Tracing Eva's Family

If a person was fairly young at the time, yet experienced an untimely death in 1918, what would you think might be the cause?

A date of death in 1918 might lead to the savvy guess of military cause, if it was due to a wartime casualty at the conclusion of the Great War—but the place of death in such cases would most likely be in Europe, not North America.

Robert Rawlin, however, did not die on the war-torn European continent. He died in Spokane, Washington. He breathed his last on October 23, 1918, on account of complications following a case of influenza in the midst of the worldwide influenza pandemic begun that same year.

Robert's arrival in Spokane was at the end of a long journey. He was born in July of 1877 in Australia in a city called Grafton. Son of Australians Nicholas and Marion Rawlin, Robert nonetheless chose, in his late twenties, to sail for California, and arrived at the port of San Francisco in 1904. Though I can't, as yet, determine just how—or why—he journeyed from San Francisco to Oregon, within eighteen months, he had found himself a wife in Malheur County, Oregon.

That wife was the former Eva Tucker, daughter of Samuel and Annie Tucker, whom we've been discussing, ever since locating several photographs of their family in a northern California antique shop over one hundred years later. Just shy of thirteen years later, Eva was once again without a husband, having lost Robert to a case of pneumonia subsequent to his exposure to the flu.

Tracing Eva, after Robert's 1918 death, was best accomplished by locating her whereabouts in each of the subsequent census enumerations. Less than two years after Robert's death, Eva was by then married to a man whose name is, by now, recognizable to us: Leslie Earl Purkey. This second Purkey-Tucker liaison produced a son before the couple split, and Eva went on to marry a Kansas man by the name of James P. Thomas, who served, at least briefly, as step-father for her three Rawlin children, as well.

Of course, one of Eva's children—if I can ever find him or his descendants—would be interested in a photograph I have of Leslie Earl Purkey. But we now also have the chance to locate Tucker descendants through the three Rawlin children—at least one of whom had a daughter by the time of the 1940 census. 

While I Was Out

Currently, I'm writing from the hotel at a world famous amusement park, the name of which I'd refrain from revealing, except that (as my husband delights in putting it), "it rhymes with Shmizneyland." Even if I were to receive that coveted reply email I've been awaiting from the direct descendant of the Samuel Tucker family, I wouldn't be able to send the photo back home. Yet.

And that seems to be my problem. I'm embarrassed to say, that has not been the first time I've been faced with that dilemma. It's happened before—namely, during last January, when I went from a week-long training session at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy to a research trip in Florida. Of course, it would be right in the middle of that when I received an email from not one, but two descendants of the couple featured in a hundred year old family portrait.

I was delighted to receive the news, of course, emailing exactly that message back to the waiting descendants. And promptly forgot to get the photographs in the mail when I returned home.

While I'm away, once again, from my stash of antique photographs, I'll take this opportunity to reintroduce you to the family who will soon—this time, I promise!—be flying their way back home.

Above: Remember George and Elmira Purkey Wymer and family  from Plymouth, Indiana? I wrote about them, back at the end of October, 2018. Their family photographs—there are at least two others besides this one which will also be returned—have long since been claimed by two direct descendants, and will make their way back home as soon as I do.

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.

The Reason I Need to Identify Those Faces

Sometimes, the puzzles we pursue require incremental learning. We need to build on the details we've already identified in order to figure out even more of the story.

Yesterday, I shared the photograph of a family labeled "Elmira's family." The picture was taken in Bourbon, Indiana—a fact I gleaned from the photographer's imprint on the lower edge of the picture. The imprint was so light, it was hardly noticeable in the scanned copy I shared yesterday, so I tried augmenting the contrast so it would be more visible. This is the best I could get:

Bourbon, as it turns out, was a small town in Marshall County, Indiana—whose county seat was a slightly larger town called Plymouth.

It was at this somewhat larger town called Plymouth that another photograph was taken of what appears to be a younger version of the elder couple from yesterday's family portrait. Unfortunately, unlike yesterday's photo, the only identification provided on the back of this picture was a label stating "Grandpa Purkey's kin."

While I can employ the concept of voice to determine just who it might have been who wrote about her "Grandpa"—that grandfather likely being Erastus Manford Purkey—the problem was that Erastus had at least four sisters. That family photograph could have been of any of them—or, worse, a relationship even farther removed than a grandfather's siblings.

When I looked more closely at the photograph with the enigmatic label, I realized something—or were my hopeful eyes deceiving me? It appeared that the younger couple in this photograph looked surprisingly similar to the older couple we observed in yesterday's family photograph. What's more, this couple happened to have three children pictured with them, exactly the number of children born to George and Elmira Purkey Wymer: a daughter and two sons.

If the subjects in yesterday's photograph were indeed Elmira and George, I'd say we've tentatively solved the identity issue with today's rendition labeled "Grandpa Purkey's kin."

Above: Undated photograph, possibly of George and Elmira Purkey Wymer and their three children, taken in Plymouth, Indiana; photograph currently in the possession of the author until claimed by a direct descendant of the family.

Family Photograph — Plus Grandkids?

It is not unusual to encounter large families when researching the typical photographs of one hundred years ago. So, for researching one photograph I found in a northern California antique shop, I figured I was looking at mom, dad, and all the kids. There were, in all, eight people in this particular photograph, taken back in Bourbon, Indiana.

The label on the reverse—thankfully, it was a picture to which someone had thought to add names—seemed somewhat confusing. If my guess is right, it looked like someone first wrote, "Elmira's family," and then, as an afterthought, added what looked like the words, "and Maude Wymse."

Although the handwriting was not the same as on the other photographs I had found during that antiquing trip to Sonora, California, I thought there was a good chance that this picture might still be related to the families tied to the other photographs. I had already learned, from researching the Purkey family for the other photos, that Erastus Purkey and his sister Pleasant—whom we discussed last week—happened to have an older sister named Olive Elmira Purkey.

Elmira—as she was labeled in several census records—married a man named George Wymer in Marshall County, Indiana. Records indicate their marriage occurred on February 21, 1878. By the time of the 1880 census, appearing in a household in Bourbon, Indiana, were George and Elmira Wymer, along with their one year old daughter, Maude.

By the time of the photograph I had found—taken in that same Bourbon, Indiana—the family had presumably expanded to include (at least) the eight people showing in the picture. As late as the 1910 census, however, the Wymer family never showed that they had any more than three children—their daughter Maude plus two sons, Charlie and Frank. What was up with that? Did I have the wrong people?

Of course, by the time of the 1900 census, Maude was no longer listed in her parents' family. By then, she, herself, had been married to Jesse Reed in Marshall County in 1897. The Reed household, by then located in Chicago at the time of the 1900 census, included both Jesse and Maude and their two daughters—Elmira and George's first two grandchildren—Donna and Verda.

Could the photo I found include not only George and Elmira Wymer and their two sons, but also their daughter Maude and her husband and two little girls? That would provide the right count. And, since Verda looks like she was still a babe in arms, it would place the time frame for the picture after 1900, the year Verda was born.

Squeezing in the other end of the possible time frame for this picture were three dates. One was the arrival of Jesse and Maude's third baby in 1903. The other occurrence was the death of Jesse, sometime after the birth of their son in 1905 and Maude's subsequent remarriage in 1908. And certainly, the portrait would have had to be taken before the patriarch, George Wymer himself, passed away in 1912.

My guess is that the family got together some time around 1901, back home in Indiana, to capture that photograph of the grandchildren for Elmira and George to have as a keepsake, since those grandchildren would be growing up so far from home. But then, that's if my hunch that this picture includes the Wymers' three children plus their first two grandchildren proves to be correct.

Time to Search for Family

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

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

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

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

And then...wait some more.

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

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

More About Tarance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mother or Child?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pleasant Remembrance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fuller Than I Thought

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

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

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

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

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

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

I kept looking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Family Tree Drawn From Photos

As we explore the collection of abandoned family photographs found in an antique store in northern California, it becomes clearer that each of those white-labeled hundred-year-old pictures are connected to the others. We've moved from the picture of the Erastus Manford Purkey family to their son Burt and his siblings, and a more recent photo of his two sisters, and then a younger brother. Burt's wife, Maude, became the bridge to identify the portrait of an older couple, which turned out to be Maude's parents, Samuel J. Tucker and Annie J. Goodman.

Reaching back further in time, we now find a photograph of a much younger Annie Goodman and one of her sisters. Though we learned from the death certificate of Annie's daughter Maude that Annie was likely born in Nashville, Tennessee, the photograph was taken at the Kidd Studio in Ontario, Oregon.

The picture of two women, sitting side by side, is labeled, "Annie Goodman Tucker + Sister Dollie Goodman." What great fortune to have found such a trove of family photographs, all labeled with thorough identification.

We are able to corroborate who is in Annie Goodman's childhood home, starting with her own marriage record from Jersey County, Illinois. The 1884 record, which confirmed Annie's birth in Tennessee, showed her parents' names as Henry Goodman and Sarah Baldwin.

Since that same marriage record indicated Annie's age to be twenty one, it would be a simple matter to pull up the census record and find her in her parents' home, either in 1870 or 1880. Doing so, however, presents us with a slight problem: though the photograph I found in that California antique shop indicated that Annie had a sister named Dollie, there is no such sister to be found, either in the 1870 census or that of 1880.

Granted, Annie did have two sisters, one named Emma and one named Alice. Neither name seems to lend itself well to a nickname of Dollie, though, leaving me puzzled as to whether this family's photo collection is prone to labeling mistakes.

And so, I'm off to explore yet another family to see whether there is a Dollie hidden anywhere within the branches of the Henry and Sarah Goodman family tree.

Three images regarding Annie Goodman Tucker, from top to bottom: First, the photography studio's imprint from the picture labeled "Annie Goodman Tucker + Sister Dollie Goodman" (photograph in possession of author); second, section from the entry in the marriage records of Jersey County, Illinois, showing Annie Goodman's information, courtesy of FamilySearch.org; finally, clipping from the 1880 U.S. census for the Davidson County, Tennessee, household of Henry and Sarah Goodman, also courtesy FamilySearch.org.

About Those Tuckers

When we viewed the photograph of Earl Purkey yesterday, I mentioned that he was married, briefly, to a woman whose maiden name was Eva Tucker. That is not the only Tucker we'll see in the Purkey family constellation, however. Eva's sister Maude Alice also happened to marry a Purkey brother—Earl's older brother Burt.

It was likely through Eva's sister's line that the photographs I found in Sonora, California, eventually ended up in my hands. You see, Maude Alice Purkey's daughter was the one who married the Brockman brother whose mis-identified photograph of Adolph and Vernie Brockman got this whole chase started in the first place.

Let's take a closer look at the parents of Maude and Eva Tucker, since—as I'm sure you've already guessed—I also have become the proud owner of another abandoned family photograph, that of "Grandpa and Grandma Tucker."

While this photograph did not provide any further information about this couple's names, it did mention one more bit of evidence: the explanation, "my mother's folks." If we assume the "voice" of the person labeling all these family photographs was a daughter of Burt and Maude Tucker Purkey, it's a simple matter to determine just who Maude's parents were.

We have ample opportunity to find Maude and her sister Eva in the household of their parents. Born in 1888, Maude was a nearly a teenager when we find her in the 1900 census record for the household of Samuel and Anna Tucker. Maude, Eva, and their five brothers were living in Malheur County, Oregon, at that time.

One record to assure us of Maude's parents' names, though, is hardly sufficient. What if, for instance, there were two Maudes and Evas with the surname Tucker. After all, the surname Tucker has multiple national origins, is widely distributed throughout the United States—and the world, for that matter. Back at the time Maude's dad was courting her mother in Alton, Illinois, Samuel was one of over 1,800 people bearing that Tucker surname throughout the state. By the time the family had moved to Oregon, things could only have multiplied.

An additional reassurance, however, was finding the death certificate for Maude Tucker Purkey, herself. According to that 1944 record, Maude's father was listed as Samuel J. Tucker of Alton, Illinois. Her mother's name was given as Annie J. Goodman of Nashville, Tennessee.

If we have the records right on this "Grandpa and Grandma Tucker, my mother's folks," then when we look at the photograph below, we are catching a glimpse of Samuel J. and Annie Goodman Tucker in their later years.

Above: Photograph of Samuel J. and Annie Goodman Tucker, found in an antique store in Sonora, California; currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant of the Tucker family.

Meet Earl

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding More Family in Antique Shops

Antique shops aren't the first stop I make when thinking about delving into family history, but apparently for some, that is one location where those coveted old photographs may be found. It's just that we have no way of knowing which shops will have our family's treasures. Those photographs might be found anywhere.

Just as we send out graduation photos nowadays, or slip a recent family portrait into our Christmas cards to friends, our ancestral relatives must have done the same. Compound that with the tendency for families to pass down those "old" photographs from generation to generation, and today's descendants often end up with pictures which cause them to scratch their heads and wonder, "Who were these people?"

Thus, out they go to the estate liquidator. Or the local thrift shop. Or...

Apparently, the entire collection of old photos from the estate of the Brockman family of Sonora, California, ended up in an antique shop in town. That's where I found them—only I didn't yet know I had stumbled upon a collection which had likely once been housed in one place. But with several of the pictures being labeled with what now has become a familiar sequence of surnames, I am certain of that assessment.

Take the photo we'll be looking at this week. The now familiar label on the back of the photo, in the same style of handwriting, gives us the identity of the young man pictured on the reverse: Earl Purkey.

Of course, the haunting reminder that hits me, when I realize such logistics, is that somewhere, somehow, some friend of my second great grandfather William Henry McClellan in Florida might have received what to me would be his coveted photo. But who has it now? Likely some great grandchild of that unknown friend, who is staring at that McClellan photo and wondering, "Who on earth is that?!" And some antique store in Virginia, or Oklahoma, or Colorado becomes the likely recipient of the long-forgotten likeness, not me.

There's got to be some sort of system to reverse that predicament, a way to help those forgotten photos to find their way back home again. True, it seems like the hunt to find the needle in a haystack of abandoned stuff. But we've found ways to crowdsource our answers to impossible problems before. There's got to be a way...

Learning More About Someone Else's Family

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myrt and Mabe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mason? Amasa? Amasy?

Sometimes, in rescuing abandoned family photographs from antique stores, I'm led on a chase through the generations of the family tree of total strangers. I try to piece together the picture—especially in this case, where I've stumbled upon the collection of an entire family—but not knowing these folks like my own relatives, I've got to slowly examine every detail.

Take the name of Rebecca O's father. In the census record, his name was listed as Amasa Lewis. In Rebecca's own death certificate, his name was given as Mason. And on the only memorial to be found for his final resting place, the entry is likely his nickname: Amasy.

Since I have such a weakness for following rabbit trails, it was the cemetery memorial that caught my attention enough to want to share the details here. Amasa Lewis apparently remained in Marshall County, Indiana, where, while seeking records of his daughter, we had found him in the 1870 census.

Not long after that—possibly by 1875—Rebecca Olive's father had died, and was buried in a place known alternately as the Argos Town Cemetery and the Argos Memorial Park, among other names.

If you check the memorial entry for Amasa Lewis today on Find A Grave, you will see there is only one monument containing the names of the many people buried there. Apparently, there are no individual headstones remaining to mark the graves—at least at this time.

The Find A Grave entry for the cemetery itself provided an explanation, thanks to a volunteer who was resourceful enough to post it on the website. Apparently, a letter was sent by the town council in 1945 to all interested parties. The message explained that, since no one had been buried there in the past forty five years, and since none of the near relatives of those buried in the cemetery were even alive at that point, the council wanted to do something about the neglected appearance of the land.

The town council had received requests to turn the abandoned burial grounds into a memorial park. According to the council's August 1, 1945, letter, the cemetery by then was seen as no more than "an unsightly weed patch, filled with tangled vines, briars and broken marker stones." Based on instructions from a 1925 Indiana state statute, the council made a record of the information on all the stones which were still legible, filed that record with the Argos Public Library and the Marshall County Historical Society, then removed all the debris and weeds from the plot of land, transforming it into "a place of memorial beauty."

At a later date, the monument which includes the names of all who were buried there was erected on the site of the old cemetery, which now had been converted into a memorial park. It is there on that monument that we find the name of Rebecca Olive Lewis Purkey's father, though once again caught in the struggle of just how to spell the surname. This time, "Louis" won out, and her father is now memorialized as Amasy Louis—not even on his own headstone, but on a monument recalling the transformation of a cemetery into a memorial park.

An Earlier Version

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Purkeys in Pocatello—and Menomonie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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