One of my favorite Genea-Blogs is Shades of the Departed. The level of detail that fM and the guests put into analyzing a photograph is jaw dropping. I wanted to participate in the latest Smile for the Camera - Crowing Glory carnival, but I was away on a family vacation and having a fantastic time that I just never made it. It's kind of hard to put together a post after chasing three year-olds on the beach all day long.

But I do have two amazing photos that I would have loved to share in the carnival. One is a picture of Edith May Conley (Rightmire), b. 1858 in West Virgina. Edith is my wife's 2nd great grandmother. I recently got a batch of photos from Uncle Glenn and this was one of them:



I have absolutely no idea how to analyze the photo, but what I can tell you is that it is made out of some 2 layered cardboard and was taken in West Virginia around the year 1900. How do I know this? Well it says so on the back. Some one wrote all that in pencil including who Edith is and who her daughter and granddaughter are.

Now that is a seriously stunning piece of headgear, don't you think? I especially like the black veil with the white pearls on it. Very nice. When I eventually learn to analyze photos I will have to redo this one. But until then, anyone out there want to take a crack at it?

And oh, famous relative alert: Edith was the first cousin of William Gustavus Conley, who was the 18th Governor of West Virginia.

On to the next crown. This is one of my favorite pictures ever taken. It's Moshe Zinberg, my great grandfather. This is actually a photo I took of my sister's roots project, so the quality is horrible. But I will get the original soon and all will be corrected. Check out the baby sheep:



This picture was taken in Russia when the Zinberg family fled their home during WW2. The family had gone through a lot of ups and downs before the war. In 1933 Moshe sold everything the family owned in order to arrange for documentation and safe passage to Israel. But it turned out he was conned and lost everything. He had to start his whole life over and rebuild from nothing. When the war started the family fled to middle Asia and ended up in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. That's where my grandparents met.

And that's a story for another time.