Another Step Backwards

When the records aren't quite clear enough to provide an adequate snapshot of a given family's constellation, in genealogy, we opt to step backwards in time, to see the view from a different perspective. In the case of the mystery photograph we're currently studying, we used that very technique in considering the possibility that the unnamed woman was daughter of John Read of Guelph, Ontario. When his entry in the 1881 census didn't provide the names of all his children, we took a step back in time to see what we could learn from the 1871 census.

Of course, I tried the same approach in studying the other candidate for the John Reed mentioned on the back of the photograph. Though he was easily found in the 1891 census, I couldn't find his family in the 1881 census. I even tried looking for alternate spellings, including Reid, but nothing turned up for me.

Thankfully, last Thursday, reader Jackie Corrigan, a blogger herself at As Canadian as can be, helpfully commented,

You have probably found this by now. The family is in the 1881 census with the surname spelt Reid. There are two daughters, Levina and Mary, who would be the right age.

Well, no. Actually I hadn't already found that tidbit. But I wasted no time in looking it up.

I did so with one proviso: since already searching for John Reid did me no good, this time I tried my search using the more unusual of the two daughters' names. Levina became my touchstone. Heading to the 1881 census, I found her, exactly as Jackie had spelled it. There she was, along with her father John and mother "Margret." Perhaps this was proof enough that someone had a different approach to spelling.

Lavinia, as her name turned out to be spelled in her birth record, was born to John Holmes Reid and Margaret Jane Grasley on 15 May 1872. By the time she was eighteen, she was married—but not to anyone named Henry, as the inscription on our mystery photo led us to hope. Her husband's name, according to that 1890 record, was actually Alexander Lindsay.

Still, there was her sister Mary. Perhaps she would be our photogenic subject. Born Mary Matilda Reid in 1875, by the time she was seventeen, she was a married woman. She, also, did not marry anyone by the name of Henry, proving yet another disappointment on this desperate search for identity. Mary became the bride of William Theaker on February 25, 1891, in Mimosa.

Once again, that persistent researcher's stubborn trait leads me to hope for another break. Maybe that inscription on the back of the photograph was really telling it like it was, when it noted, "Henry + cousin." Tomorrow, let's see if John Reed's daughters had any cousins who were named Henry.

For Auld Lang Syne: "A Little Tea Party" Redux

It's such a rewarding feeling to reap the fruit of these blog-posting labors, especially when a descendant finds a family photo here on A Family Tapestry. As I mentioned yesterday, I want to take the time in the next few days to update you on some of the emails I received, subsequent to sharing pictures from other people's family history.

You may remember the little lost photo album I began writing about almost exactly a year ago. Of course, the tiny treasure has since found its way back home, hand-delivered by a distant cousin to the granddaughter of Harry and Alice Reid, the couple who had originally mailed it off from Cork, Ireland, as an extended Christmas greeting.

That little photo album continues to reach out and call family members who, as it turns out, are also interested in their family history.

One of the photos in this album which connected me with current-day relatives of its 1936 subjects was the one labeled "A Little Tea Party." If you remember, the summertime setting included a photograph of sixteen individuals, all named in the album by Alice Hawkes Reid. Some of those people identified in the picture were young children at the time: besides the two Reid children, Ruby and Iris, there was a young girl named Daireen Foott and a young boy labeled as "Alfy" Allen.

Last summer, I had the opportunity to exchange emails with Daireen, who still lives in Ireland and now takes an interest in her family history. In one letter, she mentioned,

It is really interesting what things crop up when we are able to make contact so easily, and with the common interest of genealogy research.... I spend large parts of my days trying to sort and transcribe letters and research notes left by my ancestors over several hundred years, and storing my efforts on computer and with hard copies.

It was because of her avid interest in her family history that I had originally been able to contact her—owing to a connection she had with another family researcher who lives in Canada, and thanks to some search engine magic by a reader here at A Family Tapestry for leading me to that connection.

Yet another connection was just recently made through another person listed in that Tea Party photograph. The newlywed husband of a granddaughter of Alfie Allen got in touch with me, having discovered the photograph. Wishing to spruce it up with the digital wizardry now available for graphic design, this man wanted to obtain a scan of the original photograph to see if it could be enlarged and transformed into a Christmas gift for his bride, who also keeps many photographs of family members over the generations. So close and yet so far away, this Cork contact hadn't realized that the original is now resident in a place in his own county. This is a project that will need some additional networking to fulfill, but it is nice to hear from the people who radiate out from the list in that Little Tea Party entry.

Perhaps because there were so many people mentioned in that photo album, I've enjoyed receiving other such contacts, not just from folks connected to the names listed in the Tea Party portrait, but regarding other names mentioned in the album's pages. It is encouraging to see people coupling their interest in their family's history with the powerful connecting capabilities of this awesome digital age. We've finally come to a point where we really can reach out and touch somebody, no matter where in the world that someone might be.

Meanwhile, Another Story Concludes

While I am floundering to figure out who my paternal ancestors were, and where they originated in Poland, I need to set aside the false start of that story to jump back in time to conclude another research story. The journey of that little photo album I found in an antique shop in northern California has finally reached its destination at the place where it originated in County Cork, Ireland.

This is a story long awaiting its conclusion. I found the album a couple years ago—at least I think; I didn't really mark down the date. The first post here on the story of the photo album came almost eighty years after the tiny package was mailed as a Christmas gift in 1936. By April of this year, I had discovered the identity of, and made contact with, a living granddaughter of Harry and Alice Hawkes Reid, the couple who sent the album. The Reids' granddaughter, Heather, helped me figure out who might have been the recipient, and with that hunch, I mailed the album to a relative, Rita, living in the States.

The final step in the plan to take this album full circle back to the originating family was for Rita's daughter Lollie to bring the album with her on her travels to Ireland this summer. At that point, Lollie would present the album to Heather, and the journey would be completed.

I received the news just a couple days ago, and was elated to hear. As planned, the two women—who are actually second cousins—met in Ireland. As a kind gesture making me feel a part of the process, they arranged to send me photos of the occasion, which I definitely appreciated.

Even though I've researched almost every step of the way from the sending of that album in 1936 to its discovery a few years ago in northern California, it still amazes me to realize that that one small package had made a trip with so many winding detours. More than that, it fascinated me to see all the stories that can be gleaned by studying one solitary object representing a sliver of the lifetime represented by just one family. Such a few pages offered up so many hints to a family's history!

Perhaps camping on that thought for this season will help encourage me, as I delve into the same process once again—only now, rather than names from Ireland, this time with a few names from Poland.

 

Thinking of August

Yes, I know August is just a few days away. It isn't the calendar that prompts my thoughts about August, though. It's the full circle of an eighty year long journey that is finally going to be completed in just a few days. And I can't wait until it happens.

If you recall, just after Christmas in 2016, I began a series in an attempt to figure out the origin of a mystery photograph album I found in an antique store near my home.

With work on the puzzle taking nearly four months to conclude—and with lots of help from many interested friends—the album which was sent as a Christmas present in 1936 finally gave up some of its secrets. The senders, it turns out, were one Harry and Alice Reid from County Cork in Ireland. The recipients may well have been the family of Harry's emigrant brother Richard, by then living in upstate New York.

By mid-March, I was talking to the granddaughter of Harry and Alice, who then put me in touch with the suspected recipient—well, actually, Richard's daughter, who now lives in Oklahoma. By the second week of May, that little photo album—no longer a mystery—began the first leg of its journey home to Ireland when I mailed it to Richard's daughter Rita, who wanted to see it once again.

And now begins the rest of the journey homeward. And this is why August is on my mind: in a matter of days, Rita's daughter will be traveling to visit family in Ireland. When she returns to County Cork, she will be bringing that little album, which she'll return to Harry and Alice Reid's granddaughter in the very place where the journey once started.

Of course, I'm thrilled to see the album come home again. But more than that, I'm pleased to see others catch that same enthusiasm for finding tokens of micro-history—those small treasures representing a family's history—and personally becoming part of the solution in guiding those objects back home to those who will appreciate their return.

Just the other day, someone found me courtesy of an online search, on account of that very issue: trying to reunite photographs with family. I'll share that story tomorrow, but as it turned out, those who are familiar with genealogical research techniques are already suited to the task at hand. And once the goal is accomplished and the objects reunited with the family of origin, the enthusiasm for sharing a part in that process is indeed contagious.

The beauty of stories such as this is that we all can play our part in reuniting these lost treasures with their families of origin. As one, then another success story makes its way out, to be shared with others, the effort seems to be amplified. More people realize ways they can help. The dynamics of crowdsourcing kick in, and word spreads—perhaps through blogs or social media, perhaps through groups or friends-of-friends. The more that help, the more those success stories multiply.

We are all so much more inter-connected than we realize, especially in this age of instant and global contact online. In an unofficial yet organically-grown way, our genealogical skills are leading us to a very different kind of Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness.

Above: Front cover of a photograph album sent as a Christmas gift from an Irish couple, Harry and Alice Reid, to an undisclosed recipient in 1936. The album is soon to make the final part of its journey home.   

A Package Postscript

It was nice to learn I made someone else's Mother's Day weekend a bit brighter.

Remember that parcel I sent off in the mail—the package to someone I've never met? The mystery photograph album I'd been wondering about for almost a full four months finally arrived at the first stop on its long journey home from California when it arrived in Oklahoma last Thursday afternoon.

Its recipient—Harry and Alice Reid's niece, Rita—was quite energized as she flipped through the pages that day, and noted the strong family resemblances among the faces which, to us, were merely the likenesses of strangers. Not so to Rita, who recognized many of the names listed on the album's notes. What a delight to see a family's personal treasures reconnected with someone who appreciates the heritage.

In celebration of this first step—mind you, the album still needs to continue on its journey to County Cork, Ireland—I went out and tried my hand at antiquing, once again. This is something out of the ordinary for me; I don't usually find myself drawn to antiques, nor to collecting photographs. But if I could find yet another photograph with enough information attached to sent the thing home, well, I'm certainly game to try again.

Apparently, there are not too many of such old photographs out there to be had. Photographs sans identification there are aplenty, of course, but not any with names attached. Thus, sadly, I returned home empty-handed after this encore foray into the collectibles world.

Or perhaps that points out something I should have realized all along: that stumbling upon this photo album—with just the right hint of identifications attached—was a rare occurrence, indeed.

Start of a Journey, End of a Story

Today—likely long after you read this post, depending on the juxtaposition of your time zone and mine—a package will be hand-delivered to the local branch of the United States Post Office on the first leg of its journey home. It's a small package, less than eight inches wide and five inches in length. Inside will be the carefully wrapped album, the pursuit of whose secrets have captivated me for the past four months.

I say the first part of its journey home, because it must make a stop in this country before venturing across the ocean to reach its ultimate destination, when it finishes a round trip begun over eighty years ago. The shortstop is located in the American state of Oklahoma, where someone remembers, as a child, having exchanged letters with the Irish originators of the package. Perhaps this package was once the Christmas gift sent from County Cork by her uncle and aunt, Harry and Alice Hawkes Reid, in 1936. Now, many years later, Rita would like to see the actual photograph album, herself, and wonders if it was, indeed, the very item she thinks it was.

The album will likely reach its destination in Oklahoma in a matter of days. Rita will likely share it with her immediate family—especially with her daughter, Lollie, who has been so kind to help make the arrangements for me to speak with Rita by phone, earlier this month.

And for the rest of the journey? The album will have made its rendezvous in plenty of time for that second part of the trip. Later this year, Lollie will be traveling to Europe, and will hand carry the album back to County Cork, where it will be reunited with the granddaughter of the couple who sent it out, so long ago.

It's indeed been an incredible journey. For me, it's been a chance to travel through history—to learn about the Penrose family and Waterford crystal, then to learn about the Hawkes family's Penrose namesake and their business entities which created variations on those original crystal inspirations, both in the British Isles and in America. It's been a story which spanned two World Wars, three countries, and several generations.

Most of all, it's been an adventure I never dreamed I'd be a part of, back at that crucial moment when I picked up that tiny photo album forsaken in a basement bin of an antique store, and wondered if those three names contained inside its covers—Iris, Ruby, and Penrose—would be sufficient to lead me to the identity of its owners, eighty years ago.

Finding a Way Up North

Sometimes, we can't possibly find documentation to justify our theories about family history details. In such cases, we sometimes must satisfy ourselves with noting our recollections and hoping for the best that those stories are made as accurate as possible.

How can you document the journey made by a parcel sent in the mail? In the case of the mystery photo album I found in a northern California antique shop, all I know is that I found the thing in Lodi, California. How it got there is a tale sans documentation.

We do, however, have a family member's memories. We've met Rita, a niece of the couple—Harry and Alice Reid—who sent this photo album from Cork, Ireland, as a Christmas greeting in 1936.

When I questioned Rita about her hypothesis concerning the route taken by this photo album to arrive in northern California, she was quite certain about a few things. For one, as a young girl living in the family home in Buffalo, New York, she had taken to exchanging letters with her aunt and uncle in Ireland. Because of the family's connection—Harry's brother Richard was Rita's father—Rita was also sure that hers would have been the family most likely to have received the holiday gift from Ireland.

However, the 1936 album—if it was sent to Richard Reid and family—would have been addressed to their home in Buffalo, New York. Granted, the family later moved from Buffalo to California, but they moved to southern California, not the northern portion of the state. That is a difference of hundreds of miles.

As she had mentioned to me, Rita herself left California after the war—that being the second World War. She is fairly certain the photo album would have remained with her mom at their home in San Bernardino, California.

But then, her mom eventually left California, herself, moving to Arizona. Because the by-then deceased Richard Reid had only one son, Rita feels it is likely that her mother had left the album with her father's namesake. And that is where we need to pick up the chase, even though this post-1940 time period leaves us without the usual genealogical documentation we are accustomed to relying upon in our ancestor searches.

While I can't be quite sure, it seems this younger bearer of the Reid surname may have been a military man. I was able to find a transcription of a World War II enlistment record for someone by the same name, with same year of birth as our Richard. A promising detail: the place of birth indicated on the enlistment record happens to align with the blip of time the Reid family had moved from New York to Michigan—could that mean this was our Richard Reid? Additional details included the fact that, at the time of his enlistment, this man lived in the same county in California as our Reid family.

Interestingly, a person who seems to be this same man—the brother Rita thinks may have received the album—later surfaced at a residence in a place called Contra Costa County.

When you learn the meaning of the county's designation—basically, in Spanish, the name means "opposite coast"—you realize its northern California location on the other side of the San Francisco Bay puts it quite reasonably within a range to reach its final stop in a long journey at that antique store in Lodi. This county is so close to that Lodi location that its most prominent landmark—a set of peaks known as Mount Diablo—is clearly visible from the western edges of the city of Lodi.

While I can't yet determine whether Richard, the son, was ever married or had children of his own, I do know he passed away in that northern California county. However, he died in 1985, making it doubtful that a subsequent estate sale would have been the impetus putting that photo album on sale in an antique store. It's my guess that there might have been a wife or other family member who then inherited his personal papers, and held on to all the memorabilia until that person eventually passed from the scene.

If that is indeed the route the Reid family's photo album took—from County Cork to Buffalo to Riverside and San Bernardino to Contra Costa County—there is one additional observation that occurred to me about the album's long journey. At the beginning of this series on the photo album, I mentioned I started this quest because I was inspired by a blogger who has made it her mission to rescue what she calls "orphan photographs."

That is only part of the story. What really happened was that, through our research efforts, I and another of her readers had helped her return a particular portrait to a descendant of that subject. In gratitude, that descendant had sent my blogging friend a gift to help support her purchase of even more photographs to reunite with family. She, in turn, decided to share that gift with her readers who had helped make that return possible—including me.

Thus, cash in hand, when I made my first foray into an antique shop in emulation of my mentor, I was spending money provided by a person who happened to live in Contra Costa County. The photographs I found to buy—the mystery album we've been discussing here—may have traveled all the way from Ireland to the very same county in California from which the funds later originated, provided by a total stranger, to make the purchase.
   

A Closer Kind of "Far Away"

When speaking of the photograph album I found discarded at a local antique shop, to say it came from far away may be true, but certainly needs some qualifying modifiers.

Since the shop where I found the album is in northern California, using the term "far away" certainly was an accurate reflection when I discovered the place of its origin was County Cork, Ireland. Even realizing that the family to whom it was originally mailed may have lived in Buffalo, New York, could permit usage of that same terminology; a cross-continental distance certainly merits the descriptor, "far away."

The next step in the photo album's journey, however, might—at least in some people's minds—bring it much closer to that northern California location, but I don't consider it so. To understand that, you need to know the distance between the next stop in the saga of the album and its final point of purchase was over four hundred miles.

Still, four hundred miles is much closer than the five thousand miles the album traveled from its origin to its most recent point of discovery.

One challenge, when trying to determine just how the thing landed up in my hands—after all, this is not the story of my family I'm telling you—is that at this point, we are entering an era not easily documented, from a genealogical point of view. When Richard Reid faced his untimely death, it was two years beyond the last available census record in the United States. While online resources do reveal some records later than that 1940 enumeration, we still enter a different research domain.

What may not be accessible via online documentation has been covered, thankfully, by information provided by one of Richard Reid's daughters. This, too, interjects another research challenge: by entering the domain of living persons, genealogists have traditionally made every endeavor to respect the privacy of those people. For those wondering, I do have Richard's daughter's permission to use her first name and the basic outline of her hypothesis as to how the album ended up in northern California. But by the same token, at this point, I will refrain from hyperlinking any assertions to corresponding documentation, as I would generally have done in other posts about genealogical research.

At some point after her father's passing in 1942, Rita and her family moved from their home in Buffalo. Sometime later, her mother ended up on the other side of the country, living in the area east of Los Angeles, around Riverside and San Bernardino. Eventually, Rita's siblings moved elsewhere, as they launched out as adults. Rita, herself, left California "after the war," and, having married a military man, may have moved more than just that once.

Still, if Rita's family was the recipient of the Christmas family album sent by Richard's brother Harry and his wife Alice, it is likely that the album—if they kept it at all—made the journey with Richard's widow Amy and her four children as they left Buffalo to move to southern California.

That, however, doesn't quite explain the rest of the story as to how the thing went the additional four hundred miles to reach the northern portion of the state. To tell the rest of that story will require an introduction to yet another member of the family.   

Crossing Borders

Let's take a look at the details of Richard Reid's life—the one member of the Henry Reid family most likely to have been the connection between the 1936 photo album sent from Ireland by Harry and Alice Reid and the antique store in northern California where I found it eighty years later.

We've already learned that Richard was the next-oldest brother to Harry Reid, arriving in 1887, three years before Harry's birth. We can confirm that relationship, handily, by the 1901 census in Ireland, showing the family still living in the same place—Grange in County Cork—where Richard had been born.

While I can't yet find any passenger records confirming his arrival in Canada, we were able to learn his arrival date, thanks to the 1921 Canadian census, in which Richard was now living with his wife—the former Amy Lucking, a British immigrant who likely met Richard somewhere in Ontario—and a baby daughter.

Though Richard and Amy were living in the northern part of the city of Toronto in 1921, that wasn't an arrangement which lasted for long. By 1922, a border crossing report from the United States immigration service showed Richard temporarily leaving his wife at their then-current residence in Windsor, Ontario, while he sought permanent residence for the family in Buffalo, New York.

Judging from an entry in the 1925 New York state census, Richard succeeded in his effort, for the family was by then living in a Buffalo apartment building at 17 Walden Avenue.

Finding the border crossing record provided us with another small observation about this Reid brother we're currently discussing: at the time of his immigration to the United States, he was five foot seven and one half inches in height, with brown hair, blue eyes and a "fair"—a later report from his World War Two draft registration card described it as "ruddy"—complexion.

That later document also revealed another detail about Richard: he was diabetic. So it was stated on the reverse of his draft registration, completed on April 27, 1942, in Buffalo, New York, where the family had remained—but for a brief stint in Detroit, Michigan—since their immigration to the United States around 1922.

It wasn't long after that, though, that Richard—whether on account of difficulties from his diabetes or from another cause—died, on the first of December in that very year. He was only fifty five at the time of his passing, leaving Amy with four children still in the home—three teenagers and a daughter in her early twenties.

That specific loss may be the very trigger catapulting the family from their adopted home in Buffalo to seek other living arrangements much closer to that northern California antique shop where I eventually found the Reid family's photograph album.   

Another Brother's Story

The key thing to remember when researching large families is that any one of those siblings can hold the key to unlock the brick wall mystery keeping us from our answer. In the case of the mystery photo album I found in northern California—the one originating far from there, in County Cork, Ireland—we've discarded the possibilities from one side of the target family, and moved on to the other side of the family. In other words, rather than following possibilities from album creator Alice Hawkes' side of the family, we are now looking at her husband's side of the family.

Alice's husband, Harry Reid, also came from a family with many children. In fact, before Harry's parents were married, his father's first wife had also had several children before her untimely death.

We could follow a careful routine of obtaining all the details on each of the Reid children in turn, by date of birth, and examine each for possibility of a nexus with a California-bound descendant. Since we've already obtained a hint from Harry and Alice's granddaughter Heather, though, it would be more to the point to hold up that hypothesis for examination. And we've begun that process, with the phone call to Heather's mother's cousin, Rita, this past weekend.

Rita, as we've discovered, is a daughter of Harry Reid's next-oldest brother Richard. According to Rita, her father was born in Ireland—in County Cork, we can presume—but moved to Canada. In fact, it was quite easy to confirm Rita's report, now that genealogical documentation is handily available. In a quick visit to irishgenealogy.ie, I was able to pull up this record from the birth returns of the district of Bandon, showing Richard to be son of Henry and Elizabeth Wolfe Reid, born on May 7, 1887 at Grange.

There may need to be some reading between the historical lines for just how Richard ended up moving to Canada. However, once again, it was easy to locate an explanation of that fact, thanks this time to Ancestry.com. Dated April 5 of 1915, record of Richard's signature on a declaration when he signed up to serve in the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force may provide a key to how and why—or at least when—he moved from Ireland.

Apparently, this document represented the right Richard Reid—after all, this could be a name held by many, both in Ireland and in Canada—for it showed his application, indicating his place of birth in Grange Cottage on that very same May 7, 1887. He gave his next-of-kin to be Henry Reid, still living at that same address.

Indeed, Rita's father did serve in the first World War, and, according to Rita, he had been trapped in a trench at one point during his service. Fortunately, we have the vantage point of looking back through history to Richard's story, and can see that he survived his service and returned to Canada, where he can be found in the city of Toronto in the 1921 census.

That document includes the detail that Richard had immigrated to Canada in 1908. But that is not all we discover by locating that Canadian census record. By 1921, not only had Richard Reid survived the war, but he had returned to his new homeland and settled down with a wife. He was, by then, also the proud papa of a baby girl. That, however, begins a new chapter in his life, as well as a convenient moment to pause in our recounting of it—for with the next step, the family will find themselves moving once again.   

Finding a Plausible Explanation

It's been four months since I began that research journey to uncover the story behind a discarded photograph album found in a local antique store. Since then, we've learned that the couple who assembled the album as a Christmas gift, back in 1936, was Harry and Alice Reid from County Cork, Ireland. We've even become acquainted with their granddaughter, Heather, who has since graciously shared additional family photographs with us.

There was one more question I wanted to see answered, though: just how did a Christmas album from Ireland make its way to a small town in northern California? Was there a descendant here who moved five thousand miles from beautiful, green Ireland to make his home in the parched hills of northern California?

Heather had a suggestion. There was a family member, a brother of her grandfather Harry Reid, who had emigrated from their home in Ireland. Only problem: he moved to Canada. Granted, he since removed from his home in Ontario to live in Buffalo, New York. But that still is a long way from northern California.

Nevertheless, I had to check that out. I've been emailing with a descendant of that branch of the Reid family, thanks to the introduction kindly provided by Heather. Once again, I've been blessed with further details on the family, including more wonderful family photos. This past weekend, I was finally able to call and talk to this Reid family member and compare notes on just how that photo album could have completed the trip from a home in Buffalo to some place in California.

So, once again, I have the privilege of introducing another member of the Reid family—this time, a cousin of the young girls, Ruby and Iris, whom we met in the very first pages of the photo album. Her name is Rita, and she, like the album we're attempting to trace, lives a long way from the Ontario town where her parents once lived in Canada. And far from the address in Buffalo, New York, where she, herself, spent her childhood years.

Like many families in the twentieth century, Rita's was one which, over the decades, changed residences several times, including a cross-country move to California. Unfortunately, that move to California was to southern California. If you are not familiar with that state, let me assure you, it is a long drive just to traverse the territory between, say, Los Angeles and San Francisco—let alone travel the full distance from the state's southern to northern border.

To make matters seem even less credible, I was talking to Rita this weekend at her home in Oklahoma. Not California. Oklahoma.

Did that photo album make an unexpected detour in the process of this family's North American journey?

To examine Rita's theory of how the album ended up in California, we'll first need to take yet another detour to learn the story of Harry Reid's brother Richard.

One More Phone Call

With so much of the work behind me—of determining the family featured in the mystery photo album I found in northern California—it might seem like it is time to wrap up this story and move on to another. But no, not quite yet. There is one more item of business to attend to. Remember, that photo album still needs to find its way back to Ireland. And I want to figure out how the thing made its way to California.

There is one member of the Reid family who may know the answer. Now that I'm returning home from my most recent trip, I'll be set to make another phone call to hear the details on what may well be a plausible explanation. Today, I heard from that branch of the extended Reid family, asking to schedule a time to talk. Believe me, I can hardly wait.

This family will also likely be the very ones to deliver the album back home to County Cork. You see, the family is planning a trip to Ireland later this year, including a visit with none other than the very granddaughter of Harry and Alice Reid whom we've already deduced was the right couple.

My task, hopefully to be completed this weekend, is to arrange a phone conversation with this new family connection. Hopefully, that will include even more details that can be shared about this research journey, from personal remembrances this person has of the Reid family. Remember, the album was put together in 1936, and we are now over eighty years beyond that Christmas date. Those memories will reach far into the past of someone's lifetime, surely. I'll be interested to hear every detail that can be shared.

But first, a long flight home today as I head from Connecticut to California on a journey of my own.

Going Back a Long Way

Working on this Hawkes line from the mystery photo album I found in a local antique store reminds me that I have much research to do to verify the generations preceding the ones pictured in the album. The Hawkes family has such a long, interesting history, and yet, I've not been able to secure documentation for much of it beyond John Pim Penrose Hawkes' grandfather. Judging from the Hawkes family researchers I've corresponded with during this research, though, the family's pedigree can be traced back a long, long way.

One reason this comes to mind is due to the many people who have helped, along the way, with this search. Of course, it is easy to find several trees on Ancestry containing these Hawkes relatives, but it is correspondingly disappointing to see, as the owners' resources, such "verified" source documents as "Ancestry family trees." This, in my eyes, is no better than the blind leading the blind.

One reason I've wished to obtain documentation from a few generations prior to our target family members is, as I've mentioned, that I've been communicating with some other Hawkes descendants. Not from the immediate family of Alice Hawkes Reid's parents, of course, but with distant Hawkes cousins. So distant, in fact, that even they aren't sure just how they relate.

Since one reader, Intense Guy, had provided the link to a family tree naming one of the children mentioned in the post about the tea party at the Hawkes residence, I was led to an email address permitting me to correspond with one Hawkes descendant in Canada, and the very person, still in Ireland, who had been featured in that tea party group photograph.

It's been a treat to be able to correspond with those two women. Though neither was able to directly lead me to the descendants of Harry and Alice Reid, they certainly sent me kind responses to my questions, which I appreciated. It is certainly an odd inquiry to receive in one's inbox, agreed. To have such gracious responses was heartening.

So, yesterday was a day to send out thank you notes. Agreed, again, that such thank you notes are also unusual entities. But perhaps that will someday become the norm, as we delve further into genealogical connectivity in this age of universal contact, thanks to the Internet.

Another Trip, Another Phone Call

Has it been only a month since my trip back east to Florida—the very day in which I received the message confirming connection with the granddaughter of the Irish couple from my mystery photo album? It was in the airport that morning I had checked my messages one last time before boarding my flight. There, Heather had responded, confirming she had received my messages and wanted to talk.

Phone calls in busy airports, though, do not blend well with this type of conversation, so we waited until a mutually convenient—and quiet—time to make our first phone contact.

Once again, I've received an answer to a tentative message—in the affirmative, and with a request to talk by phone. If not from the actual recipient of that mystery photo album, from someone who could possibly be the oldest living relative of this family line. She likely has a lot of information to share. And I am keen to hear it.

But travel plans have once again gotten in the way. For a phone call of this type, I'd not only need a quiet place but a space to spread out with note paper and my online database—that "secret" family tree I constructed to help keep track of my guesses as to who this family was that sent the album, and just who its recipient might have been.

Meanwhile, though, we do have email. And we've been exchanging notes—on my part, pumping out an endless volley of questions about the Reid and Hawkes families, and from the other end, a gracious stream of answers plus the bonus of more photographs.

Once that call has been made, all that remains is to make arrangements to return the album to the family in County Cork whose grandparents had sent it westward, over eighty years ago. In the interim, though, I have one more small bit of research business to attend to: contact all the others researching these family lines who had helped me along the way to accomplishing this goal.

We're Stuck in Lodi, Too

Back before Saint Patrick's Day, when the unsolved mystery of that photo album I found pushed me to go hunting, one last time, for a living descendant in Ireland, I posed my quandary to a Facebook group of genealogical society members in County Cork.

When I mentioned I found the album five thousand miles from where it originated, one of the group members piped up, "So what's five thousand miles away?" When I informed this seasoned society member the answer to his question was a town called Lodi, California, he retorted with the inevitable: "Stuck in Lodi."

Yes, it's true: if anyone from that time frame remembers anything about the place, they remember the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival release by that same name.

Lodi, however, has a life of its own, separate and apart from that doubtful claim to fame. A city of about sixty five thousand, among other features, it sports a revitalized downtown which is finding its way amidst the exurbs of the more tony Bay area communities.

Right on the main street running through that downtown area sits the antique shop where I found the photograph album that turned out to belong to Harry and Alice Hawkes Reid of County Cork, Ireland. That's the shop where I returned, the other morning, to see if I could find an answer to my question of how the thing managed to get here from there.

The name of the place is Secondhand Rose. According to the shop's website, it has been in existence for twenty years, and has been established in the same location since 2000.

The difficulty—well, for me, at least—is that this is not just one shop. It is actually a collection of "shops," each the domain of a separate dealer. Right now, the store boasts forty five such dealers in their cooperative. And one of them—an unnamed one of them—is the person responsible for finding the album which eventually got sold to me. But I won't know anything more about the details unless this dealer decides to give me a call.

And so, I'm stuck, too—stuck in Lodi.

You know me: impatient. I want to know the answer now. But it's been two days since making my request, and I haven't heard a thing. I've even answered what turned out to be spam calls, all for the sake of not missing this caller from the antique dealers' secret society. Do you know how hard that is for me?! This is true dedication.

Meanwhile, it seems I may have an answer coming from a different direction. The person Heather had thought might know something about the album's journey to California has responded to my tentative plea via Facebook messenger. We are going to talk. Soon.

Photo courtesy Wren.

 

Back to Where We Started

Some things are never easy—but they are still worth the try.

It occurred to me, while puzzling over how a 1936 photograph album from Cork, Ireland, could make it all the way to California when there was no one in the family living here at the time, that perhaps I could find a different way to answer my question.

After all, though it took almost three months to figure out where the album came from—and who the family was, sending it—some things may not lend themselves best to genealogical solutions. Perhaps there was another way to discover how the album landed in the antique shop where I found it.

I had noticed there were two unobtrusive white stickers affixed to the back of the album. The purpose of one of them, of course, was to notify the potential buyer of the asking price. The other, also bearing numbers, was likely a code of some type—though handwritten, hopefully some sort of tracking or inventory code.

I don't know much about how to run an antique store. Presumably, the owner goes to special locations where such treasures may be bought, obtains items most likely to move quickly off the store's shelves, and adds them to the store's inventory—hopefully for the duration of a brief shelf life.

Since it was my daughter who introduced me to the antique shop in the first place, I ran my idea by her to see if it was reasonable: go back to the store and see if the code could lead me to where the item had been obtained by the shopkeeper.

We made a mid-morning coffee date and started out on our expedition, back to the antique store. Arriving in town at what seemed to be a quiet hour of business, we breezed in the door and found ourselves talking with the woman behind the counter in a matter of minutes. While she was willing to help, right away she brought up the down side: the store was actually a consignment shop, and the code on the back of my album actually told her which contact person was responsible for that object.

Only problem: for whatever confidentiality reasons there are among antique dealers, she could not reveal her source for this sale item. But she did offer to forward to that person any message I might want to send.

So there I was, yesterday morning—before my cup of coffee—pulling out a business card and scribbling a note on the back.

How do you explain a story like the one we've just been through in the past three months? It doesn't really fit on the back of a business card—nor on the paper the shopkeeper so kindly offered for the continuation of the tale. I thought about including a link to A Family Tapestry so this antique dealer could read it for herself—but then, I found out she was likely not online, herself.

All I could do was write my plea for assistance, and walk out, hoping for the best. And really, considering I probably bought the album at least two years ago, how could I expect anything at all?

Well, at least I could expect my cup of coffee. With a shorter visit than expected at that lovely little antique store, now we'd have even more time to enjoy it.

Headed to California

If a single item from one's family estate ended up in California, wouldn't it be reasonable to presume the rest of the estate might have been kept in California, as well?

Of course, my premise that the mystery photo album I found in a California antique shop came from a local estate sale may be flawed. Who knows? Perhaps antique dealers search far and wide for the trinkets they sell for under twenty dollars. But I doubt it.

Then again, perhaps the album, while ending up in California, might have originally been mailed to a recipient who lived elsewhere in the United States—or anywhere else on the continent, for that matter.

I think these things out, over and over, as I try to discern that invisible pathway taken by that mystery photo album, from the County Cork home of Harry and Alice Reid to its unknown destination, back in 1936. Since no surnames were used in the notes accompanying the photos on each page of the album, I presume that means it was a gift meant for family, who would know, despite their lack, just who was meant by each nickname.

But which family member might have been the recipient? After all, though Alice Hawkes Reid had only one brother—an unmarried one at that, back in 1936—she also had twelve aunts and uncles, just on her father's side of the family. I haven't even begun to trace the generations descending from her mother's side of the family. And if the recipient was someone on her husband's side of the family, Harry had at least seven siblings that I've been able to find, and several more half-siblings much older than he.

Of those possibilities which I have been able to document, I had found one brother on the Hawkes side of the family who might eventually have settled in Los Angeles. While that city might be the epitome of California in many people's minds, it also is a distance of at least three hundred fifty miles from the shop where I retrieved the photo album. Besides, the 1948 California death record for Richard Hawkes, while providing the right mother's maiden name and birth outside the country, also contained the wrong middle name. Could it be just a coincidence that his parents' surnames were Hawkes and Gibbons?

True, Alice Hawkes Reid had two uncles who had immigrated to another part of the United States—both originally heading to the New York metro area, then moving beyond. But we've already examined the life of Thomas Gibbons Hawkes—who, incidentally, had died long before the 1936 album was composed—and that of his descendants for possible California connections without much success. And his brother—and their father's namesake, Quayle Welsted Hawkes—though moving to Westchester County in New York, had also died long before our mystery album was sent.

On the other side of Alice's family, though, there may have been some in-laws who could qualify as California recipients. Not that they were there in California in 1936—but at least they arrived there some time after that point, bringing their belongings with them. At least, we can presume.

The one most likely candidate family would be that of Harry Reid's older brother, Richard. Born in 1887 at Grange Cottage in County Cork, Richard eventually enrolled as part of the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force during the first World War. Eventually, he ended up in Canada, where he married Amy Lucking. Together, they became parents of a son and three daughters.

By the time the third child was born, the family was no longer living in the Toronto area, but in Buffalo, New York. While I realize Buffalo is a far cry from California—even northern California—the family does eventually get around to making a California connection. At least two of the four children spent some of their adult years living in California. A third may also have lived there for a while. Best discovery yet: some of those California residences could be considered to be reasonably close to the location of the shop where I found that photo album.

Could any of those nieces or nephews of Harry and Alice Reid have inherited a photo album sent originally to their parents in Buffalo, New York? Could they have kept it all those years, while moving cross-country to a new home in sunny California?

Those are the types of questions I have for one of those family members, once we connect and can talk about it.

In the meantime, another idea occurred to me: what if the owner of the antique store kept a log of where each inventory item originated? Could it be possible that there is a record of where the photo album was obtained by the shop?

That's a project for another day. Soon.

That Secret Family Tree

It started out as a place to accumulate—and then sort through—all the miscellaneous facts I had been gathering as I pondered the family whose discarded photo album ended up in my possession. The jumble of notes over hunches, guesses, conjectures and outright mistakes needed some sort of mechanism with which to make sense of it all. So I started a new family tree.

Not in the usual manner, of course. All the trees I've posted at Ancestry—and elsewhere over the years, for that matter—have been publicly accessible. I wouldn't have it any other way. How else would I tempt distant cousins to get in touch? If I made my trees a secret, no one would have the incentive to connect.

This tree was different, though. For one thing, it wasn't my family tree; it was someone else's—and a stranger's, on top of that. What if someone became incensed over my gall in posting details on a family that didn't even belong to me? Worse, what if I got something wrong? No sense putting errors out there, in the ether, for passers-by to snatch away and add to their own mismatched tree.

So when I put up my jumble of notes on the Hawkes—and then, eventually, the Reid—families, I made the whole thing not only a private tree on Ancestry, but an unsearchable tree. A secret only I could know.

Now that I've met Harry and Alice Reid's granddaughter, Heather, I've learned more about the family related to those creators of that photo album sent as a Christmas greeting, back in 1936. In particular, when Heather reminded me to take a look at the Reid side of the family, I discovered a family, much likes the Hawkes family, with many siblings, all striking out in life, headed in far distant directions.

As it turns out, there were several candidates from Harry Reid's generation who could have been the recipients of the couple's photography gift, some of whom actually may have lived in California, the Irish album's final destination. While I've already reached out to contact a descendant of one of those family members, it would be helpful to review all the possibilities here, one by one, over the remainder of this week. Each candidate has his or her pros and cons, thus the choice may not be an easy one. Mulling over the possibilities by writing out these thoughts may help zero in on the likely candidate.

In the meantime, that secret tree may not remain such a secret. I'm finding that, with each family member I contact, I may as well invite that person to view the tree and advise me on its accuracy. After all, I've now heard from two family members who mentioned wanting to share an old, barely legible handwritten family tree passed down through the years. In exchange, I may as well offer to share the details I've gleaned from this fascinating journey learning about the history of two families from County Cork, Ireland.

Above: Undated photograph of Alice Hawkes Reid at Bride Park with her parents, John Pim Penrose Hawkes and Sarah Suzanna Ruby Hawkes, and one of the Bride Park Westies. Photograph from the private collection of a member of the Hawkes and Reid families; used by permission.
  

The Last Hurdle

It's been quite a trip to go from finding a discarded photograph album in a local antique shop to actually determining whose family was featured on its pages. At this point, the goals of discovering the 1936 family's identity and getting in touch with a direct descendant can both be checked off our list. At some point soon, the little photo album will be making its way across the ocean, back home to Ireland.

There is, however, one more goal I'd like to see accomplished: to figure out just how the album made its way from County Cork to San Joaquin County in California.

While I've been writing about the various facts uncovered by researching the Hawkes and Reid families—the families of Alice and Harry, originators of the album—I've been testing possibilities for a family tree. Once I had discovered the likely identity of our easiest-to-determine member of the family—Penrose Hawkes, Alice's brother who immigrated to upstate New York to join a family member's business concern there—I had started sketching out a rudimentary family tree.

There were, of course, twists and turns. Guesses aren't always as insightful as we might hope they are. In time, I just gave up with the pen and paper route, and opened up a new tree on my Ancestry.com account. Making the tree not only private but unsearchable—lest someone think I was actually a relative or, worse, think I was the very one who held the key to bust through their unfathomable brick wall—I felt free to test my craziest hypotheses and juxtapose conjectures alongside confirmed relationships.

Since discovering Penrose's surname—well, maybe since confirming I had the right Penrose (as if there could be any others)—I had been working on my secret family tree. Since early January, the slow process of testing and discarding possibilities has yielded me a tree of 127 names. A modest count, that number is sufficient to help me find my way around the family constellation, although certainly not enough to confirm relationships I've since become aware of. After all, Penrose's father had twelve siblings, some of whom remained in the area around their County Cork home and some of whom had also made the trip across the Atlantic to either the United States or Canada.

In trying to put together a path of descendants—and thus the likely trail taken by that mystery photo album to its final destination in California—I've tested several possibilities which subsequently had to be discarded. I couldn't quite figure out who might have been the recipient of Harry and Alice's Christmas greeting album.

Of course, their granddaughter Heather has since reminded me to look to the other side of the family tree for answers. And, in that same phone conversation a couple weeks ago, she made a suggestion of her own. Perhaps if I contacted one specific family, I'd be able to talk to someone who might have some ideas on the subject.

Once again, I find myself reaching out and then holding my breath, hoping for an answer, but all the while thinking this is, indeed, a crazy pursuit.

  

The Trouble With Nicknames

When it comes to researching a name like Dolly, one can be fairly certain that is not a given name, but a nickname. When I tried to match the names on the Henry Reid family tree with those I had seen in that mystery photograph album I had found, I couldn't find any documented place for a name like Dolly. Nicknames require a researcher to find a way to know the rest of the story.

Now that we've met up with a descendant of the Reid and Hawkes families who has been quite gracious to provide the rest of the story on the people in that 1936 album, the names and faces are coming together. Except Dolly's.

Indeed, I wasn't even sure I had the right name. The handwriting on the page listing Chris and her companions at her "bungalow" had me wondering whether one of the women was actually named "Bolly."

But, as explained by Heather—Harry and Alice Reid's granddaughter whom we've since met here online—there was another family member who was called Dolly. Perhaps that was the one on the right of the threesome peering out the window in that old photograph. After all, we've since discovered that the other two women in that picture were sisters.

While Heather did send me several emails with photographs and descriptions, the way I found out about Dolly was a bit different. In trying to recall all the information she provided, I had thought at first that the little detail about Dolly had been discussed during our phone conversation. But looking back over my notes, I didn't find any mention there. Reviewing all the emails turned up not a clue as to where my memory had gleaned that detail.There had been such a flood of information coming all at once, and I had lost track of which source provided which fact—a sure signal that I need to reorganize my notes.

There had been one more item sent by Heather. It was a scan of a handwritten family tree. In impeccable—but tiny—print, it detailed the siblings from Harry's generation of the Reid family. Above one of his sisters' names, in even tinier print, was added the note, "Dolly."

It appears, then, that the Reid sibling who was known by that nickname was Harry's next older sister, Aphra. Born on May 31, 1889, in County Cork, by the time of the 1901 census, she was living elsewhere with an older Reid sister whom we've already met: Elizabeth, later to become Mrs. William O'Malley.

Apparently, at that time, Elizabeth was serving as a "national teacher" away from home in the County Cork village of Monkstown. In the household with Elizabeth was her half-brother Edmund Lombard Reid and her half-sister Aphra. At that point, Aphra was only eleven years of age. She was listed as a "scholar," and perhaps was staying there, rather than at home, for the educational opportunity.

By the time of the next census in 1911, Aphra was back home, presumably at Grange Cottage, with her father, another sister, and her younger brother Harry.

From that point on, there is little that can be gleaned from official documents, as the more current census records aren't available. However, a note from the superintendent registrar's district of Bandon provided the sad news that Aphra had passed away at the age of only fifty six, on March 28, 1945. Despite the winning smile she flashed for that photograph back in 1936, the one the family remembered as "Dolly" had remained single all her life.