I’d Like to Meet...

In 2022 I participated in Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge, and I am quite proud to say, I accomplished it! I blogged every week, writing to a majority of the themes she put forth. This year, I commit to writing at least once a month and I may at times use her prompts to stimulate and inspire my blogging. I would however, also like to commit some time to making more discoveries in my personal genealogy research. Writing takes time. Search takes time too.

The 52 Ancestors Challenge theme for this week, though, is "I'd Like to Meet..."

Pondering the past tense of that theme, I would have liked to have met my maternal grandmother, Marilyn Irene Fay-Gardner (August 28, 1930 - June 5, 1972). She passed away so very young, at the age of 41, the year before I was born. I had all three of my other grandparents until my Grandpa Earle died in 2000, shortly after my 26th birthday. Grandpa Gardner passed in 2004. Grandma Earle will be 94 in February. Sadly she no longer recognizes her family due to the ravages of Alzheimer's disease but she's otherwise hangin' in there. So I knew my grandparents. I can tell you a lot about each of them, well, except Grandma Gardner who no one, not my grandpa, not her children, no one spoke about. 

Prompted to want to know more about my Grandma Gardner and having tapped out the resources on Ancestry.com, I went looking in other databases, namely MyHeritage. My subscription runs out there in February so while I have it and the time off from work during this holiday week, I went looking. 

I think I have found my grandma's high school yearbook photo. I'm not sure. I've only seen 2 other images of her. Once a long time ago when I was a kid my mother showed me a photo of her mom. I want to say it was taken at a baby shower. Marilyn, or Lynne, as everyone called her, did have a bunch of babies so I'm not sure when it was taken and I don't have the image to refer back to as, sadly, I am estranged from my mother. The other image I have of Lynne was from about 1950 from an unidentified newspaper announcement of her engagement to my Grandpa. It's terribly unclear, graining like most newspaper photos.

The new image I found is from the 1948 yearbook at Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens, New York. The name, year, and location fit. I think it's her.

The day I found the image I sent it to all my siblings as well as the two cousins with whom I have any contact information. Being the eldest grandchild I didn't think any of them would be able to identify the grandmother we never knew but I thought they'd appreciate having it. I showed my father, who knew Lynne. Not only was she hid mother-in-law, he grew up next door to her. He was not confident that it was her though. She died 50 years ago and this high school yearbook photo was taken long before he knew her so I understand his reluctant to confidently identify her. I showed his brother, my Uncle Allen, and he too was unsure. I know my mother would recognize her, but again, I have no contact with her nor do I have contact with either of her sisters. Well, one I could email I guess but she was only 2 when her mother passed. Hmm. Anyway - - -

The following day it dawned on me that I should look in that same school's yearbooks for Lynne's sisters; one of them I knew. When I was in my teens, every summer I would go to Florida and spend a month with my grandfather and he would always make sure I spent a day with his sister-in-law, my Great Aunt Ann. I could probably count on my fingers how many times I saw Ann in my life, however, I am 100% sure this is Aunt Ann's yearbook photo from Newtown High School, 1938. 

The discovering of Ann in the the same school's yearbook at the right time period, I am not confident that this is a picture of my grandma Lynne.

Hi grandma.

52 Ancestors Challenge Week 38: "New to You" - Great-great Grandma Mayme's Ring

Below is a photo of my chubby little hand decked out in 2 relatively new rings. 

The one on my ring finger is really a mother's ring. I am not a mother. A mother's ring, though, is one that presents the birthstones of all of a mother's children. My grandma has a lovely one with her birthstone and that of her 5 kids. This one has 4 birthstones representing my beautiful nieces; Sofia (October - really should be an opal but they use some pink stone. Pink tourmaline, perhaps), Breanna (March - aquamarine), Emilie (July - ruby), and Molleigh (June - should really be a pearl but they use some purplish stone. I think it is alexandrite.). I bought that ring for myself for my recent birthday.

The ring on my middle finger was given to me by a cousin I recently connected with through AncestryDNA. It was a gift from her and her mother. It belonged to my great grandmother, Mary Elizabeth "Mayme" Sharp-Gardner (October 2, 1891 - January 25, 1961). She is the woman on the left in the photo below.

I am sure it is not of great monetary value but it is of great value to me. I am not sure when she acquired it. I wear it on my middle finger because that is where it fits me best. I don't want to have it resized. I like that it has evidence of being shaped to Mayme's finger.

Maybe someday one of my magnificent little nieces will inherit their great-great-GREAT grandma Mayme's ring from me.

Thank you, Cousin Kristen and Cousin Anita.

52 Ancestors Challenge Week 34: "Timeline" - My Review of MyHeritage

The theme for this week, Timeline, immediately makes me think of the Family Tree Timeline feature in MyHeritage so I am going to take this opportunity to write a review of the genealogical research website. I have poked at it in the past but I was never had a subscription before this year and quite honestly, I do not think I will continue it when my membership expires. 

Don't get me wrong, it is a good website. It has many resources but it doesn't strike me as having more than Ancestry or anything all that different in terms of records I need to enhance or advance my family history research. It does, however, have some truly amazing, fancy, features some of which I will highlight in this post. I just pay so much for my Ancestry membership already and I use Ancestry so much with clients and students. I can't really afford to keep up with 2 sites. I prefer Ancestry.com. Truth be told, I find the abundance of fancy features on MyHeritage a bit overwhelming even though they are really cool. Maybe if I had started with MyHeritage it would be my go-to.

So let me tell you about some of my favorite features at MyHeritage:

1. DNA: For one, MyHeritage allows for the upload of raw DNA from other direct-to-consumer DNA test providers which AncestryDNA and 23andMe do not allow. By uploading your DNA to MyHeritage, one can increase the number of potential matches that they have. You never really know where that one needed match will be that will help you bust through your brick walls. One can also take a MyHeritage DNA test as they too sell a direct-to-comsumer DNA testing kits. In MyHeritage I have over 12k DNA matches. A lot of people use this site for DNA research. I tell all my adoptee clients to use it.

They also have DNA tools like auto-clustering and a chromosome browser which Ancestry does not have at present. A chromosome browser helps you view segments of DNA shared between you and multiple DNA matches which can help point to a common ancestor. Auto-clustering is much like application of the Leeds Method, if you are familiar with that, its a tool that organizes your DNA Matches into clusters or groups that likely descended from the same common ancestor.

2. PHOTO TOOLS: MyHeritage's photo tools have gotten a lot of publicity in the past couple of years since it added the tool to animate photos. Below is a head shot of me animated. It is very cool when applied to photos of long deceased ancestors that you may have. However, I find something kind of unnerving about it when applied to photos of recently deceased relatives. Kind of creeps me out. Fun feature though, not to mention the other photo enhancing and editing tools they provide. Ooo, but the creepiest photo tool they have, if you ask me, is DeepStory which actually can make your family photos speak. Yeah, worth checking out but not something I need on the daily.

 

 

3. FAMILY EVENTS: I am going to miss this feature when I say goodbye to MyHeritage. This is basically a calendar of family birthdays and anniversaries based on the information you have put into your own family tree. You can add to it holidays from an assortment of countries and even display dates according to the Hebrew calendar.

4. FAMILY STATISTICS: This is a neat feature that presents aggregate data from your tree. Just fun factoids like I haven't set the gender for 27 individuals in my tree, thus 52% of my family tree is male, 47% is female, and 1% is of an unknown gender. The most common first name for males in my family tree is John and for females is Mary. 

And ta-dah, 5. TIMELINE: The Family Tree Timeline can help you visualize your ancestors’ lifespans, including whose lives overlapped and what major world events they lived through. It is a visual representation of the direct ancestors of one individual from your family tree, you are typically the default person. The lifespans of these individuals are presented on a bar graph. By default the Timeline shows 4 generations, from you to your great-grandparents. However, you can choose to display more or fewer  generations.

Each person’s name, profile photo, and age appear on a colored bar. If the individual is deceased, their bar is rounded on the right and their age at the time of their death appears at the far right. The bars representing living individuals are squared on the right and their current age appears there. If the date of birth or death is unknown, the bar will be faded towards the birth or death date, ending at an approximation of the time of their birth or death.

However, what I wish Timeline did was show the overlap of lifespans for family groups, not just direct ancestors. I'd like to see my siblings, cousins, aunts/uncles, etc. represented on a timeline. I think it would help my research in a lot of way. For example, such a feature might help pinpoint a date on which a group photo was taken. For example, I have a group photo with 10 people in it. I can identify 9 of them. I know it has to be taken before person A died and after these six kids were born. Maybe I could figure out that 10th person if I could see who was alive at the same time.

ABOUT THE 1950 CENSUS: MyHeritage came up with this awesome tool shortly after the recent release of the 1950 U.S. Federal Census that kind of incorporates their Timeline capabilities. Under "Research" there is a new link for Census Helper. It generates a list of individuals in your family tree who are likely to be found in the 1950 census. In fact, it does this for any U.S. census you're researching in as well as censuses for Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, Norway, France, and England & Wales!

Again, MyHeritage has great features which if you have never explored before, you should!

52 Ancestors Challenge Week 44: "Shadows" - A Favorite Photo

This theme doesn't bring to mind anything in my family history research; Shadow. The only thing I could think of is one of my favorite family photos. It is a very arts photo of my dad and his mom. It was taken in about 1952 by my grandmother's brother, my great uncle Robert "Bobby" Henry (October 21, 1925 - April 30, 2011).

52 Ancestors Challenge Week 21: "Yearbook" - A Collection of Graduation Photos

As a college librarian we get calls from time-to-time from alumni and descendants of alumni looking for yearbook photos. Sometimes it is the only photo one has of their loved one.

Very recently my father's high school wrestling coach passed away at the age of 96. This prompted me to go onto Ancestry and look through their U.S. yearbook collection. 

I had seen my father's yearbook before. He still has it. And my step-mother graduated with my mother and my paternal aunt, same year, same high school, same yearbook and she still has it.

However, I had never seen the ones from my father's junior year during which time he was on the wrestling team. As soon as he got a car, the motorhead that he is, he quit wrestling. 

Honestly, I couldn't pick him out of his wrestling team photo even though I have seen many photos of my dad from his youth. It made me wonder if I could pick out other family members in their yearbooks so I went trolling Ancestry.com's U.S. Yearbook Collection and made my own family yearbook. 

Most of them went to different High Schools which I have not identified here for the sake of their privacy. You'll see I only list them by their relationship to me, their first name, and the year they graduated but here is my family's yearbook. Included her are my paternal grandmother, most of her siblings, my father, his siblings, some of his first cousins, my mother, and a few of her sisters.

Family Photos in an Antique Shop

This past week I attended some training for work up in Syracuse, New York. On the way back a colleague and I stopped for a late lunch in Ithaca, NY; a town she really loved visiting before. I had been through it once or twice but never really spent much time there so I was open to wandering around a bit. 

We stopped into the DeWitt Mall which is an odd assortment of little shops in what appears to be a re-purposed parochial school. My colleague and I wandered independently for a bit. There was a little antique shop that had several shelves of items for sale out in the hallway between stores. As I passed the shelves I saw some little eyes peeping over the edge of a box. 

It was a portrait of a handsome woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Neu Wagner, as noted on the back of the photo. Many of the photos in the box appeared to be from the same family album but none of them were labeled well; not like this one at least. This had a brief genealogy on it. In a small neat print, much like my own, the label reads: 

 ELIZABETH NEU WAGNER 

(MOTHER of FREDERICK A. WAGNER)

(GREAT GRANDMOTHER OF 

BARBARA WAGNER WOODAMS) 

PROJECT! I had great fun this past year helping a patron at my part time job put a family heirloom back in the right hands. Why not see if I could get this photo to an appropriate family member. 

As soon as I got home last night I sat down and searched for those names on Ancestry.com. And in less than 10 minutes I had found an Ancestry member who had a robust tree naming all those individuals indicated on the photo with the proper connections between them. The tree had many photos including one of Frederick A. Wagner and Barbara Wagner-Woodams. But the tree did not have a photo of this woman, Elizabeth. Now it will because I contacted the Ancestry member who made that tree and in less than 20 minutes heard back from her. Elizabeth is her husband's 3x great grandmother.

A little poking around and I learned Elizabeth was born in Bavaria, Germany in 1832; no known date of death. She was married to Frederick Wagner. She arrived in the U.S. in about 1855-1860; so probably before she was married...maybe. She has at least 6 children with Frederick; some if not all were born in New Jersey.

It appears as though her great granddaughter Barbara was the last family member to own the photo, at least that is what I assume from the labeling. 

Barbara Ann Wagner-Woodams was born on January 15, 1929 to Alfred Walter Wagner and Barbara Althea Lounsberry in Bradley Beach, New Jersey according to her U.S. Social Security Applications & Claims indexed information on Ancestry.com. She married William John Woodams on January 12, 1951. She passed away on December 3, 2000. Her husband was from Ithaca, NY. William outlived his wife by 11 years. He died September 14, 2011 and I suspect he passed in Ithaca and that this antique shop purchased a family album in an estate sale or auction or something of that nature.

I am sure there are more Wagner Family photos in that antique shop but they were all mixed in together with thousands of other photos. Some were obviously taken from the same family album though; those could have been images from an album that also contained this woman's photo. Who knows. It would be quite a task to comb through them all. The descendant I tracked down lives in Oregon. I don't think he will be in Ithaca any time soon. Hmm. I wonder if any of the other family photos will make there way into the hands of the right family. Well, I know this one will.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Wagner.

Grandpa's Mustache

Yesterday morning my 4 month old niece came to spend the day at my house with my dad and step-mother. I had to go to work but I did get to watch dad and Sofie play together for a while. She likes to yank on his mustache - - which reminded me of an old family photo that I have.

This here is a picture of my paternal grandfather's brother, my great-uncle, Allen Preston Earle (1916-1956) with his great-grandfather, John M. Losee Sr. (1841-1918). Based on Allen's year of birth and John's date of death this photo had to be taken in 1917 when Allen was about a year old.

Like my niece, I think little Allen was super cute with his devilish grin. And John had a pretty awesome mustache too. Don't ya think?

FOLLOW-UP: February 17, 1950: Rockville Centre Train Derailment

I searched the New York Times Historical database today to see what more I could learn about the Rockville Centre train derailment that took place in February of 1950.

I found this article that not only listed each of the casualties and all those injured but showed the exact location of the accident.

I wish I could make it larger so it was easier for you to read:

February 17, 1950: Rockville Centre Train Derailment

The other morning I woke to find my father had left me a stack of old family photos bundled together by a rubberband. Really dad, really?? A rubberband?

Anyway, among the photos were these 7 pictures. I can not identify anyone in them or where exactly it was photographed or by whom BUT, there is a date written on the back; "Feb. 1950."

 So I googled "Long Island train derailment February 1950" and found this entry in wikipedia

February 17, 1950 – Rockville Centre, New York, United States: Two passenger trains collide head-on at Rockville Centre train station. The engineer of train number 192 ignored an Approach and the following Stop signals and collided with train number 175 on temporary gantleted (overlapping) track which had been installed to facilitate a grade separation project. Both engineers survived but 31 people were killed, and more than 100 people injured.^[1]

<sup>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_%281950%E2%80%931959%29 

My father would have only been 2 1/2 months old at the time of this accident. My grandfather was a machine operator. I suspect he may have been the one to take these pictures and perhaps he worked on the crash site. I don't know for sure but I am now on the hunt to understand how we came to hold on to these pictures for so long.</sup>

Salvaging Family Photos

Part of the reason I have not been posting to my blog is because I live on Long Island, NY. On October 28, Hurricane Sandy hit my beloved island hard. I was not here at the time of the storm as I was delivering a paper at a conference in Baltimore; a much safer, saner place for me to be.

Prior to my departure for the conference my sister gave birth to my parents' first grandchild; a girl, Sofia. She is beautiful and she is living her first few days with us here rather than in my sister's house because of the storm. Sandy unleashed 58 inches of water into their basement. It would be unsound to bring their newborn home until issues of power, heat, and mold have been resolved. And so Sofie sleeps without a care in the room her mother grew up in surrounded by her parents, grandparent, pet bulldog, Aunt April, and friends; oblivious that this is not normal.

I have been lending a hand to a dear friend who was affected by the storm as well. He fared pretty well all considered; however, he did lose his car and some cherished family photos. That is where I come in. I am trying to save whatever pictures I can for him. We haven't really had a fight about it, although we have had some cross stares with furrowed brows. He says that this is just stuff that he lived these images he doesn't need to save them; but I am certain he says this out of frustration and being overwhelmed. I keep saying that you have to save them or else how will they know. How will Who Know What? How will your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, ect. know of the love that brought them here, how will they know who you were if they have no objects, no tokens, no documentation of the lives that existed that brought you here.

I am not talking about saving snapshots of nothing. I am talking about saving photos from the 1800s, baby pictures, first Christmases, wedding photos, photos of souls long gone, moments of love... We know not the degree to which that love existed but for the people in the photos it was a moment they wanted to capture in their own time and somehow it remains. I have to try to save them.

In any case, if your photos have been water damaged, they can often be salvaged. Photos are made in water. If need be you can soak them apart. The best course of action is to remove loose dirt and debris by rinsing your photos in a basin of cold clear running water until the water runs clean. Do not run water directly on them as this may cause further damage to the already softened emulsions. Lay them flat to dry. Do not cover them at this point. Let them fully dry. If they curl up simply take them once they are fully dry and press them in your heaviest books. Here are some more in depth tips from Image Permanence Institute: https://www.imagepermanenceinstitute.org/webfm_send/314 

As I have said, my house and family photos remained unharmed through this severe storm; thank God! This morning I woke to a bundle of old photo my father left on the kitchen counter for me before heading off to his job at the Long Island Power Authority. Among them was this photo; my Grandpa Edwin M. Earle Sr., his maternal Uncle Luman Losee, and grandpa's brother Allen Preston Earle circa 1945. 

Grandpa was a Navy man. Until this morning I had never seen this photo. I had never seen him so young. And only now I recall images of him with thick dark hair; like Sofie's. Since the moment I saw Sofie I have said that my Grandpa Earle (a.k.a. Poppy) would have loved those cheeks of hers. How will she know anything of him if I do not save this photo for her and fill her ears with stories of him and his ultra-sensitive crabby ways. How will they know?