Heading Home

After a long detour which ended them up in an antique shop in Sonora, California, three photographs from Indiana are finally heading back home to family. Unlike other century-old photographs I've rescued and returned, the route leading to this homecoming was a path less traveled.

A photograph of George and Elmira Wymer, their sons, and their daughter Maude and her family was first featured in a post back in October, 2018. Usually, once I determine the main members of a photograph subject's family tree, I start looking for researchers who have posted their tree on searchable genealogy sites. I had found several public trees which included that couple's names—but not any posted by direct descendants.

If I had found any direct descendants, my next step would have been to send them a message, one person at a time, and then begin that long, unbearable wait until I got an answer to such an off-the-wall question as "hey, do you want your ancestor's photograph?" No answer to that message would mean moving on to the next possible descendant, if there were any others.

That, of course, has been the usual route to connecting antique photographs with their long-lost family. Sometimes, things went differently—like the time I posted a private message to a descendant on Facebook, or the time I succumbed to joining Geni.com just so I could message another member. I've contacted local librarians, local historical societies, and local genealogical societies, all in that attempt to get lost photos back to family who would appreciate them.

But finding the family of George and Elmira Wymer went differently. It took nearly three months before the connection was initially made—and then another eight months before the transaction was finally completed—but the connection showed up not through my initiation, but because someone contacted me.

Actually, make that two descendants contacting me—and doing it directly to my blog, in fact. I'm still waiting to hear just how they found me, but I can tell you they are two sisters who are great-great granddaughters of George and Elmira. The Wymers' daughter Maude was the sisters' great grandmother, thus the opportunity to send not only George and Elmira's two portraits, but also the picture of the extended family, including Maude's first husband and eldest two daughters.

The next heart-stopping moment on this timeline will be to await the news that these irreplaceable photographs have indeed made it home safely, a message I anticipate will come through in a matter of a mere couple days.

Above: Photograph of George and Elmira Wymer, their two sons and daughter Maude with her husband and two young children, finally on its way home to the Wymers' second great-granddaughters.

While I Was Out

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

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

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

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

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

When That Face Looks So Familiar

Sometimes, the faces we see in photographs do not have the same look as they did in earlier versions of themselves. Other times, well, if the face still looks familiar, then run with it!

The very answer I was keen to find with the photographs I shared with you yesterday and the day before becomes the crux of the matter with yet another photograph. The older man in Tuesday's photo, who seems to be one and the same as the younger father in Wednesday's picture, is, in my mind, no other than the man in today's portrait of a mature couple taken in South Bend, Indiana.

Could it be the same man? Or am I being too hopeful about identifying a family to whom I can send these abandoned photographs?

If the man we've seen in the past two days' pictures is the same as this man, it makes a lot of sense that he and his wife would have had their picture taken in South Bend. The man and his wife—whom I believe to be George and Elmira Wymer of Marshall County, Indiana—had one daughter, as we've already discussed. This daughter Maude, her husband and her oldest two daughters were likely the younger family posing along with parents George and Elmira in Tuesday's photograph.

Maude's husband, Jesse Reed, apparently died sometime between the 1905 birth of their only son, Loyd, and Maude's subsequent June 1907 marriage to second husband Elbert Harris, a widower living in Michigan. Eventually, the blended family of Maude and Elbert Harris moved to South Bend, where they appeared in the 1910 census.

It would make sense that doting grandparents George and Elmira Wymer would move from their home in Marshall County to live in South Bend near their tragedy-struck daughter during that time period, but especially so upon the arrival of new grandson Franklin Harris in 1909. Then, too, recall the time squeeze in dating these photographs: grandpa George himself passed away in 1912.

If it weren't for what amounts to a timeless facial appearance for that grandfather—added, of course, to the helpful hint on the first photograph, naming Elmira and Maude as part of the Wymer family—I would have been left with three unidentified photographs.

Some people have faces and figures which change as they age. But young or mature, Mr. Wymer's appearance seemed changeless enough to decidedly spot him in all three pictures.

Above: Photograph of George and Elmira Purkey Wymer, taken in South Bend, Indiana, circa 1910. Photograph currently in possession of author until claimed by a direct descendant of the Wymer family.

The Reason I Need to Identify Those Faces

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Family Photograph — Plus Grandkids?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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