrong with their eyes"? Take a look at the photograph and see for yourself what she might have meant.

Photograph, above, possibly of Ole, Rønnøg, and Maria Rosby of Fertile, Minnesota, addressed to Mrs. Jacob Torger Anderson of Iowa; photograph currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant of the family.

Anyone Here Speak Danish or Norwegian?

Sifting through the many photographs I found abandoned in an antique store in northern California, it was easy to see that several came from the same ancestral family. Others, however, may not have even been related to the Purkeys, the Wymers, the Goodmans or the Tuckers we've been discussing.

Take this one photograph I found—much older than the rest—which was inscribed with a greeting that filled the entire reverse of the picture. The picture itself featured what I presume would be a setting with father and mother in the background, with grown daughter seated in front of them.

Even though it was difficult to see the writing on the reverse—it looked like it had been written in pencil—it was clear this was not English I was reading. I tried typing into Google Translate as close an approximation as I could decipher to the original words and, for the first part of the opening sentence, the translation service pronounced it to be Norwegian...if I corrected the spelling on one word which was clearly spelled differently. Trying again with a phrase taken from the last few lines of the inscription, this time Google Translate thought it was written in Danish.

Who knows what it actually will turn out to be. Maybe it will be Norwegian. Or Danish. Or perhaps Swedish. Or maybe a very old form of one of these languages has stumped the ever-helpful Google. After all, the photograph is well over one hundred years old—my guess, at least.

One thing for sure about this message, though: it mentioned Fertile, Minnesota. Whether the message provided any names or any other clues to help me return this old photo to descendants of the family, I don't yet know.

But I'd be grateful for any translation help from anyone who knows any of the Scandinavian languages. Together, hopefully, we can figure out this puzzle.

Original appearance of the message on the back of a hundred-plus year old photograph pictured above, with contrast enhanced. Below, enlarged portion containing the message: