First, the Obvious

Finding the origin of this latest of the abandoned family photographs will be a challenge. Can you tell I'm having trouble latching on to a solid clue? When in doubt, I find it helpful to talk things out. So today will be my self-talk on the obvious details about the picture of P. Emile and Lucien.

To start with, we've already determined the Azo postcard which featured this picture of the two darling children had to have been printed between the years of 1904 and 1918. We also learned that, at whatever time the photo was taken, P. Emile was three years of age, and Lucien was one. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that the date range possible for P. Emile's birth would probably be no earlier than 1900 or 1901 (given the wiggle room of how many months over three years that date might have landed). Likewise, Lucien would have been born about 1902 or 1903, at the earliest.

On the opposite side of the range, the latest year of birth for P. Emile would be 1915, and for Lucien, 1917.

Another obvious detail from the back of the postcard is the handy phrase, "Made in Canada." Not that the note itself wasn't clue enough—it was, after all, written in French—but this at least eliminates the possibility that we were trying to draw conclusions on children living in France.

That, however, is where the obvious stuff ends. We could, possibly, conclude that, since this was a photograph of French-speaking Canadians, that this was a family living in the province of Quebec. The fact that the rest of the postcard was printed in English, however, leads me to realize that Quebec would be a first step in research, but not necessarily an only step.

Another point to reckon with is whether we can assume these were siblings. We can presume both children were called by the same surname, Hallee, but they could also be cousins.

An even stickier point would be to determine just what the "P" in "P. Emile" might represent. It could be Paul Emile. But it could also stand for Pierre. Or Philippe. However, in searching wikipedia for how many entries there are for each name combination, Paul Emile seems by far the more popular combination, especially in Canada—at least for famous people.

But the prime question is not whether there are any Paul Emiles to be found in Quebec—or anywhere else in Canada, for that matter. What we need to do first is see if the name Hallee is a viable surname. If there is no such surname as Hallee, it is a trivial pursuit to decide whether Emile's first name is Paul or Philippe or anything else, at all.

Not Enough Pieces to Solve this Puzzle

When I first found the photograph I showed you in yesterday's post, I thought there was enough information to figure out how to send it home. That was then, in the excitement of the moment, sifting through dozens of photographs with my genealogy angel and good friend, Sheri Fenley.

Now, I'm not so sure I can do it—deliver that photograph back home to family members, that is. Some of the information can be interpreted in more than one way. There's a lot of wiggle room on another piece of the puzzle. And a slight problem with the handwriting.

Still, it's worth the try. So, today, I'll show you what we have to work with, and some of my misgivings about what I'm seeing on the reverse of the photograph. Tomorrow, we'll dig in and see if any of the details can actually lead us to some solid data.

The first detail that had convinced me that it was possible to successfully complete the mission was the fact that the two children were named and given ages. There were a couple problems, though. One was that the person writing the names was not writing in English, but French—but hey, a little high school French should be sufficient to tackle this part of the equation. The second detail—admittedly, a small one—was that the word I presume the writer meant to signify the English word "and" looked more like "el" than "et."

More than either of those trifling annoyances, though, were two other issues. One was that the postcard stamp box—a detail hobbyists often use to help narrow the date range—was the Azo design assumed to have been used any time from 1904 to 1918. That, as you'll see, takes away from the small victory of realizing that the two children's ages had been given on that same postcard detail.

The biggest doubt, though, is the very last word written on the postcard. At first, I thought it might be Hallie, which was part of the reason I bought the card in the first place. If you remember the photo of Baby Fay, you may recall that Fay's mother's name was Hallie. But once I researched the full story on Hallie Randall, mother of Baby Fay, I realized her story wouldn't match up with a photograph of other children—especially one written in French.

On second review, I thought better of my snap judgment, and realized the name was likely Hallee. My next task, therefore, will be to find anything I can with either of the children's names plus the surname Hallee. We'll get to that, tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is what we were left with, most likely written en français by a proud mama some time between 1904 and 1918:

P. Emile [et] 3 ans

Lucien       1 ans

Hallee

When the Last Trip Home Doesn't Happen

It's been an interesting experiment, this project to rescue abandoned photographs from antique stores and return them to family members. There have been some interesting—and unexpected—discoveries along the way, supporting my theory that Gold Country did indeed attract people from all over the world who eventually chose to remain in the region long after gold fever had passed.

I've learned something else in the process, something I'm not sure I'm ready to accept yet: that not everyone is interested in receiving photographs of their ancestors. In fact, not everyone is even interested in learning about their ancestors at all.

Let all the genealogists in the room express shock and dismay. Okay, moment's over.

I still have, as examples of homeless family photographs, several pictures of Alta Barnes and her siblings—photos which surely could head back to Kansas or Oklahoma, if only I could locate an interested descendant. Add to that stack the photograph of baby Louise, and possibly her ancestors, Timothy and Carolyn Browne, the ones who stopped by a photography studio in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to capture their likeness back in the 1870s.

There are even more yet to come. In that same trip up to Gold Country antique shops to rescue those photographs, I found several others. More, incidentally, which turned out to lack sufficient clues to lead me to a possible family.

What to do with those? Well, you know I can't pass up posting them here. Some of them are actually sweet pictures. If they can't go home, at least they can enjoy a visit with folks who will appreciate their moment in time, a hundred years or so in the past. And who knows? Perhaps someone else will realize a clue that I've missed entirely. Hearing about that would indeed be a great help.

Having shared that concern of mine, now that I'm mired in the mess of mission not accomplished, let me introduce you to two adorable siblings, P. Emile and Lucien. Tomorrow, we'll discuss briefly—believe me, it will be brief as there are few details to go by in this search—what can be found about these two cherubs.

Above: Undated photograph labeled with the names P. Emile and Lucien; currently in possession of the author.

Thirza's Hospital

Thirza's photograph from the 1920s has made its journey home. Cole family researcher Karen told me she received it, and then sent me something you'll surely be interested in knowing about, as well.

Remember how we discovered that Thirza Browne Cole ended up actually owning and running a hospital? What Karen sent was a copy of a local newspaper article on Thirza's presentation to the ladies' auxiliary of a current-day hospital in the same city where she lived in Lodi, California.

The newspaper clipping itself is unfortunately undated, but I suspect it was an article which ran in the Lodi News Sentinel. Since Thirza passed away in 1979, judging from her picture which accompanied the article, the report was likely written in either the 1960s or early 1970s. Unfortunately, there are no online newspaper archives carrying an extensive collection of that publication, and those dates were not included in the scanty collection of Lodi issues in the Google News archives. As for dates, we'll have to remain blissfully ignorant.

What was useful was the detail Thirza shared with the (unnamed) reporter, especially about her years after first arriving in Lodi. According to the article, "Hospitals: Past and Future discussed at Branch meeting," Thirza's medical career spanned almost forty years.

Thirza got her start in a practical way: after graduation in 1911 from the Red Cross Hospital nursing school in Salida, Colorado, in 1915, she and her husband, William Cole, moved to Lodi. At the time, Thirza had been taking care of her mother-in-law, who had recently suffered a stroke. In the course of providing that care, Thirza became acquainted with several local doctors, who then asked her to take on some of their own cases of patients needing extended care.

By the time the 1918 influenza epidemic hit Lodi, several local doctors fell ill along with their patients. This left two main doctors, operating one small hospital facility, to serve the stricken population of Lodi—at that time, a city of just over four thousand residents—and a makeshift emergency facility was set up on the upper floor of a local bank. Several "practical nurses" bore the load of caring for those smitten with the disease, and Thirza Cole was asked to take charge of the emergency center.

Not long after that—July of 1921—Thirza and her sister, Nellie Yates, together bought a nearby hospital called the Mason Hospital. This was the former home of one of Lodi's popular doctors, Wilton M. Mason, which he had converted into a hospital. Thirza and Nellie did extensive work to the facility over the years, but the building certainly wasn't anything of the magnitude of the type we think of today when we consider hospitals. There were several rooms for patients, plus a room for surgery and a room for "sterilizing." That was it.

Nor were the services at the facility as specialized as those we'd expect from a hospital today. It was not unusual, for someone undergoing surgery, to have Thirza administering the anesthetic—usually ether. Then, if X-rays were required, they might "occasionally" be done by Thirza, as well, since she had been "taught X-ray" in Colorado. As the newspaper article explained, "Nursing in those days embraced many facets usually associated today only with specialization."

If the building needed painting, the two sisters would be there, doing the work themselves. Of course, any equipment updates were a cost Thirza attended to, as well. Nellie stayed with her sister to launch the business and oversee it in its formative season, but after seven years, she returned to Colorado. Thirza operated the hospital for twenty nine years, selling it in 1949.

The building once known as the Mason Hospital is still standing today, though it certainly is no longer a hospital. In its current re-iteration, it serves as a board and care home for seniors, a much sleepier ambience than in its heyday. The old Mason Hospital sits just north of the downtown area on the same main street which traverses the entire downtown shopping district, today a tony collection of bistros, wine tasting stops and antique shops.

It was a treat to find an old photograph of the Mason home on a Facebook page called "Historic Lodi," a picture taken from the time long before its establishment as a hospital. Dr. Mason, it turns out, was one of the first residents in town to own an automobile, as documented in a photograph preserving the memory of not only his home but his horseless carriage. Click through the embedded photo from a year ago to view the actual page on Facebook and explanation of the photograph from long before Thirza Cole and her sister bought the place as one of Lodi's hospitals.

Posted by Historic Lodi CA on Thursday, May 25, 2017

Photo Updates

The verdict is in: yes! Ralph is going home, too. Well, I mean his photo, that is. I heard from the Pollock descendant who gave me all that fascinating detail about Ralph's life after he left his childhood home in Colorado, so now I have directions on where to send young Ralph's photograph.

Out of all the photographs marked "Thirza," I have yet to track down a Van Noate descendant for the hundred year old picture of baby Louise. I mentioned the other day about posting baby Louise's photograph on our local genealogical society's Facebook group, and I did get a few general suggestions, and one member sent me a rather complete copy of the family's tree. But as for how to contact a living descendant, well, the best suggestion was to try poking around on Facebook.

So I did. And found someone. The problem is, no matter where I look, I can only find rather distant relatives. The same went for the trees on Ancestry.com. There were about six different Ancestry subscribers who had Louise in their family tree, but every one of those trees was posted by someone who must be much like me—a little bit too enthusiastic about their genealogy. And what I'm seeking is a close relative, not a seventh cousin twice removed. But, using another tactic, I found that possibility.

The nexus is a grandchild of Louise's husband's brother. At least, I think that's the connection—and, trusting that the trees where I found the family line are actually accurate, it looks like that's the closest I'll get to contacting someone who might know how to get in touch with Louise's grandchildren.

Of course, that leaves the squishy part of contacting a stranger, out of the blue. It is definitely so much easier to research dead people. Even sending an email to a living descendant of a dead person isn't too difficult. But going straight to a relative of a relative of a relative—who doesn't even show the slightest interest in genealogy—well, that's a challenge I'm not sure I'm up to. Yet.

Give me a couple days and we'll see whether I chicken out. Baby Louise may just have to remain in that folder on my desk until a closer relative stumbles upon this post via our research assistant, Google.

  

Crossing Paths With Our Ancestors' Descendants

I've been dealing, lately, with a mind obsessed with crossed paths. What I uncovered this week, in my relentless pursuit of ancestors, grabbed me with this notion even tighter.

It's only because I've been bombarded with distant cousin matches on all my DNA tests—yes, I've been that obsessed researcher who has tested at Ancestry, Family Tree DNA, 23andMe and MyHeritage—that I've been left with the quandary of wondering, "Who are all these people?"

My solution was to spruce up my family tree a bit: go back to my ancestors and enter all their children, not just my direct line. And then, enter all those children's children. And repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I call it quits on a line when I reach seventh cousin, mostly because some companies will show matching cousins up to the level of fifth or sixth cousin (and one goes up to eighth). Reliably, of course, some paper cousins won't show at those levels on DNA tests, even if they are blood relatives because some genetic material from our third great grandparents may simply not make it down all the generations to reach us. Since we don't know, ahead of time, which relatives that involves, I decided to trace them all—and then some.

All that to say, there are a lot of cousins out there, still needing to be added to my family tree. So I plod onwards.

This week on the paper trail, I ran into some cousins who actually ended up living in the same city as I do, and at the same time that I've been here. I had no idea at the time, of course—but then, I'm talking about sixth cousins. One could hardly be expected to keep tabs on that extended relational reach...until the advent of genetic genealogy.

That brings me back to my occasional obsession: wondering, whenever I travel, what the chances would be that I would cross paths unknowingly with someone who turns out to be a seventh cousin. Forget that, maybe even a third cousin. It might be the person sitting next to me on the plane, or the one behind me in line to buy coffee. I am awed at the possibilities of how we all relate—and how we don't even realize it.

So, I keep working on those descendants of my multiple-great-grandparents. And those trees grow bigger. Not because I'm pushing back to incredible reaches in history, but because I'm throwing my net wide and capturing all those distant cousins, in hopes I'll recognize them when they show up in my DNA matches—maybe even if they show up at the dinner table at my next genealogy conference.

The past two weeks surprisingly yielded some research progress, considering how difficult the time has been. Perhaps there's a solace in the routine research of adding names to a family tree. There sure is that family-talking-to-family sort of gathering, when we lose a loved one, just comparing family notes and reminiscing—and remembering that we forgot to add that new baby, or that new spouse.

For my mom's tree, that meant jumping 172 entries to land at a tree size of 12,903. For my mother-in-law, that gained her tree of 14,746 another 107 entries. For my dad's tree and my father-in-law's tree, each gained only one entry apiece, but they now stand at 501 and 1425, respectively.

Yet, as fast as I try to build those trees, the DNA matches seem to roll in faster. I'm up to 2,989 at Family Tree DNA and 4,305 at MyHeritage. AncestryDNA seems to have given up counting, once the matches exceed 1,000, so I don't even know how many I have there—and those are just counting fourth cousin and closer. As for 23andMe, it's a rare biweekly count when I don't lose matches from my count, but this is one of those times: I now am up five to 1,036. And I really can't complain there, since one of the new matches actually contacted me—now, that's a switch!—and the bonus is that she is apparently related to my on my father's side. Perhaps it will even be on my paternal grandfather's side—that man who claimed he was an orphan and unofficially changed his name and zipped his lips concerning the reasons why.

My husband's matches are piling up almost as fast as mine. He's got 1,915 at Family Tree DNA and 3,007 at MyHeritage. He hasn't hit that thousand-mark ceiling at AncestryDNA yet, but he's over halfway there at 549. For once (can you tell I'm jealous?) he actually saw his count go backwards at 23andMe, dropping six to level off at 1,072. But because I have his mother's tree so full of cousins, it seems much easier to figure out the matches to his DNA cousins.

As I travel this research pathway, I'm constantly surprised to spot coincidences and crossed paths—everything from distant cousins marrying, to relatives moving from their home turf in Ohio or Alabama or Florida, all the way out to the corner of the country where I thought my own family was well hidden away. And yet, we have ended up driving down the same streets where our ancestors' descendants decided to live. How does that happen? More to the point, how does that happen and we don't even realize it? Our invisible networks and connections, once brought to light, can indeed be unexpected and fascinating.

Now Indexing: Indiana Marriages

It's high time to do some volunteer work, giving back with appreciation for all the help of those countless—and nameless—others whose efforts have made possible the ease of online research. I headed to the indexing tab at FamilySearch.org with good intentions, but apparently today was a technology and tantrums day for our good friends with the enormous digital data collection. Try as I might, I just couldn't get any indexing projects to open for me. I'd scroll through the choices, select one—I try to stick with naturalization records in either New York or Chicago, my two research interests right now—and with that click came...nothing.

Well, take that back. I did get an error message. Something about that batch not being able to be opened; try again.

Rinse and repeat may work for shampoo, but it wasn't working for selecting a new batch to index at my favorite online place to volunteer. Out of desperation, I started looking for anything...anything...which was in English and featured a record set in my home country. It's been a long time since I last volunteered to do any indexing—too long—and I didn't want another day to pass without helping out.

Finally, success: I got a file to open for county records of marriages in Indiana. Well, my father-in-law's line did have some family in Indiana, so at least I have a vested interest in this project, after all. The surprise was: the records weren't really all that old. One set out of the two I did actually bore dates in the late 1980s. So much for privacy of living individuals. And here I thought only California had that blatant disregard for further publicizing their "public" records.

Once I got into the record set, the indexing system worked like a charm. I was done with my first set in no time, leaving me quite willing to spring for a second go-round. It's times like these which encourage me to delve into doing more volunteer work like this. Painless, the minimal effort is amplified by setting up searchable records that can then be easily accessed by countless others, as long as the FamilySearch website still makes these records available.

That sure beats the old way of individually having to contact each government entity with a snail-mail plea to look up a document. I don't think there would be many of us researchers boasting trees numbering in the thousands if we were still resigned to the crawl of such a research fate. And that makes it all the more worthwhile to expend this minuscule amount of effort to get those records prepared to be accessed online.