Traveling Back a Bit Further in Time

Finding the surname Lewis on a photograph for a woman from Marshall County, Indiana, makes me recall another woman whose photograph I have recently rescued from a northern California antique shop. Granted, Lewis is a fairly common surname—albeit frustrating to research, given the propensity of record keepers to inadvertently swap spellings from Lewis to Louis. But coupling the name with the location made me wonder whether there was any connection between the "Rebecca O." Lewis Purkey of the photograph I'm currently working on and the Lewis family of a previous project.

The curiosity was great enough to convince me to take a walk back through the decades since finding Rebecca Olive Lewis' marriage record from 1882. Even in that document, if you take a look at the original entry, the woman's maiden name was rendered two different ways—at the top of the entry as Louis, then below, on the return after the marriage ceremony was completed, as Lewis.

Since we already knew from the 1900 census that Olive, as a married woman, reported her birth to have occurred in Indiana in September of 1862, let's start by finding her entry in the 1870 census. Fortunately, at that time, the Lewis family was residing in Marshall County, and we see that Olive—listed there with the same moniker as we saw in her later family photo, "Rebecca O."—was the second oldest of the five children of Amasa J. and July A. Lewis. An encouraging sign was that her mother declared her own birthplace to be Ohio, just as we had seen in Olive's entry concerning her in the 1900 census.

Following the records for this Amasa Lewis of Marshall County, Indiana, moving back another decade—of course predating the arrival of Rebecca Olive—we find a possibility for his entry in 1860 under the name M. J. Lewis. The wife's name there in that Marshall County record shows as Julia—probably the more accurate spelling rendition of her true name—and their one child, who was listed only as "baby."

What is interesting about that entry is the one appearing directly above it. Likely for one of Amasa's relatives—we'll check further on this—the listing was for a Joseph and Susannah Lewis. Included in that Lewis household was a family by the name of Webb: Francis and Rachel Webb and their two young daughters.

Seeing that connection, I wondered just how Amasa Lewis and Rachel Webb might have been related, so I pushed back another generation. This time—we're back to the 1850 census by now—the Lewis family of the elder Joseph and Susannah was in Cass County, two counties to the south of Marshall County. There, in their household was Rachel, predating her marriage to Francis Webb, along with four other children with the Lewis surname. The youngest of those five children in Joseph and Susannah's household was named Amasa.

Of course, when we are dealing with any census record before the 1880 census, we have no guarantee that the children showing in a man's household were actually his own. But we do, at least, have a record showing some sort of connection between Amasa Lewis—whom we later learned was father of Rebecca Olive Lewis Purkey—and the woman known as Rachel Lewis Webb.

Things get complicated when we reverse our time-traveling engines and fast forward to Rebecca Olive Purkey's last days. Despite having her death certificate completed with information provided by a granddaughter, the document makes permanent the listing of her father's name as Mason Lewis.

No matter which way the name was actually rendered—and we'll explore more about Rebecca Olive's parents soon—going back, decade by decade, through the documents reveals that there was some sort of relationship between Olive Purkey and Rachel Webb. That explains, for people as curious as I am, why the same collection of abandoned family photographs included both of these women. Despite the appearances of the different married names, these two Lewis descendants were likely aunt and niece—with the niece turning out, herself, to be grandmother of the woman whose collection unwittingly ended up in my possession.

Above: Remember Rachel Lewis Webb, the woman with the penetrating gaze whose photograph from Chicago not only contained her name but location of her home? It is she who likely was related to the Rebecca Olive Lewis who married Erastus Manford Purkey in Marshall County, Indiana.

With Family to the Four Winds

One of the questions always in my mind when I rescue abandoned family photographs from antique stores is: how did that picture end up here? With the picture of Rachel Lewis Webb obviously taken in Chicago—and Rachel and her husband Francis spending their last days there in that city—the question naturally arises: what was that photograph doing in a town of less than five thousand people in northern California?

Tracing what became of Rachel's descendants doesn't give us a clear picture, though I'll rehearse the matter so you can judge for yourself. Francis and Rachel had five daughters, as we discussed yesterday. The oldest, Clara, was blind from childhood and stayed with her parents when they moved from Indiana to eventually reside in Chicago. The story for the other daughters, however, brings us in several different directions.

Second oldest daughter Edith married Charles Fink in her hometown in Marshall County, Indiana, long before her parents removed to Chicago. Not surprisingly, they raised their daughter in Indiana. Though that daughter, in turn, married someone in Michigan, she eventually ended up in Florida. Her daughter married a military man with all the moves one would expect with a military lifestyle.

After Edith came Susan Rosina, whom we first saw in the 1880 census, listed as Rosa. To tell this Webb daughter's story, we need to take a brief detour, back to the year after her parents, Francis and Rachel, were married in 1856. Apparently, Francis and another Webb relative—perhaps a brother—decided to move to what was then called Minnesota Territory. By 1857, they were settled next door to each other, along with their wives and firstborn children, in Goodhue County.

As we can tell from the 1860 census, that arrangement did not last long for Francis and Rachel, as they had returned to Indiana. But sometime between that 1860 federal census and the time after the 1880 census, the Webb family returned to Goodhue, where their daughter Susan eventually married a man from New York who had also settled in the same county. Though Susan's firstborn son died as a teenager, her daughter remained in Goodhue County until her death in her eighties.

Moving to the next daughter, though, brings a greater geographic distance. Fourth Webb daughter Eva, like Susan, had moved with her parents to Minnesota upon their return there in the 1880s. But by the time of the 1900 census, she was back in Chicago, like her parents. By that time, she had also married and given birth to a son, all while in Chicago. Not long after that, however, Eva and her family moved far away, to Los Angeles, California.

Perhaps you will suspect that would be the connection that brought Rachel's photograph eventually into my hands. But that would be too premature an assumption. After all, Los Angeles is a distance of over three hundred miles from where I found Rachel's photograph. And besides, though Eva died in Los Angeles—as did her only child—Eva's grandson ended up in Columbus, Ohio.

There was, however, one other California connection: the line of the youngest Webb daughter, Lula. Married and raising her family in Chicago, Lula's one surviving child had moved to Palm Desert in southern California. In her older years, this grandchild of Rachel and Francis moved to Ventura County to be near her only child.

Still miles from the northern California town where I found Rachel's photograph, Lula's descendant may be the key to how Rachel's picture ended up in California. That, at least, is the guess of Rachel's second great granddaughter, the one to whom I've mailed Rachel's now-found photograph.

Perhaps it was Lula's family who was the original recipient. Perhaps, alternately, it could have been someone from Lula's sister Eva's family, even though they moved out of the area in subsequent generations. Or perhaps it was thanks to another relative—or even a good family friend—to whom the photograph had been sent. It's likely we'll never know for sure. But one thing we do know: Rachel has found her way back home—ironically to southern California—and with that ending to her story's journey, we're satisfied.

Above: In what seems to be an earlier century's equivalent of Photoshop artistry, Rachel and Francis Webb appear side by side in what seems to be a mash-up of two family portraits. Photo scan courtesy of Cathleen, Rachel's great-great granddaughter; used by permission.

About Rachel's Beau

Now that the photograph of the older Rachel Lewis Webb is making its way back home to join the one of her younger self, I have the opportunity to share with you, by permission of Rachel's second great granddaughter, a photo of the man Rachel married.

It was in July of 1856 in the county seat of her home in Marshall County, Indiana, that Rachel married an Ohio man by the name of Francis Darius Webb. Son of Oliver and Louisa (Ellis) Webb, Francis had evidently moved as a child with his family from Ohio to LaPorte in the Indiana county by the same name just to the northwest of Marshall County. The move, according to a report by the Webb family, likely occurred sometime between 1847 and the time of the 1850 census.

Though all five of the daughters of Francis and Rachel Webb were born in Marshall County, there was a distinct division between the arrival of the first three daughters and that of the last two: the era of the Civil War.

Though the father of three children at the time, on August 5, 1862, Francis enlisted in Company D of the 73rd Regiment of the Indiana Infantry. Almost three years later in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 1, 1865, Francis Webb was discharged as the Company's Chief Musician.

Following the war, Francis had many health problems due to his time in the service. According to a note from his great-great granddaughter, from that time forward, Francis "suffered from ill health due to mercury treatment given to treat illness during the war."

Returning home to Indiana after the war, Francis and his family remained in Marshall County until after the 1880 census. By the time of the 1900 census, however, we find Francis, his wife Rachel, and their oldest daughter Clara in Chicago, just as we found them when first searching for Rachel's identity. All the other daughters were, by that time, already married. Clara, according to Cathleen (Rachel's second great granddaughter), had been stricken with both measles and spinal meningitis, on account of which she was blind from the age of eight—something I noticed from an entry in the 1880 census—thus, remaining with her parents for the rest of their lives.

Though Rachel, Clara's mom, lived to be ninety two years of age, her father Francis did not live so long. Perhaps owing to the disabilities from his years in the Union army, Francis suffered from "muscular rheumatism" and "cardiac hypertrophy," dying in 1913 at the age of seventy seven.

A tall man (according to his military history, five foot nine inches), before his marriage to Rachel, Francis was, according to Cathleen, formerly Rachel's teacher. When I saw his photograph, which Cathleen had also provided to the volunteer at Find A Grave, I couldn't help but notice his eyes. Just as his wife Rachel's eyes had captivated me when I first found her photograph in that antique shop in northern California, her husband's eyes were quite expressive, as well.

Above: Undated Civil War photograph of Francis D. Webb, Chief Musician of Company D of the 73rd Indiana Infantry; photograph in the possession of his great-great granddaughter Cathleen, who granted permission for its use on this post.

Got Something From a Go-To Place

When researching our ancestors, what do most people do but pursue their family history via the many online resources now available to us. So, to find out what I could about Rachel Webb, the woman in the abandoned photograph from the antique shop in northern California, of course I checked what documents I could find, thanks to Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org.

There is, however, one other go-to spot I keep on my must-see genealogy list: Find A Grave.

Fortunately, I found a memorial for Rachel Webb almost immediately. While it was great to find her listing, that also presented another twist. Rachel's memorial at Find A Grave includes a photo—a photograph different from the one I rescued in Sonora.

The catch was: the details were so tiny, I couldn't determine whether it was a picture of the same woman as the one I was looking for.

Again, there was a way through this dilemma. The volunteer who created the memorial happened to mention that the picture was "graciously provided by Cathleen."

I fervently hoped that either the Find A Grave volunteer was a Webb family member, or that this person could at least put me in touch with the source of the photo. I just had to see the face on this photo up close.

Rachel, as it turned out, was not buried far from her Chicago home. If you remember the map I posted the other day, showing her address in the Chicago area known as Evergreen Park, you'll realize the green area on the map, just north of her home, is actually a cemetery: Evergreen Cemetery. And that, shortly after September 4, 1930—now eighty eight years ago—is where the Webb family buried her.

Seeing that too-small picture, I decided to send a message to the Find A Grave volunteer, in hopes of seeing a bigger version of the photo.

I wrote. And waited.

Meanwhile, I was back to researching everything I could find on Rachel Webb and her family. After all, I'm quite curious to learn how a hundred-year-old photograph of a Chicago woman ended up in a small town in the northern California foothills.

About the time I followed the trail of each of Rachel's daughters and their descendants—finding nothing besides a couple weak leads to southern California—I stumbled upon several family trees at Ancestry containing Rachel and Francis Webb. Then, not on the links provided by the search engine at Ancestry, but by following links of links, I ran across the very photo I had seen on Find A Grave.

There is something important about provenance to a genealogist. Thankfully, Ancestry provides a way—though not a foolproof one—to ascertain just which subscriber was the first one to post the picture. For that first listing, a fair guess would be to assume the source of the photo has been determined.

In finding that earliest post, I noticed something special about the name of the provider. The subscriber's first name just happened to be spelled the same way as that of the person who graciously allowed the same image to be shared on Find A Grave.

It wasn't long after I sent a message, via Ancestry, to this subscriber when I received my request: an enlarged copy of the photo I had found on Find A Grave. Take a look for yourself and see if it isn't one and the same as our Rachel.

Better yet, the source for this photograph—not to mention the well-researched tree, itself—is actually a great-great granddaughter of Rachel and Francis Webb.

Above: Photo of an eighteen year old Rachel Lewis, not long before her 1856 marriage to Francis Webb in Marshall County, Indiana. Permission to include this photo here kindly granted by Cathleen, Rachel's great-great granddaughter.

When all the Details Fall Into Place

When working on old photographs I've rescued from antique shops, it's always gratifying to quickly come to the conclusion about the subject's identity. In finding the Chicago photograph of Rachel Webb—handily labeled with not only her full name, but also her address—we get a head start on learning more about this woman with the captivating gaze.

After quickly finding her in the 1900 and 1910 census records, we're already able to glean some details. First of all, we learned that her husband's name was Francis, and that the elderly couple lived in Chicago with their unmarried daughter Clara. Furthermore, it was easy to determine that Francis Webb was born in Ohio, and that his wife, Rachel, was born in Indiana. Though we've found them in Chicago, since their daughter, like her mother, was also born in Indiana, my guess is that Francis met Rachel in Indiana, and that they lived there until at least the year of Clara's birth in 1857.

That date gives us an extended range of census records which, once located, may paint a clearer picture of this Webb family we've found on Turner Avenue in Chicago.

And so, the search is on. With not much difficulty at all, we locate Rachel and her husband Francis in Indiana by the time of the 1880 census. At that point, Francis Webb worked as an engineer in a sawmill and the family lived in the town of Argos in Marshall County, Indiana, a small community now counting less than two thousand in population. Back then, when Francis and Rachel lived there, Argos was a tiny place of barely over six hundred people.

By 1880, the Webb family consisted of Francis and Rachel plus their four daughters. Besides Clara, there were her three younger sisters: Rosa, Eva, and Lula. When we locate the 1870 census, we realize there had been another daughter, Edith, who had been born in 1860.

Reaching back to that 1860 census, we are fortunate to find the Webbs listed in the household of the man we can presume is actually Rachel's father, Joseph Lewis. There, Edith, having just been born a few months previously, is listed only as "Baby."

Since the family was still in Marshall County at the time of the 1860 census, it is likely no surprise to find the marriage record for Francis and Rachel in that same county. There, on July 3, 1856, Rachel Lewis appeared with her intended before a Justice of the Peace to exchange vows.

It wasn't just in governmental documentation that records of Francis and Rachel Webb and their family could be found. As it turns out, almost at the start of my search for Rachel, I stumbled upon another of her photographs—this one, as it turns out, of a Rachel much younger than the woman whose likeness I rescued from an antique store in northern California.

Someone, as it turns out, has cared greatly for her family's history.


Images above from the 1870 census and the Marshall County, Indiana, marriage records courtesy Ancestry.com.  

Delving Into Details

If the notes on the back of an undated cabinet card tell us that the subject of the picture lived at 93rd and Turner, I'd go check it out in other documents—wouldn't you?

Thankfully, we already know the picture of Rachel Webb—the woman whose photograph I found in an antique store in Sonora, California—was taken in Chicago. That little detail comes in handy when we realize the clerk's penciled in note about her address—93rd and Turner—doesn't include a city designation.

Next step? Check out any other way we can to find confirmation that Rachel Webb lived on 93rd and Turner in Chicago. Since we don't know the date of the cabinet card for sure (though we can presume it was taken in the late 1800s), and since we don't know the name of Rachel's husband for a cross-check in a city directory, the safest approach is to first consult a census record.

While census records don't tell us everything, they did provide addresses on their records from 1880 onward. However, we have no idea whether Rachel and her unnamed husband lived in Chicago for the long term, or whether they were recent arrivals—or, making this exercise even more difficult, just in town for a visit with friends or relatives.

Taking the address entry on face value, though, I decided to presume the address was that of the Webb residence. While a lot can happen in the twenty years between the 1880 census and the next available enumeration in 1900, I took a gamble on pulling up the 1900 census first.

That, as it turned out, was enough to provide our answer. Rachel and her family were listed at 9240 Turner Avenue. (A close look at the full page of the 1900 census reveals the clear entry of the street name.)

Since I'm not familiar with Chicago geography, I went next to Google Maps to see where that address falls in its current surroundings. As you'll see in this map inset, 92nd Street curves around to eventually become Turner Avenue, and the Webbs' address is close to the corner of 93rd Street.

The 1900 census, as well as the 1910 record, show that Rachel lived with her husband, Francis, and their daughter Clara. The 1900 census revealed that Rachel was born in November of 1836, somewhere in the nearby state of Indiana. Her husband was only months older than his wife, declaring his birth in Ohio to have occurred in January of 1836. The couple had been married for forty five years, and of their five children, all five were still reported as living.

Along with Francis and Rachel, the Webbs' forty three year old daughter Clara was living at that address. Of the three, only Francis had been employed—as a carpenter, but working for only four months out of the past year. Neither Rachel nor their adult daughter listed any occupation. Considering the time period and the age of Clara's parents, that was not unusual.

With this small confirmation that the Rachel Webb in the photograph—living at 93rd and Turner—was the same as Rachel, wife of Francis Webb in the 1900 census, we now have a toe-hold from which to spring into other documentation to learn more about Rachel's life and family.

Clues That Add Up

When I am on one of my photo rescuing missions, I don't pick just any abandoned pictures for a project. A photo suitable for rescuing needs to contain enough clues to lead me to a conclusion—and to find a candidate not only descended from the photo's subject, but one who is willing to receive the item.

Not that I insist solely on rescuing cabinet cards containing both first and last names. I've managed to return an entire photo album to a family living over six thousand miles away from the antique shop where I first found the collection—and all I had to start with were three first names: Iris, Ruby, and Penrose. (Admittedly, Penrose was an exceptionally strong clue, despite lacking a last name. Perhaps the name of the kennel of their blue-ribbon winning West Highland White Terrier might have tipped the hat in my favor.)

The most successful candidates for a return trip home, one hundred years after the fact, seem to be ones with at least one fact about their name, coupled with another detail about the person. That second detail, for instance, could be a location, like that of the studio taking the picture. In a way, I am "triangulating" (if you can call it that) the details on the photo to help me zero in on the correct individual.

In the case of Rachel Webb, the woman with the intense gaze whom we met yesterday, I was fortunate in that not only did I have the woman's full name—well, at least her married name—but I had two other details to combine with that record. For one thing, the imprint of the studio let me know not only the business name, but the street address and the city of its proprietor. Besides that, on the reverse of the photograph, someone had penciled in the customer's address, and yet another someone with a different handwriting had inserted what I presume was meant to be the woman's maiden name.

Thanks to the photographer's shortcut to linking products with customers, we now know that Rachel Webb—whoever she was—happened to live at 93rd and Turner. Since the photograph was taken in Chicago, I went online to see if I could find anyone by that name in any records that could reveal her address.

Fortunately for us, there was indeed a woman by that name, living near that location, which allows us to move quickly to our next step. We'll begin, tomorrow, looking through street maps and census records to see what we can learn about Mrs. Rachel Webb of the neighborhood by 93rd and Turner in Chicago.

Above: Reverse of the hundred-year-old photograph of Mrs. Rachel Webb of Chicago; photograph currently in possession of author until returned to a direct descendant family member.

From Chicago to California

Now that I've returned from our family's trip to Chicago—and that significant detour to Fort Wayne for the FGS conference—it's high time to pull out that latest stash of old photos from my most recent trip to Gold Country. After all, it's been almost three weeks since my travel partner and genealogy mentor, Sheri Fenley, joined me to brave the smoke of distant forest fires to head to the hills of Sonora, California, where antique shops with ample stores of old photos beckoned.

The picture I have selected to launch this latest series of rescue stories just happens to be one from Chicago. And no, I didn't find the thing in Chicago. The photo caught my eye, right as I stepped in the shop at Antiques Etc., back home in California—2,076 miles from its origin in Chicago.

Something about the gaze of the subject I found nearly arresting, and I knew right away I needed to learn more about the woman's story. Besides, each abandoned photograph I rescue from its discarded position has a secondary story of its own to tell: just how it arrived from its distant origin to end up for sale in a store in the foothills of northern California.

For now, just say hello to Rachel Webb. I think you'll agree there is something arresting about those eyes. As for her story—and why those eyes seem to haunt me so much—we'll have to wait on that discovery, whatever it might be. We'll begin, tomorrow, to see if we can uncover more of Rachel's story.