Names and Olde Pictures

[digitS']

My cousins can sure cause trouble .

One is recently retired, gathered old photos from another who had collected them years ago, and sent them out to be identified. There are probably about 50 with nothing more descriptive than "family on porch" or "2 babies." They must date back to earliest days of photography!

99% of these people are long, long gone. I wonder how she even suspects that they are family - we share pictures with friends, don't we? Anyway, I took some time to try to search out a couple of names ... where there were names.

A name that I recognized as family turned out to be fairly easy. The photography studio was identified and so "Mary" was found to be an aunt (in law) from about 100+ years ago.

I thought that "Goldie Berry" might be unusual enough altho' I didn't know we were related to any "Berries" ... there was someone known as "Wilmot Edgar" associated but I wasn't sure how. Well, how many people have names like those?? Okay, Google, do your stuff!

Shoot. Not only did I follow a blind trail on Wilmot and his marriage to "Edith Meree" (could there really have been 2 couples in the US with these names?), but I learned that Berry had just been changed from "Bury" with Goldie's generation ... and, I still don't know how that cute little girl might be related!!

Time to bury this in the back of the files and leave it there, don't you think?? I keep saying I'm not gettin' into this genealogy stuff.

Steve

 

[NwMtGardener]

Heh, this reminds me of something funny i learned on my last trip home to visit my family. There's a picture of me as a tiny baby, the 5th generation. In the photo are my dad, grandpa, great grandpa, and great-great grandpa - whose name i always thought was PAUL. My grandmother showed me his wedding certificate from 1901, and that wasn't his first name! Apparently my grandmother and her generation had alway called him "Pa" and i mis-heard that my entire life as "Paul."

 

[bobm]

My wife's aunt traced my wife's ancestry back to the mid 1400's including all of their children. Her pedigree is a book that is 14" high x 28" long and 1 1/2" thick . The print size is like one would find in a newspaper. For myself however I only know of my maternal grandmother and my parents, my mother's brother and his 3 kids as the only survivors of 2 world wars. They would not talk about any of their relatives as it was too painful of the memories of their untimely demise. All records were destroyed in WW II along with all of their families, lands as well as all of their possessions with only the clothes left on their backs. What I know of my relatives is what was told to me by my parents' friends.

 

[Smart Red]

My mother left a large box of photographs. Unfortunately for me, she had tossed all the pictures left by her sister, Mildred, into the box with Dad's family and Mom's family. Somewhere in the pile are Dad's distant relatives who shall remain forever anonymous as the elders in the family who might have been able to identify them are long gone. Somewhere in the pile are Mom's relatives who are slowly being identified by the many cousins, aunts, and uncles. This is made so much more difficult because somewhere in the same pile are photos of members of the Neddo family -- no relation to me and mine -- who have no idea where their home and kin might be and just lend another layer of confusion to our attempts.

I am the mysterious woman!

I happened to find that out the year I drove my mother to her family reunion. As I walked with my mother to the main tent, I noticed many adults pointing at me and whispering while young children were pointing and racing to the photograph table.

Uncomfortable as it was, it seemed all eyes were on me as I seated my mother beside her brothers. To whispers of "she's the mysterious woman, isn't she?" I was called over to the books of pictures to find a photograph of my much younger self hugging (long since dead) Uncle Harold.

It seems there was a photograph of Cousin Robert's wedding that had a stranger getting a hug from someone in the family. For years -- at every family get together -- the books of photographs would be put out to share and people would try to identify the few photos of people that no one could recognize.

At long last, the mystery of that woman was put to rest. I was the mysterious woman who had driven up to Green Bay for a wedding when I was 16. Since I had seen this side of my family so seldom no one considered Aunt Lil's daughter might have been there. Mystery solved!

 

[digitS']

I was misidentified as my brother and my cousin in 2 pictures. I mean, we are all there. How come I have to identify my own unique self!?

I have some relative, I have no idea how, who has created this incredible "tree!" The trunk is this guy, I guess he was the first in the new world. Then, there are the branches ..! The surname list is HUGE! I must be related to every European American in this hemisphere!

I can follow a t h r e a d back to this olde dude. It goes through grandmothers for 3 generations, or maybe 4. Then, the guy traces on through Europeans! You know, if there is 1 adopted child ... this house of cards collapses.

Steve

 

[Nyboy]

Years ago my uncle hired a family researcher, he had worked with Alex Haley on his 2 nd book. Was amazing what he found, this before internet. He found my grandparents Ellis Island records, Forget the name of the ship, but in 1901 my grandfather 23 years old my grandmother 15 years old ( now a days that would be prison sentance) declared $5 cash and 2 suitcases when they entered this country.

 

[baymule]

My mom traced her family back to the year 1000, it's a very interesting read. My father's family, she traced to Kentucky in mid 1800's. A couple of them rode out of the mountains to check out Texas, then went back and got the family.