Just Where is That Place, Anyhow?

 

Genealogy can sometimes become a strange mix of mysteries and the mundane. Now that I've found a resource—the Polish website BaSIA—from which I can pull up scanned documents to verify births of my Polish ancestors' extended family, I've been working through the descendants of each collateral line of my second great-grandmother Franziska Olejniczak, and then the collateral lines of my great-grandmother Marianna Jankowska, to add links to each individual's verifying documents. That can be the kind of dull undertaking that makes even the most dedicated genealogist's eyes glaze over.

Predictably, many of those documents confirmed that the extended family lived in Żerków, just like my own direct line ancestors did. Even moving further in time through the generations on those collateral lines, I'd see records confirming that same residence in Żerków, long after my own ancestors had left the country. But then, as I worked through the process with each descendant, I looked closer at the birth records and realized there was another location mentioned in the documents. The problem with that was: the country had more than one town with that same name—many more such towns. Now what? Just where was that place I was seeking, anyhow?

The trouble began when I decided to be too smart for my own good. I realized the documents I was reading were written not in Polish, but in German. Equipped with my trusty Google Translate, I decided to spot check some of those foreign words, like "wóhnhaft."

In case you don't speak German—I don't, so you're in good company—"wóhnhaft" means "resident," as in "resident of ...." In this family's case—say, the record for Cecilia Karcz, daughter of my great-grandmother's sister Antonina—the town in question was called Lisewo.

Great, I thought. I'll just look that up. 

Not so easy, it turns out. According to Wikipedia, there are at least eight different locations in Poland which go by that same name. Many of them, it turns out, are part of another region of Poland, known as Pomerania.

Thankfully, I already know from my paternal grandfather's branch of the family that those Pomeranian locations would not apply to my paternal grandmother's side of the family, so I eliminated most of the list that way. The rest, though, I'd have to sift through by another process of guesswork reasoning.

As it turned out, two of the remaining same-named towns were part of what is known as the Greater Poland Voivodeship, a province which is also known as Wielkopolska. So, my next step was to turn to Google Maps to see which one of those two contenders might be closer to Żerków.

Fortunately, there was one clear winner in that competition, a town located within the right province, in the county called Września. That Lisewo was a mere eleven kilometers east of Żerków, as opposed to the alternate location eighty kilometers away, which in modern terms would have required a drive of over an hour.

Still, there was something which bothered me about accepting these handy explanations. For one thing, those hundred year old documents sometimes spelled the family's residence as Lissowo, rather than Lisewo. Was that the same place? A case of messy handwriting? Or another example of the Germans attempting to wipe all signs of the conquered heritage off their maps?

I tried one more exploration: what would happen if I searched for "Lissowo" rather than "Lisewo"? While the search result which caught my eye is not exactly for the same Lisewo as the one I believe was my family's home—this entry was for a Pomeranian town—the website called Kartenmeister reported some alternate names for a town they catalogued by the German name Lissau. Note the alternative names: Lissowo (dated 1789, but spelled just as the late 1800s documents I found had indicated) and, under the heading, "Polish/Russian name," Lisewo.

Given all that, I'd say I just found the right place for those ancestors to call home.

The History All Around Us

We are surrounded by the fingerprints of history. The only thing we need to do is learn how to dust those prints—to preserve them.

That lesson was cemented in my consciousness as I struggled to pin an identity on the faces in the mystery photograph album I had found in a local antique store. How was I to know, when I first lifted it from the basement box where it had been stored, that it would connect me, a casual shopper in Lodi, California, with a family five thousand miles away in County Cork, Ireland?

The simple items we find as we make our way through our everyday life may turn out to be much the same as that photo album I stumbled upon. Photographs, old newspaper clippings, even street signs or old houses contain shreds of a saga from our past. We can only read those details if we care to learn enough to recognize the signs and pursue the trail to the past. But that trail is there, bidding those who heed to follow.

Now that I've followed the trail from unidentified faces in a photo album to the now-disclosed identity of the family who once assembled it, I'm remembering other items which had, at some point in the past, seemed to call my name, beckoning me to pursue another micro-history. There were the street signs bearing the name, as it turned out, of some of my family's specific ancestors. There were pieces of furniture once belonging to now-long-gone relatives. There likely are house histories for the places where my family once lived. And, oh, the photographs—some of which are still faces without any names.

The epiphany of this experience has converted me into an evangelist for the ubiquity of history—and, beyond that, to encouraging people to open their eyes to that history and find ways to decipher it, preserve it, share it, and, when possible, return it to its rightful owners.

Perhaps, deep down, I nurse a secret hope that someone, somewhere, will stumble upon a hundred-year-old photograph of one of my ancestors. Or pull out a drawer full of junk in an attic somewhere back east, and find a letter addressed to someone in my family.

I think all of us who finger the strands of our own genealogy harbor those same hopes. Hopefully, we can find ways to step away from the straight path of the typical documents we've always come to expect will harbor our family's secrets, and wander among those other possibilities. I've certainly taken inspiration from the document-poor Irish, who have learned to glean genealogical information from such unlikely sources as century-old dog licenses, for instance. I want to free myself from the restrictions of thinking I can only learn about my family by doing the BMD chase, or sticking with decades of census records. Wandering through old newspapers from the family's hometown may paint a much more interesting picture than those dry vital statistics. What if a gift of a new discovery awaited us as researchers in some of these other, unlikely places?

Better than that, what if we all crowdsourced our discoveries—you looking in your town for the names and faces that, perhaps, would turn out to aid me in my search, while I, on my side of the continent, look for items which conceal just the details you were seeking? It is not that inconceivable, considering we are all surrounded by the tokens of history. While giants like FamilySearch or Ancestry or any of the other genealogical companies do their part in digitizing large swaths of documentation, each of us can do our small part in adding to the data stream with our own discoveries, too. 

The Glacial Pace of Genealogical Research

There is something about hearing family history researchers confidently declare their "research goals." Yes, it's nice that you want to pursue your roots in Sweden back to the 1600s. Whether you achieve your goal of finishing that project by next fall may not be entirely within your own control. There is the little matter of those other parties out there who may or may not operate on your timetable.

So then, the question becomes, what to do while being unable to complete those genealogical goals. Despite the well-meaning advice I've heard about not being all over the board with my research pursuits, I find it necessary to have a Plan B project in that back pocket for such dilemmas. Since it is near-impossible to force one's correspondent to answer an email or send a requested document in rapid response, researchers sometimes need the grace to know when to retreat or change directions.

While nobody is answering, where to turn next? In our case of being so close to presenting that mystery photo album to a direct descendant of the woman who created it, the story is almost all told—all, that is, except for the storybook ending that could have been, if the right people answered the call. Our only remaining option is to settle for a waiting game. Also out of our control, that wait may take a few more days—or months upon months. It may never see that hoped-for closure.

In the meantime, I'll put the pages back in the proper order, wrap up the covers in the ribbon which so neatly tied them all together, and tuck the album into a safe place. But I won't just wait; I'll be on to a next project.

And you know there's been one in the wings. Not as fascinating, admittedly, as the one we're wrapping up (literally), but you know it will be a genealogical pursuit that comes with a story. There is always a story, when you delve deep enough into the lives of ancestors.

Yet, it will be hard to say goodbye to the Penrose Hawkes family, and to Alice Hawkes Reid, who brought us—unsuspectedly—so many weeks of interesting tidbits about her extended family. Though it wasn't even concerning my own family, it's been a journey I've been glad to have stumbled upon. If nothing else, it's opened my eyes to the treasures stored in unexpected places—sometimes, quite far from the place family once called home.

Maybe the Neighbors Know

If, in my quest to find a living descendant of the couple who mailed off a photo album from County Cork, Ireland, back in 1936, I can't make any connections via the usual family history means, perhaps reverting to the tried and true FAN Club principle may bring results. I'm willing to try anything at this point.

The FAN Club, if you haven't heard of the term coined by genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills, is a cluster of people in the milieu surrounding a mystery ancestor, and may present some viable clues about those research brick walls we struggle to overcome. The acronym FAN stands for friends, associates and neighbors.

With the discovery in that mystery photo album, last week, of a friend (or neighbor or associate) of the Hawkes and Reid families known as Chris, we also had been introduced to a place labeled simply as "Chris's bungalow." In my mind, the term bungalow can be easily interchanged with the label cottage. And it just so happened, back when I was searching for any online clues about Bride Park House, that I came across some entries for a place called Bride Park Cottage.

Could Bride Park Cottage have been Chris' bungalow?

Fortunately, there are many leads to the current day Bride Park Cottage. Apparently, the current owners have a custom of offering their home to host an annual charity fund raiser during the holidays. Thus, I was able to find a write up on their place in the November 11, 2016, edition of the Cork Evening Echo (in which, by the way, a photograph toward the end of the article displays a "water garden" reminiscent of the one attributed to Chris in the 1936 photo album). An article on the event in an earlier year—that one published in 2012 by the Irish Examiner—included a photograph of the cottage exterior.

Although a quick visit to Google Maps showed Bride Park Cottage to be a mere one minute walk's distance from Bride Park House, from the photograph, it is apparent that Bride Park Cottage does not look like the bungalow shown in the photo album. Though it apparently isn't Chris' bungalow—whoever Chris was, and wherever her bungalow might have been—it provides yet another vehicle to use the "neighbors" in the FAN Club principle to track down more information on the Hawkes and Reid families.

I went on an online hunt to see if I could locate anything further on Bride Park Cottage. I discovered another photo of the place put up on the website known as Flickr—which, in an almost eerie coincidence, turned out to be placed there by the very researcher (Damian Shiels) who has recently written the book, The Forgotten Irish, that I mentioned in my January book post. Far predating the time period in which the Hawkes family had lived in the area, Bride Park Cottage was once the childhood home of Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, who eventually attained the rank of Major General in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

While none of that further informs me about the Hawkes or Reid families—or even about Chris or the whereabouts of her bungalow—it does remind me that, even if I never hear back from the people I've contacted about connecting with a living descendant of Alice Hawkes Reid, I can try a second approach in finding some answers. Part house history, part crowdsourcing attempt through local media, perhaps reaching out to the neighbors may yield some answers I might not otherwise be able to access through traditional paper-based research. We are, after all, shifting from history to current events with this next move.

Above: Revisiting Chris' bungalow—not appearing to be one and the same as the Bride Park Cottage seen in current newspaper publications.
   
  

Snapshot of Life at Home

While some family photographs don't provide the specifics a genealogist seeks, they can round out the picture concerning what life was like for family members during certain times.

Though this photograph from the mystery album—sent somewhere in the United States by Alice Hawkes Reid from County Cork, Ireland—doesn't help to explain just who some people are, we can get a good idea of what was important to the one woman called, simply, Chris. The description of this next photo, enclosed toward the end of the album, almost makes me wish it wasn't a composition set only in black and white.

 Chris's water garden with heather + shrubs round it + Tim Connell reading.

Sadly, there isn't much more in the album to divulge the identities of Chris or Dolly—let alone the O'Malleys or even Tim Connell, despite having his surname appended to every mention of the man. Even after all these pages, I'm still not sure who the other Alice was. All we've managed to do is figure out who Penrose Hawkes was, and through quite a bit of effort, uncover the identities of the Harry and Alice who signed their Christmas wishes to that unknown recipient of the album, back in December of 1936.

What's left, at this point, is to strike out into the wide unknown real world and see if any connections can be made with those now living in the area who may once have known about this Hawkes family from Bride Park House in County Cork, Ireland. We'll commence on that part of the journey next week.

Finding the Right Bride Park House

With the nagging thought still lurking in the back of my mind—that the unnamed family in the photo album I found might merely have posed for their pictures at a lovely spot discovered while touring Ireland—I continued following two parallel research tracks. One was to seek any record of the Mrs. P. Hawkes whose darling West Highland White Terrier had won so many ribbons at Cork dog shows. The other, of course, was to zero in on the specific parcel of land which would definitively identify the right location for the building dubbed Bride Park House.

It was that second task which was uppermost in my mind, once I discovered another home known as Bride Park in the same county in Ireland. I simply can't abide it when my pet hypotheses don't line up with reality.

Fortunately, using the Ireland-specific version of Google helped bring a few local resources into focus. While the Landed Estates Database we discussed yesterday seemed to lead us away from our target property, it nevertheless included some interesting detours which may turn out to be helpful in the second phase of our quest to learn more about the Hawkes family.

Keep in mind the NUI Landed Estates Database is organized to be searched in three different ways. One of those is to search by family name. Right away, I headed for the A to Z listings in the family category. There was plenty to wade through under the heading for H. If our mystery album's family was indeed part of the Hawkes line of County Cork, there was plenty to learn about their forebears in the 1800s in this overview of Hawkes holdings.

Though none of the entries mentioned the name Bride Park specifically, various entries on the Hawkes family confirmed some of the other discoveries I had been finding simply by Googling that name. What I had been sensing about a family name with quite a history turned out to be so.

That was not all to be found on Bride Park, as you may already have discovered for yourself if you chose to join in the research chase. While I couldn't find anything correlating "Hawkes" with "Bride Park" in any landed estates, I could find some more recent listings for properties.

One beautiful website discovery was that of the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. There, among their entries, was one looking very much like the Bride Park House we had been musing over from the photograph album's pages. Except now, much like the Dorothy who was transported from Kansas to Oz, we weren't looking out the door to view a 1936 black and white life any longer; this photograph was in vivid color.

Detailing the house history for the very building we are seeking, the Architectural Heritage entry informs us that Bride Park House was likely built in the 1820s. In the townlands of Kilumney in County Cork, the property has undergone additions, all of which are catalogued in the Architectural Heritage description of the building's construction. Clicking on the web page's hyperlink for "additional images" reveals a close-up of the very doorway where I suspect "Grannie" stood in 1936 to have her picture snapped.

The location of the house, according to the map linked to its entry in the Architectural Heritage website, appears to be right next to a river. Whether that is the River Bride, I'm not yet sure, but it seems likely. Checking the property's location on Google maps not only confirms that location, but adds the ability to view it via "street view," revealing yet another iteration of what seems to be the very property we've been seeking.

Ruby and Iris, taken in the garden at Bride Park—July 1936

Introducing Penrose

Taking on the task of deciphering the hints in a family photo album can go one of two ways. Either there are enough details in the picture labels to clearly point to the identity of the subjects, or there is such an abysmal lack that the photos remain a mystery despite any attempts otherwise.

But really: when do we ever come across that former option? Even in the best of labels, who sends a family member a photo having both first and last name provided? That would be awkward. Of course your family would know who Alice is. Or Harry. They are family. You've known these people for their entire lives.

Thus, we are left with Harry and Alice. And Ruby and Iris. And we aren't one bit wiser for having learned their names. After all, we're strangers—unsuspecting interlopers on the pages of a Christmas gift sent from one family member to another, back in 1936.

When I found this photo album, discarded in a basement bin of a local antique shop, I was delighted to see the white-inked notes alongside each of the photos. And then disappointed when I realized none of the names provided included surnames. I was so hoping to be able to do just what my mentor—blogger "Far Side of Fifty" of Forgotten Old Photos—does: rescue "orphan" photos, identify the subjects, and then return the photos to appreciative family members.

Despite having no indication of surnames in this album, there was still something drawing me to buy it. There was this one subject, wandering through the pages, making sulky cameo appearances hither and yon. His name was Penrose.

How many Penroses can there be out there, I reasoned. And promptly made my purchase.

In my mind, Penrose was the grumpy husband of "self"—whoever that was—and father of the two darling girls, Ruby and Iris. All that was needed was to traipse through all the entries that can be found online for two sisters with those names, along with a father named Penrose. This will be simple, I thought.

As it turned out—though the verdict is far from decided—that was not the case. I now lean towards seeing Harry and Alice—though not necessarily the Alice of yesterday's photograph—as the parents of Ruby and Iris. And Penrose as someone's near-petulant (though very middle-aged) brother, not so graciously enduring the affairs of a family reunion or other obligatory social gathering.

So today, meet Penrose. Unfortunately, his first appearance is in a poorly focused portrait, but I want to include it because, despite the fuzzy likeness, he will probably be the one leading us to determine just who this family really was.

Another snap of Penrose with Ruby + Iris, at the hall door, Aug. 1936.

Despite the label stating "another snap," this is actually Penrose's first appearance in the order of the album. However, it is not the first we have seen that doorway. Remember the photograph of "Grannie"? That was the same doorway, though framed for the picture more carefully. Note that it is labeled here as the "hall door." Whatever the significance of such a label, it leads to the conclusion that the main door would be even more imposing—and likely be attached to a significant structure for the place called home by this family. Wherever that might be.

Even without the surname, a given name like Penrose should fuel some promising genealogical searches. After all, there can't be too many men out there with a name like that. Let's just hope it wasn't someone's pet name; we need something official to lead us to more clues.

Someone Did Want That Picture

When I first started writing A Family Tapestry, a seasoned blogger popped up out of nowhere and became not only my inspiration but a wonderful mentor, as well. Among her other online properties, one was a blog dedicated to the worthy mission—at least in genealogists’ eyes—to find and rescue abandoned old photographs and reunite them with family members.

While I was infinitely jealous of the fact that she was located in the far northern reaches of our country—in “Minnesnowda,” as she likes to call it—instead of being out and about, scouring the antique shops in the Southern hometowns of my ancestors, I was impressed with what she is accomplishing. To date, she has posted 1,914 rescued photographs on her blog and returned 118 of them to grateful family members.

Perhaps you already recognize, by this description, the accomplishments witnessed on the blog known as Forgotten Old Photos by the near-anonymous blogger who calls herself Far Side of Fifty. Perhaps you, too, have learned a lot about the photographs of the mid to late 1800s and beyond, just by following her daily posts and watching the scramble as readers attempt to identify living family members of her mystery photograph subjects.

Granted, having a subscriber base well over 1700 helps the reunification process—yet another aspect about which I must confess harboring feelings of envy. Sometimes, in struggling over the photographs left behind by my own family’s ancestors, I wish I could just hand the pictures over to Far Side and let her choreograph the magic that occurs on her site with such regularity.

However, I am me, and she is, well, phenomenal. I can only hope to someday achieve a smidgeon of that reunification success rate.

Last night, though, I received a comment on A Family Tapestry that made me perk up and renew that dream of becoming Far Side’s “Mini Me.” The note was concerning a post from June, 2013—about a photograph from the mostly-unlabeled Bean family collection that I never could just bring myself to throw away.

“Someone might want this picture” would be the thought going through my mind, every time I sternly lectured myself on the foolishness of keeping that hopeless collection of faces from my now-long-deceased first husband’s grandfather’s siblings. But I guess I had a soft spot in my heart for the crotchety Aunt Leona and Uncle Bill. And the photographs stayed on in the old box I received them in after their passing, back in the 1980s.

You can imagine how I perked up when this note came through my email inbox:

Hi. This is my grandfather, Leo Walter Harrington from Tonapol.

The message went on to read,

My grandfather went to Stanford and studied law. He was born on October 15^th, 1896.

That year—1896—was the same year Bill Bean was born in Redwood City, California, not far from Palo Alto, where the Bean family later lived and in which Stanford University is located. Though I have yet to find out how Bill met Leo Harrington, perhaps now I will have a chance to learn—and, of course, like my inspiration, Far Side of Forgotten Old Photos, to return the photograph of a young Leo Walter Harrington to a family member who might like to have it.

“Wall” is For…

When it comes to nicknames, what may seem at first to be clues can turn out to be misleading.

There is a photograph tucked among my grandmother’s belongings that had me stumped for a long time. Unlike those many snapshots we all find in our elder relatives’ collections, this one actually was labeled. On the reverse of the picture, written in my grandmother’s distinctive hand using a green, fine point pen, was the explanation:

Wall Smith

March 1949

For the longest time, I figured the name “Wall” was doomed to signify “Brick Wall”—only the most recent in a long line of puzzles I wasn’t solving very successfully.

Then, while working on my mother’s cousin Sarah Martha Moore McKinnon’s line, I realized from a letter Sarah Martha’s mother Lummie had written that “Wall” was a nickname for Sarah Martha’s father, Wallace Moore.

“Wall is for Wallace,” I thought triumphantly to myself, and raced back through my files to find that abandoned—and totally unrelated—photograph of Wall Smith. Now, all I had to do was search through online records for a Wallace Smith to figure out who this mystery person was!

Well…everyone knows what it is like to search for someone named Smith. Even knowing this picture likely came from my grandmother’s roots in Florida, I couldn’t make any names, dates and circumstances come together sufficiently to reveal who “Wallace Smith” might be. The only thing I could do to provide any further hints was to blow the thing up on PhotoShop and look for details in the photographic field.

I did find one: the doormat at the entry of the official-looking building just behind Wall Smith bore the legend, “Bank of.” But Bank of what? The rest of the label was cut out of the picture.

Thankfully, we all benefit from the comments blog readers share, and I was most grateful for A Family Tapestry reader Far Side, who suggested I sort all my mystery photos by size and even by border design. Doing so, I found three other prints of that design—all, by the way, labeled by my grandmother with that same date: March, 1949. Evidently, my grandmother had taken a trip and visited a number of people at that time.

One of those other photos featured Wall Smith and a woman. They were standing in front of the same imposing building as I had seen in the other picture. On the reverse of this snapshot, my grandmother had written:

Lula and Wall

March 1949

While I still knew absolutely nothing of who this “Wall” might be, “Lula” provided me with a big hint. My grandmother had a childhood friend from Fort Meade named Lula. While I had never heard my grandmother talk about Lula, I had seen enough written notes about this friend to recall her full name: Lula Childers. But even then, I needed my mother’s cousin to clue me in on the correct pronunciation—it’s not CHILD-ers, like we would pronounce the word “child,” but the name was pronounced with a short “i” as in CHILL-ders.

Could Lula Childers be the “Lula” who was “Wall” Smith’s wife? I took a look at what could be found at FamilySearch.org. Sure enough, there was a Lula Virginia Childers who married someone by the name of William Wall Smith in Hernando County, Florida, on July 20, 1948. Likely, that “Wall” came from William’s mother’s maiden name.

Just in case there were more than one Lula Childers in Florida at that time, it was encouraging to find the Application for Marriage License also at FamilySearch.org. There, I learned that Lula was forty eight years of age at the time of her marriage, and that she was a school teacher. More important was that little detail on the document revealing that she was born in Fort Meade.

The application form also told me that forty five year old William “Wall-Smith” lived in Clearwater, had been born in Tampa, and was a bank clerk. The photo I had found of the mysterious “Wall” was likely taken just outside the front door of his place of employment. And, taking this second photograph of Lula and Wall, treating it the same way with PhotoShop as I had done to the other picture, I could see on the doormat the last three letters of the conclusion to the label, “Bank of —.” Whatever the name, I could now tell the mat was labeled, “Bank of —ter.”

Clearwater?

Finding the dots connected between the mysterious “Wall” Smith and the Lula Childers I knew to be my grandmother’s friend, it now opened the way for me to muddle through the other two photographs with that same border design. Though they contained no surnames in their labels, the clues from these first two photographs were enough to get me started on another productive search.

Lost Amidst The Unnamed Faces

What could be better for a family history researcher than to inherit scads and scads of family photographs?

What could be worse for a family historian than to discover that none of those photographs are labeled?

I’ve been seeking every way I know to figure out that one near branch of the more recent descendants of my Davis line—the one descending from my maternal grandfather’s oldest sister, Lummie Davis Moore. While I’ve done my due diligence to locate records online—and while, sadly, I don’t have the liberty to travel to Tennessee, Maryland, and most definitely not to Honduras to do hands-on research—I haven’t found what I’ve been seeking.

Meanwhile, thoughts of that family keep spiraling through my mind like some hypnotic computer screen saver from the nineties. Every unlabeled photograph from my aunt’s collection makes me jump to the conclusion that it must be them.

One of the few recollections passed down to me of my mother’s aunt Lummie was that she and her sister, Mabel, were tall women. If I could believe my family, they’d have me know the sisters were each six feet tall—quite a striking appearance back in their day, just after the turn of the century, when these women would have come of age.

As it turns out, I did find one document that served to set that family tradition aside: Lummie’s passport application in 1922. On the second page, the “Description of Applicant” plainly revealed her height to be five feet nine inches.

Close. But not exactly six feet. Perhaps, when I get to that point, I will discover her sister Mabel also wasn’t as towering a giant as family legend held her to be.

Whether truth or tall tale, I still can’t help myself, though, when it comes to these blank backings to family photographs. If only they contained labels. Every time I see a family picture of a tall, slender woman, I wonder if it might be Lummie. Or her sister. But I’ll likely never know.

Take this old picture—a little slip of a thing measuring just over two inches square. Faded now to a lighter shade of brown, it did brighten up a bit when I used a little Photoshop magic on it. Thankfully.

While the background of the composition offers no clues—not even a recognizable detail which could serve to provide some scale—my mind immediately jumps to the conclusion that this must be my missing relative, Lummie Davis Moore. Surely it is. Look how tall and slender the young woman looks. I’m convinced it is Lummie, so starved am I for search results. I struggle to rein in my racing imagination.

My mind fights back and tries to reason with me. “See,” I tell myself, “She has dark hair, just like the passport application indicated. And her face looks to be an oval. Doesn’t it seem to match the one included with the passport application?” (If you are an Ancestry.com subscriber, you can take a look through Lummie’s passport pages here, and see what you think about the comparison.)

Then I look again at the photograph in my hand, and wonder who the young man is, standing so close to her. At first, I presume it is her husband, Wallace Moore. But then, something about the eyes, the forehead and the unmistakable ears reminds me of my own grandfather, Lummie’s baby brother. I’ve never seen a picture of him in his younger days. Could this be him?

I’d really like to know. Just thinking that makes me resent the unfairness of being deprived of anyone who could fill in the blanks for me! But it is what it is, and I have to relinquish these flights of fancy and unreasonable conclusions and get back to reality: it’s a photograph of someone. Standing next to someone else. Who each one is, I’ll likely never know.

Unless some distant cousin comes to my rescue. That I would always welcome.

Christmas Cards Past

Here’s to untraceable faces from Christmas cards of the past.

Who is Mabel Gosline? You’d think that identification on the back of this Christmas greeting would present straightforward marching orders for an online search. Armed with Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, NewspaperArchive.com and others, I thought it would be child’s play to knock out all those toy soldier false leads in the twinkle of an eye.

But no, there are no false leads—well, other than several California Voters’ Registration listings for a Mrs. Mabel Gosline.

I don’t think this Christmas card is from a married Mabel Gosline. With the card dated 1952, showing a young woman of a marriageable age, I don’t think this Christmas greeting would be sent with a picture like this if it were representing a married woman. Back in 1952, a married woman would have proudly posed with her husband at her side.

Finding an unmarried Mabel Gosline presents an entirely different search, one at which I’ve not yet been successful.

This card comes from my collection inherited from the Bean family. Remember last year, about this time, when I started the series on that extended family? I would have loved to include this card in that series, but one thing held me back: I couldn’t figure out who Mabel Gosline was. Friend? Family? Direct descendant of a common ancestor? Third cousin fifteen times removed?

There is no way—at least up to this point, a year later—for me to tell.

So, now that the year has rolled around to that same point in time, Mabel is getting her fifteen minutes of fame. Why? She is reminding me of all those faces which, while not nameless, still present the diligent family history researcher with an unsolvable quandary.

If I’ve got them in my stack of mysteries, I know you do, too. So, in this season that calls us back to family and remembrances, don’t be shy about pulling out those photographs that still stump you. Maybe your visiting aunts and grandparents can provide the missing puzzle piece that connects your mystery picture with memories of times long gone.

Here’s to a Christmas that reconnects us with our past, that knits us back together with our heritage—even the forgotten parts.

On the Road Again

It’s been interesting, matching up the material I’ve already received from my grandmother’s belongings after her passing in 1993 with the photographs I now have from my aunt’s collection.

I’ve mentioned my grandmother’s “Little Brown Book” in the past: what was meant to serve as an address book but doubled as a reminder list and catch-all for odds and ends gleaned from newspapers over the years.

With the discovery, in her book, of one tiny news clipping—presumably from an Erwin, Tennessee, newspaper, though there is no name or date to show this—I receive confirmation of the family’s residence in Baltimore, and their ultimate destination in Florida.

I can’t help thinking back to that sad note in my mother’s own life, when her family left her in Florida with her grandparents while the rest of them returned to Baltimore, with its proximity to the Johns Hopkins University hospital for consultation on some health conditions for my aunt. Though my mother loved her grandparents—she was particularly close to her own grandmother—experiencing this turn of events as a young child, she couldn’t help but feel left behind.

Perhaps it was two little girls of about the same age as I found in this family photo who were traveling from Baltimore to Tampa, by way of the Smoky Mountains and the little town of Erwin, Tennessee.

Mr. and Mrs. Jack Davis and two little daughters arrived Friday from their home in Baltimore, Md., to be the guests of the former’s mother, Mrs. Cassie Davis at her home on North Main street. From here they will go on to Florida, where they will visit Mrs. Jack Davis’ parents.

Runs in the Family

Yesterday’s photograph beside the long, sweeping lines of a 1930s Buick is turning out to be just one of many such automobile portraits in the collection of material I've inherited from my aunt.

Oh, there were people in the pictures, too. But I imagine there was one photographer who only had eyes for those gleaming steel machines.

I was going to include another candid shot, yesterday, of my mother and aunt during their later childhood, standing next to a car with—I presumed—their father. After scanning the original, though, as I magnified the subject to trim the border, I realized that the man in the photo wasn’t my grandfather, after all. Apparently, someone else in the family was a great fan of those handsome automobiles.

Looks like this picture will be the one to initiate a collective effort to identify the people in all these unlabeled photographs. Some of the pictures of my aunt and mother as younger children were labeled, thankfully—actually, labeled quite precisely, with each girl’s age, down to the month. But as the years wore on, perhaps my grandmother had other things more pressing on her mind than labeling snapshots of dozens of cars (and her own children and husband). After all, she knew who they were.

So, off I go, sending emails with attached photos to likely prospects among my relatives, in hopes that someone will remember a face from over seventy years ago.

That will be a tall order to fill at this late date.


Photograph, above right: Sisters Patsy Ruth Davis to the left and Sara Jacqueline Davis to the right of an unidentified relative in the late 1930s.

Family Fatigue

There comes a point in every project when it appears the work could go on, but—and this is the sticking point—the will to do so is flagging.

Since starting this series on January 4, I’ve written about a family I described as “mostly the same as your families—except some ways.”

Those “some ways” included immigration from Maine around the Horn to California; chasing the Gold Rush, away from family back in Wisconsin; living with injuries causing blindness—and in one case, deafness too—and getting in on the leading edge of sales for that latest innovation, automobiles.

It’s been an enjoyable project, this memory lane journey through the Bean family history. Well…for the most part. Sometimes, it touches home too closely, but we all need to do something like that from time to time.

The hard part is knowing that I have, literally, over a hundred photographs still screaming at me from inside Bill Bean’s box of collected memories. Dare I say the people they represent still want their stories told?

Like this self-possessed businessman, decked in his three-piece suit and hat, perhaps posing in front of the very building in which he has built his reputation—who is he? It’s hard to admit I’ll probably never know.

Or take this young woman with wavy dark hair flowing behind her in the wind: will her relatives ever find this picture of her youth? I can imagine—actually, I’ve been witness to this very scenario, myself—a grandmother incapacitated in a convalescent hospital, whose aides see her only as a “Crabbit Old Woman” and can’t look beyond the face they see now to the person she always was.

Of course, I could have done more research. There is a world of online resources for historic newspapers, and Bill Bean’s name alone could yield many more stories. I still owe myself another research trip to the Bay area to follow up on Bill’s twin brother Sam’s own story, too.

However, sometimes family history research fatigue sets in, and the project no longer seems as fresh as it once did.

Knowing that, at a later date, more online resources may help me delve further into the mysteries in Bill Bean’s photograph box, I’m standing my ground now and bidding the entire Bean family—and all their potential additional stories—goodbye at this point.

It has been a heartwarming yet pensive journey for me, and I hope it was well worth the time for you as you joined me over the past several months.

We’ll head in a new direction with tomorrow’s post. But for now, we’ll give ourselves permission to lay this family’s stories down to rest.

After all, isn’t that the best antidote to fatigue?  

Remembering Golden Years

As the more recent chapters of a family’s history unfold themselves, the widespread use of photography enables us as researchers to catch ample glimpses of the everyday lives of these former generations. No longer must we surmise daily routines from stiff formal portraits, carefully composed.

For today and the next few posts, I’ll share the last of the photographs from this series from the collection of Bill Bean’s photographs. While I’ve sifted through that box of pictures dozens of times, no new clues are finding their way to my attention. It is now simply time to close out this chapter and move on to another family’s story. What’s left behind in that photograph box is left.

Most of today’s grouping of photos are matched, based once again on style of borders of the prints. These pictures are tiny: measuring two and three quarter inches square.

Today’s group features Bill Bean in his older years—most likely an active retirement, though I can’t say he ever really laid down all his business projects entirely. His ever-faithful companion, a brown-and-white hunting dog, is featured with him in two of today’s shots. How I wish I knew that dog’s name. Judging by the many pictures in which the dog is featured, he was a beloved pet.

I’m not sure where these photographs were taken. All outdoors, they provide a peek into the life—and even personality—of the man.

Some of the photographs in Bill’s collection still have me wondering—like this one of him standing alone—or is that some sort of critter perched on his shoulder? The picture, small and blurry, makes it hard to see. Up close, though, there seems to be a spray of feathers or something similar by his arm. Or could that just be an illusion, a strange juxtaposition of something from the background?

Then there are other pictures where I can clearly tell that yes, these are not fish…

Whether on land or in the water, in the mountains or in the desert, Bill seemed to live a full life. In his later years, free to enjoy more of the blessings of his material success, he evidently was able to share some of those good times with the next generations—whoever those young people might have been—even though he and Ellen had no children of their own.

Secret Hideaways

Some of the photographs we inherit from our now-long-gone relatives are of the non-labeled type maddeningly portraying people we are sure must be family members. We agonize over such pictures, wishing to know which faces might match the names from our research database—those names we already know too well.

Some snapshots, however, capture the sights from our relatives’ past, constructing for us a tale of the places they’ve been. Usually, we can guess—or, more happily, even infer—identities of such locations, based on our knowledge of the whereabouts of our ancestors.

In the case of Bill Bean, however, the act of guessing may not come remotely near the fact of the matter. In his later years, Bill—along with his wife, Ellen, of course—was quite the traveler.

Such is most likely the case with one picture in Bill Bean’s collection of unmarked photographs. Set in a geography I can’t quite place, the subject of the composition is not Bill, not his wife, not even “natives” of the area he was visiting.

The subject is a building.

Set on what appears to be a sandbar at the edge of a lake perched near bald hilltops, the building looks like a hotel—all except for one distinguishing detail: no people. Oh, there may be a speck or two on this photograph that might be human, but the building is conspicuously void of the throngs of people one might assume would accompany a building of this size.

Another surprise: the building seems to lack any of the customary signage of such a commercial enterprise. What kind of building is this? And why was Bill there to take its picture?

Granted, my eyes have already failed the test of determining telltale clues. I’ve already mistaken geese for fish, not to mention a mother-and-daughter duo for twin teenagers.

So perhaps I had better leave well enough alone, and leave it to you: what do you think? Is this a remote mountain hideaway? An exclusive resort of a bygone era? A wealthy recluse’s compound?

You may be noticing my romantic muse is getting carried away with itself.

Please rescue my runaway imagination and weigh in on the verdict: where is this place, anyhow?!

Twins?

Since last Saturday, when I had mentioned struggling with some family health issues, things had moved from crisis status to a more stable situation—but last night, well, let’s just say it was a difficult night.

Difficult enough to make me lose all ability to think. Or write.

Considering how therapeutic the writing task can actually be for me, that is saying quite a bit. But that’s the way it was. I didn’t want to not write. But I couldn’t actually sit down and write.

So I chose a different approach. I reached into what seems to be the bottomless pit of unidentified family memorabilia in Bill Bean’s box of photographs, and pulled out one that makes me smile.

I hadn’t planned to ever post this picture—mainly because I have absolutely no clue who two of these people are. And, of course, there is no label on the reverse.

Well, that is not entirely true. As it turns out, the photograph, which was once pasted into an album, then subsequently torn out, has a layer of paper obliterating all but two letters of a handwritten identification.

All that’s left me now are the first two letters: “No—”

The woman in the middle I can safely say is Bill’s sister, Leona Bean Grant. As for her smiling young escorts, I have absolutely no idea of their identity.

While I am no expert at dating cars by the changes in a model’s appearance over the years, at least that is not the only clue to rely on in this photograph. I can guess that the picture was taken in the 1960s, judging by the hair style of the two women.

Although these two strike me as possibly being twins, they are likely just sisters of a more average variety.

At any rate, they make me smile.

And I could use something like that right now…

Happy Trips, Sad Trips

While I’ve already shared with you the fun of my latest trips—and some of the vacation photographs from Bill Bean’s own forsaken collection of memorabilia—it looks like there may be another trip following close on the heels of the previous ones.

This one, however, may not turn out to be one of those happy trips.

When I think of all the trips photo-documented in Bill Bean’s collection, I see many happy times represented. They show activities that Bill evidently gained much pleasure from—like, for instance, his many fishing and camping trips.

Take this photo, unlabeled and undated as was Bill’s custom. Thankfully, the scene included the sign naming the location of this one fishing spot:

Richmond Court

Campbell River BC

Wherever Richmond Court on the Campbell River was located in British Columbia, I can’t determine. For the term, "Richmond Court," a Google™ search yields only locations of jurisprudence—hardly a stellar spot for recreation. The Richmond Court that I’m speaking of, however, did yield, apparently, a catch that one unidentified sportsman could be proud of making.

Or how about this next photo, uncharacteristically labeled with a date and partial identification:

Nov 10 – 57

       The Opera House

Went to see the Glass Curtain

Unfortunately, the question still remains: which Opera House? Since Bill lived for many years in the Bay area, I had presumed it was the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco. However, taking a look at pictures available online, unless the San Francisco structure underwent radical earthquake retrofitting, the Opera House where Bill saw the Glass Curtain had to have a different identity.

Granted, Bill and his wife, Ellen, did a lot of traveling. See, for example, a trip to an undesignated exotic location such as this one (note: complete with fishing catch, though I presume not his own!).

These, however, are all tokens of happy memories. We rarely go out of our way to capture photographic memories of less joyful moments.

And yet, because of such less joyful moments, I may be traveling across country in the next few days.

Though as genealogists, we thrive on researching all the details on our long-gone ancestors, sometimes, like all people, we are called upon to set our daily tasks aside in favor of the needs of the family still with us. Usually, these are crisis times, admittedly. Who among us who value family, however, wouldn’t be ready and willing to do so?

For the past six months, one of my close family members has struggled with a health issue that appears to be at an irreversible point. I alluded to the struggle last winter, and during my trip east back then, managed to schedule enough posts to fill in for the days of my absence.

With this trip catching me so suddenly, though, I may have to take a rain check on our daily visits when you stop by to read A Family Tapestry. Some things simply allow us no time to prepare.

Hopefully, I’ll still catch a minute each day to check in—but I have to admit the stress of knowing what is facing a loved one has already taken its toll on me. On the other hand, having your company along the research way has been such a boost that I hate to miss any opportunity to connect with you each day.

If you are a praying person, I certainly appreciate your prayers for our family. And if you show up on these pages one morning and my customary post is not there to greet you, well…you’ll know I’m okay.

Just terribly sad.

The kind of sad that no one wants to capture in a photograph.

Ever Do This?

It’s vacation time. Time to travel to exotic destinations. Or cool ones. Somewhere away.

You’re in the picture-perfect place, and you decide to capture the ambience. You pull out your iPhone—or Android, if you are locked in our family’s perpetual battle of iPhone versus ’droid—and snap the moment.

Before you can tuck your camera back in its carrying place, a stranger approaches you with a question:

Would you mind snapping a photo of me?

Well, I don’t suppose it would happen exactly like that in this age of the ubiquitous smart phone. Perhaps during Bill Bean’s earlier years, however, the much-rarer camera-toting tourist would have achieved an enviable status.

In going through the many photographs Bill Bean left behind, I’ve puzzled over one shot taken in a very Yosemite-like vicinity. The sole subject of the photo had me stumped: wearing what looked like open-toed heels, this person could hardly be classified as a hiker.

That, however, wasn’t the main reason I was puzzled over this photograph. It was the note on the back.

Best I could make out, the scrawl said something like this:

                                                        Douglas 6565

J. P. Aikman [Arkman?]

2^nd floor

J. E. Sompkins

186 N. W. Montgomery

The “Douglas 6565” was most likely someone’s phone number.

The rest? Well, I just presumed Bill had done the equivalent of that small networking faux pas that we all find ourselves doing at some point: grabbing one of our own business cards to write down the contact information of someone we’ve met—and then forgetting to follow through, perhaps passing the slip of paper along to yet again someone else.

However that note got on this photograph—and whoever it was intended for—I’ll never know. I doubt it was for anyone significant in my own search for family history stories.

Today, though, it occurred to me that perhaps there was an alternate scenario playing itself out. What if Bill, the consummate shutterbug, had been taking pictures, was spotted and befriended by a tourist, and pressed for the kindness of his immediate services.

Yeah, sure, he’d get the photo back to the stranger as soon as he got it developed. Perhaps, when it was developed, he set it aside, scrawling the note on the reverse to remind himself of the tourist’s name and business location.

And then…life got hectic, as it always does, once we return to work after a vacation.

And the picture just sat there on the desk.

He meant well, I’m sure. But Mr. and Mrs. Aikman—or Arkman—it looks like you never got the photograph you were requesting.

It’s still in Bill Bean’s box of photographic memories.

And I have no idea, now, who you are.