Looking for Thirza

Perhaps the name written on the back of some of those old photographs was really Thiega. But sometimes, the writing looked like it was trying to spell Thirza.

Handwriting can make such a difference. In this case, it will make the difference between locating a false lead, or finding the right ancestor's descendants so I can return not one, but several family photographs I've found in a northern California antique store.

Actually, all I had to go by from some of those photos was simply that first name, whatever it turns out to be. Thankfully, I had my mentor and genealogy angel Sheri Fenley on hand during that shopping trip to the antique stores of Gold Rush country; she was certainly ready to guard me from hasty decisions. Otherwise, I might have put some of those pictures back on the store shelf and walked away from them.

The more I research the possibilities, the more I realize that was a close call. Apparently, the "Thirza" affixed to the reverse of each of those pictures seems to be the thread that ties them all together, just as we had hoped. Whoever Thirza was, her cherished stash of family photographs were no longer treasured—a thought that always gives pause to contemplate just what might have happened over the generations in her family's story.

Among the photographs was one, dated 1920, of a young woman, two baby pictures, and a very old and faded portrait of a young man. It was this last specimen that included an inked-in name just above his head—the only full name provided which I could read, out of all those photographs.

Next week, we'll begin piecing together the story of Thirza. Or Thiega. Or whoever she—or they—might have been. In the meantime, I'm quite thankful that that recurring name wasn't something as common as Jane. Or Mary. As we've already discovered, it is possible to return a photograph to long-lost relatives with only a first name supplied, but it does require using at least a few other hints—accurate ones, at that.

On His Way Home

No, this is not another hundred year old photograph finding its way home, but it is about a stage being set for a picture-perfect reunion. As I've mentioned before, sometimes while we're so busy writing about the history of family long gone, we neglect telling the story of family as it is currently unfolding. Sometimes, we recoil from telling that story because the event is too painful to record. But this time, the event is joyful, something that can't simply be contained.

Ever since the post I wrote on "Not Finding Alta"—the Barnes daughter from Oklahoma whose set of five photographs I still haven't been able to return to family—there's been something different about my own everyday family life: if I want to talk to my husband, I first have to do some mental calculations on the time difference that separates us. You see, if I call him in the middle of my day, I would wake him up in the middle of his night. As he likes to joke, he is in my future.

But not any more. Today, after teaching at a college in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the past five weeks, he is beginning the long trip back home.

I couldn't be more excited.

Of course, if he is in a place which is eleven hours ahead of me, that means the return trip won't happen in the blink of an eye. That would be in my future. Between early airport arrivals and flight connections with long layovers, the journey is one of nearly thirty hours, door to door.

There isn't much which can tear me away from my pet genealogical research projects, but I assure you, this is one of those rare exceptions. I won't be thinking much of family history for those thirty hours.

I think you'll understand.  

On Her Way Home

Well, I can't exactly say it is going to her home, but Baby Fay is now finding her way back to family. If I have this correct, her photograph will soon be in the hands of her grandson. But first, there will have to be one additional stop: to the home of this grandson's sister-in-law, the researcher whose tree on Ancestry.com led me to contact her this week.

As has happened before on this new quest to reunite abandoned photographs with family members, it has been an encouraging and inspiring connection that evolved with this week's email contact. Of course, it always starts out no different than a sales cold call. Since I wouldn't make such a good sales person, the prospect of cold calling stops me in my tracks; if it weren't for the mission behind the contact with total strangers, I'm not sure I could pull it off.

There is, however, a compelling reason behind making these connections: I always think of how I wish someone would find a photograph of one of my ancestors. I'd be delighted with the news! I realize that, because those of us who delve into genealogy share the same outlook about our heritage, I have a good chance of connecting with someone—stranger or not—who feels exactly the same way as I do.

It's just that, this time, I wasn't sure how close the family connection might have been. As I mentioned yesterday, on this particular family tree, I couldn't tell how closely related the researcher was to Baby Fay or the Randall or Panuzzi families. Maybe this researcher wouldn't be interested. Maybe I'd never get a response. After all, that has happened before, with the series of photos I found for Alta Barnes and her family.

In less than twenty four hours, I had a response from the researcher, who, as it turns out, had put up the tree online for her brother-in-law. The two of them talk frequently and their families get together often. She would be glad to pass along the photograph to him.

Not only that, but this fellow genealogist shared an experience she had which proved inspiring to me. While she hasn't done quite the same as I am doing with orphaned family photographs, she found herself sharing in a similar way.

One day, she had been browsing in an antique store, and was looking over some old books when she noticed a "very nondescript looking book." It had a very plain looking new book jacket, but when she flipped it open, she realized it was something very different than what the cover indicated.

As she explains it,

when I opened it up it was a very old Bible and it had generations of marriages and births and deaths in it.

Some of the dates in this Bible reached back into the 1700s. I could so relate to what she mentioned next:

I was so taken by it that I had to find who it belonged to and I was able to find through the last known entry the family that this Bible belong to and was able to contact them just like you contacted me.

The killer was that the family Bible hadn't just ended up in the antique store because someone didn't want it. On the contrary, according to this researcher, the owner

found out that the Bible has been accidentally left in a box full of donated books when the person who was in charge of it...ended up having to move.

What was irrevocably lost through mishap was inexplicably retrieved through one of those random acts of genealogical kindness—the hallmark of a community of researchers who believe in giving back. Perhaps that's why this researcher remarked that she and I are "kindred spirits." The experience made such an impact on her that she now makes it a practice to "always look at the books with the plain binding."

As this researcher observed in her email to me, "It makes the heart feel good when you’re able to get back something that belonged to somebody."

So far, in rescuing these few photographs I've found over the past year, I've found that to be true, myself. The response has always been so positive. And there certainly is no lack of supply of hundred year old photographs containing enough clues to send them back home.

Foiled by Another Elusive Lead

If I had any thought that, upon discovering more about that hundred year old postcard's recipient, I could then locate just how the item came into my possession, I should have recalled my difficulty in tracing its sender.

It's true that the 1917 postcard was clearly signed by Hallie Randall from Bandon, Oregon, but that didn't mean I'd actually find any record of someone by that name in the 1920 census in that town of less than two thousand residents. Likewise, to think that the Mrs. Henry Keefe whom Hallie was addressing would actually show up in the same record for Red House, Nevada, was naive of me. Bandon, at least, was designated as a city, small as it was; Red House was merely a bump in the road on the outskirts of Winnemucca.

Still, you can't blame me for trying. It seemed like a reasonable hypothesis. But in all of Nevada—not just that one-town county which contained Red House—there was not one Henry Keefe that I could find.

Of course, there were plenty of O'Keefes to be had—though not many Henry O'Keefes. I did manage to find a notice of sale in the Reno newspaper in 1926 regarding one Henry O'Keefe, liquidating his estate after his passing. Whether this was the same man whose wife Hallie had addressed as Mrs. Henry Keefe, I can't tell. And Reno isn't exactly the forsaken outskirts of Winnemucca, though there was precious little standing between the two.

The hope of determining the route taken by that little postcard of Baby Fay—from her mother's hand to the recipient in Nevada to, ultimately, the antique store in Jackson, California, where I found it—is, however, merely a secondary pursuit. The key question is: can I return the little treasure to a family member now who would appreciate having it? Even that question proved difficult to answer.

Usually what I like to do is look through all the family trees posted at Ancestry.com which include the person in question. In many cases, from those publicly-posted trees, I can tell which researchers are actually close relatives of the subject of my search.

In this case, though, most of the researchers had two discouraging points in common. One was that the tree was quite large and the researcher seemed to be only distantly related, often through marriage. The second drawback was that, because this family had unfortunate divorces, the relationship-by-marriage was on the other side of the divide. Somehow, I wasn't sure that this tiny photograph would be cherished by the distant relative of the ex of a hundred year old breakup. I wanted someone closer to Baby Fay.

There was, however, one tree where I couldn't quite tell who the home person was. Since I had no other options, I decided to make contact. If nothing else, at least this researcher might be able to connect me with a closer relative. It was worth the try.

Searching Through the Next Generation

My hope for most weekends is for a time when I can set aside the usual routine and delve into the research problems that have me stumped. Of course, that was my hope last week, despite writing about missing the primo genealogical event of the year, or how I am doing my small part to give back to the genealogical community.

My focus right now is in finding a way to return an abandoned photograph of baby Fayetta Mae Randall and her young mother to a family member who would appreciate having it.

I am not doing so well with that current goal. Besides stumbling upon the tragic story of Fay's uncle and how he and his wife suddenly lost their lives just before Christmas in 1940, I haven't really figured out just how Fay, a girl from Elko, Nevada, ended up marrying an Italian immigrant's son in the Bay area of northern California.

But why mull over getting stuck in our research? There are other clues to pursue. We may not learn how Fay and Joseph Panuzzi first met, but we do know they got married. And they had three children—two of whom are still out there...somewhere.

It would be wonderful if this little Azo picture postcard of their mother and grandmother could find its way to either of them. That would be the ideal. In the meantime, I'm having a hard time, given the array of fellow researchers who have their family trees posted at Ancestry.com, finding one family historian who also happens to be a close relative to Fay.

Meanwhile, best I can tell, not only did Fay and her sisters remain in the Bay area for the rest of their lives, but so did Fay's husband and children—at least for as long as Fay herself was still here.

It was at the relatively young age of fifty seven that Fayetta Mae Randall Panuzzi passed away in Contra Costa County, California. That was in December of 1974.

Less than two years later, Fay's mother—the woman writing on that photo postcard of her infant daughter back in 1917—by then remarried, passed away near the end of May, 1976.

Almost twenty five years to the day after losing his wife, Joseph Panuzzi died in December of 1999, by then having left the Bay area for the northern reaches of California.

I doubt that little postcard made its way to the Jackson, California, antique store where I found it from the liquidated estate of Joseph and Fayetta Panuzzi. Perhaps it found its way there from the belongings of the woman for whom the postcard was originally intended: someone living in a tiny spot in Nevada called Red House—a woman known as Mrs. Henry Keefe.

 

Now Indexing: New York Naturalization Records

Finally! It's a good feeling, having gotten the chance to get back in the routine of doing volunteer indexing, to actually complete a batch successfully—and without the angst that comes from facing the unexpected. Of course, the only reason I managed to achieve that success was—don't tell anyone—that my batch consisted of only one single entry.

It seems, lately, that the batches I've chosen to transcribe, in my quest to give back to the genealogy community, have been riddled with idiosyncrasies. After tonight's effort, I can heave a sigh of relief. Done!

When I do my volunteer work online, I usually do it late at night—odd, because what I'd consider a way to unwind (not to mention, feel good about my contribution) turns out to be an angst-ridden, second-guessing marathon. I'm sure the folks at FamilySearch Indexing don't intend it to be that way, but what can an organization do, tasked with getting such a wide variety of governmental documents transcribed in an orderly fashion? It seems the very bureaus which issued these documents were intent on confusing the issue by changing their format every few years. Not exactly the essence of efficiency.

I've moaned and groaned, over the years, as I wrestle with documents from New York to California, Illinois to New Mexico. Everything from contrary imaging machinery to illegible handwriting can stand in the way of a volunteer indexer's wish to make a helpful contribution.

Tonight, thankfully, was different. I usually try to work on documents from locations where my own family's history once unfolded, perhaps in a vain hope that I'll find that missing document of one of my elusive forebears. So, tonight was New York, and naturalization records.

It was a spark of delight to realize that the first document showing up on my screen was from the very county in New York where I lived during my high school years. The towns mentioned in that Polish immigrant's petition were places I know.

The added bonus was that the batch I indexed was labeled a "quick batch." I soon discovered just what FamilySearch meant by "quick batch." It was one—yes, only one—record which needed to be transcribed. And then, hit enter and submit! Just as if I had done the typical batch, which usually includes ten different records.

Well, getting off that easy meant I really had to try another one of those "quick batches." So I clicked on the link asking if I wanted another "batch" like before. Of course I would!

I ended up doing that ten times, enough to do the same amount of work as if I had done a typical batch. Ten times I got to watch the colorful cyber-confetti sprinkle from the top of my computer screen. Talk about positive reinforcement.

In the process, I transcribed everything from handwritten declarations from the 1850s to petitions from immigrants arriving between the two world wars. There were immigrants from Norway, Ireland, Poland—even Turkey. And each batch was made up of only one document. Talk about quick!

The only reason I can figure for such an unusual set up is that perhaps I was tonight's clean-up batter. Perhaps there were several items left over from other batches—one here, one there—which needed to be taken care of. Whatever the reason, it was a refreshing break from the usual "stuck" feeling I'd often get, encountering a messy form in the midst of a batch of ten.

Then again, perhaps moving my volunteering time to an earlier hour of the evening might catch me with a more reasonable reserve of patience for those ever-changing government documents.

Not Even Late to the Party

If you are not in Salt Lake City right now, you are probably missing the world's hugest genea-party in progress through this evening. That's okay; if you are not one of the umpteen thousand participants from around the world who have gathered for RootsTech, you can be part of the #NotAtRootsTech live streaming crowd—even display a not-so-official badge, courtesy of "LDC"—and know you are one of an estimated seventy thousand in combined attendance.

I'm not one of those seventy thousand. At least, not this year. Well, amend that: I was for one brief moment, when one of my class members caught me on Facebook and tagged me with a link to the innovation panel discussion on day one. Other than that, I tend to be the wet blanket who avoids crowds at all costs. My learning style is more suited to marinating at SLIG than running the RootsTech marathon.

Still, I've been tempted. Just the other day, I was reading through Randy Seaver's RootsTech blog compendium and ran across a little something. It was a post by Jill Ball, "Relatives at RootsTech?" She has traveled all the way from Australia to attend the conference, where she was game to download the mobile app for the FamilySearch family tree. On that app—at least for those fortunate enough to actually be at the convention site in Salt Lake City—it's possible to tap on the banner labeled "Find Relatives at RootsTech" and opt in to display anyone else on site who is on your FamilySearch tree and at RootsTech.

I'm so jealous. I've been wanting to see an app like that for genealogical conferences ever since I read about the project promoted last year at the Ontario Genealogical Society conference. The folks at OGS called theirs the "Wall of Ancestors," and admittedly it wasn't exactly the same feature, but the idea behind it was right: give people a way to see if any of their fellow attendees share a spot on the same family tree. It is, after all, an app for a genealogical conference.

That is such a big deal for me that I might actually agree to come out of hiding and attend next year's RootsTech. Maybe. Or at least hope that another conference's organizers might be tempted to test the waters closer to home.