I am not sure what the appeal is with the awful show called Jersey Shore, but I guess MTV has to air something since they don't show videos any more. So the whole Snooki phenomenon has gone insane and with it a couple of sites that let you download a PNG file of the orange one where you can insert her into other images (site 1, site 2).
I decided to have a little fun and add Snooki to some historical images. If you decide to make your own, post a link in the comments!
footnoteMaven has tasked us once again with finding something unique to share with our readers: "It is the holiday season and a time for giving. So give Smile readers the gift of sharing, sharing a family photograph. It can be a gift given or received, it can be the gift of talent, it can be the gift of having the photograph itself. The interpretation of gift is yours. Admission is free with every photograph!"
I decided to focus on family pictures and look for the oldest ones I have. As usual I will have two submissions, one for my ancestors and one for my wife's.
The Smorgonski Family - Dolhinov, Poland (about 1932)
I've written about this picture before, but thought it was worth displaying again. This is my great-grandfather and his family (without the oldest sister, Hanna, who was probably in Israel by this time). Everyone in the picture except for the top row of older siblings perished in the holocaust. They were murdered by the Polish villagers in their town of Dolhinov by being herded into a barn that was then set on fire.
Top row (left to right): Zipora (my grandmother), Shlomo and Pesia
Bottom row (left to right): Ida (Ita), Henia Segalchik, Joseph Haim, Avraham Smorgonski and Haya.
Hanna, Zipora and Pesia were the daughters of Avraham Smorgonski and Ester Segalchik. When Ester died, Avraham married her sister Henia and they had Shlomo, Ida, Haya and Joseph Haim.
I am not sure where this photo was taken or who saved it. Since The three oldest sisters left Poland with the Jewish youth movement before WWII, I suppose one of them brought it with her.
The Rightmire Family - Parsons, West Virginia (about 1906)
This is the the family of Thomas Ward Rightmire and Edith Mae Conley, my wife 2nd-great-grandparents. The family lived in Parson, West Virginia and from census records I suspect the were tobacco farmers. In the 1900 Census the three oldest children are listed as having an occupation of Stogie Rollers.
I believe this photo was taken after 1906 which is the year that Pearl Alta Rightmire was married and left the household to live with her husband Saul Isaac Hytowitz in Pittsburgh. I still need to figure out how the son of Jewish/Russian immigrants who lives in Pittsburgh married a girl from West Virginia, who was definitely not Jewish. But that's a story for another post.
This photo is on a postcard, which probably will give me more clues. In it we see Thomas and Edith, the parents, as well as their three sons, Myron W. Rightmire, Dale Mannington Rightmire and Otto Kent Rightmire. It is the oldest family photo I have on my wife's side of the family.
I haven't submitted a post to a carnival in a while, but this one is too good to pass. I actually have three stories, but have photos for two so far (I know the third exists but I don't know where it's hiding). This is my submission to the 78th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy: Pony Pictures.
1. The Ponies in Los Angeles
This is a funny one because it is one of my daughter's favorite bedtime stories. On our second family trip to the US in 1982, we did the west coast tour and also visited Mexico. When we were in LA, my mom's cousin took us pony riding. I am not sure where it was exactly.
The ponies rode around an elliptical track and every 5 minutes or so they would be corralled back and new riders would get their turn. While standing in line, my sister and I started eying the ponies we wanted to ride. My sister wanted the slow, mellow pony, who calmly strolled around the track. I obviously wanted the fastest one.
So we get our turn and get on the ponies we wanted. But as soon as the ponies were released, my sister's shot out of the gate like he was at the derby. Mine on the other hand decided to take a bit if a break:
Yes, those are real tears on my poor sister's face. For 5 minutes she yelled and screamed for that pony to stop, which he didn't.
I just found out that we have an old home video that my parents converted to VHS, so now I am waiting for my copy on DVD.
2. The Mule in West Virginia
I love this photo. According to my wife's uncle, Glenn:
This was taken in Parsons, WV, Summer of 1950 at a family reunion at a second cousin's house. Jackie (left) and Lois (right) standing, Bunny (back) and I (front) on the mule. Grandma was there too, but she got her hand caught in the door of my dad's new 1950 Mercury just before this picture was taken. We were up near Black Water Falls. Somewhere out there is another photo with Jackie on the mule, taken at the same time.
Don't worry, I asked for more details and will share when I get them.
UPDATE: More from Uncle Glenn - This was at a Rightmire great-aunt's home. The Aunt we visited lived very basically in the country with a mule for a work, as a beast of burden and a hand pump well for water in the back of her home. She made us kids eat carrots and other things she grew in her garden. I know it was very near Black Water Falls because we went to the Falls that day and walked in the back water and did a swing bridge. This was just before we moved to Ft. Lauderdale later that year in Nov. 1950.
3. The Love Story
I've heard the following story in several variations, but this is the one that my sister wrote in her roots project:
This is the story about how my grandparents met. Grandpa managed a store in Tashkent and had a business relationship with Grandma's father. He would always tell him about his daughter but refused to let them meet because he said my grandfather was a punk. They met on accident when he spotted her walking with her father one day. Her father tried to avoid their introduction by trying to go down a small alley but because my Grandpa was riding his horse he quickly caught up to them and that's how they met. It was love at first sight and a year later they were married.
Somewhere, there's a photo of my grandmother on a horse, which I need to find and post. But I love this story and had to include it in this post.
Moshe Zinberg was my maternal great-grandfather and pretty much the only grandfather either of my parents had. My father's grandparents perished in the Holocaust as were my mother's paternal grandparents. So Moshe and Elka Zinberg were pretty much it. My mother remembers how after the war nobody really knew what grandparents were and whenever they came to visit, people would come by just to get a glimpse of them.
Moshe and Elka lived in Beltsi (Balti in today's Moldova), had 6 children and were planning to immigrate to Israel around 1933. Moshe sold everything they had, including their house and all their possessions to purchase tickets and travel documents only to find out he'd been scammed and left with nothing. The family went thorough a very hard time but eventually managed to rebuild and prosper. Then when WW2 started their house was destroyed in a Nazi air raid and they fled over the Russian border. Traveling hundreds of kilometers on foot, the family eventually settled in Tashkent, in what today is Uzbekistan:
After the war, because of his deteriorating health, Moshe moved the family back to Beltsi, where he died in 1960.
The truth is, I haven't done much research on Moshe yet. Most of what I know is from my sister's roots project and family conversations. But one of my favorite photographs is of Moshe, probably around 20 years old, in Red Army uniform during his service in WW1. It's a small photo that is badly deteriorated, that I have shared here before.
And this is where Landailyn comes in. Janine Smith, who writes the terrific Janinealogy blog has taken this photograph:
and restored it to this:
Can you believe it? And she did it in no time at all.
My mother showed the restored version to her mother and she confirmed that this is in fact her father in uniform. Now, before all this we didn't even know that he served in the Red Army during WW1, so now I get to talk to my grandmother about this new revelation and find out much more.
My grandmother became very emotional when she saw the restored image. So thank you, Janine, you made my grandma cry.
My parents were in Argentina for a group trip earlier this month and this is the best photo from the batch my mom sent:
Doesn't that look amazing? It's almost looks computer generated.
This is my submission to the 9th edition of Smile for the Camera: Who are you? I really want to know!
Well this should be easy. I have boxes of photographs that I haven't even started scanning, where many of the subjects are complete unknowns. I have a hunch or two and some clues to get me started, but getting to the actual person is going to take a whole lot of digging. The hardest part about this challenge was trying to narrow down the photo selection. Let's get started shall we?
First up are two photos from a box I believe belonged to my wife's grandmother, Emily Anne. It's full of photographs of her and her family as well as many photos of and by her mother, Pattie Stone Tuggle who was a photographer herself (there are many photos stamped on the back with "Pattie T. Wiley"). These photos may be of Pattie's wedding and of her with two of her children:
The woman in both photos is obviously the same and since they were in the same photo binder I am going to conclude this as a fact. The binder also had the studio name (for the second photo): Leonard & Co. 57 1/2 Whitehall St. Atlanta, GA. I seem to remember that while going through the Atlanta City Directories I saw several entries for Whitehall St. so if I go through those again I may find out who this family is.
The next one is a complete unknown. It is also from Emily Anne's box and was in a glass frame, so it has some importance. It looks like a photo of a photo. I guess that by analyzing the pose and attire I can narrow down the range of years this was taken in, but I currently don't posses such knowledge. Handsome guy, whoever he is:
And here's the last one. This one is from my side of the family. It's one of the photos my mother brought with her on their most recent visit. According to my grandmother (who gave her the photo) this is possibly either one of her brothers or on of her uncles from Russia (location could be any one of several in East Europe). The large man in the center of the photo is the mystery. The way everyone is posed around him suggests he is the VIP in the photo. The woman on the bottom-right who is kneeling is holding his left hand tightly. And what's up with all those little flower bouquets on the floor? Is he wearing some sort of uniform? He's obviously not a golfer, but his facial tan line suggests he spends a lot of time outside and wears some sort of protective head gear. I would love to find out who this is:
Any ideas?
When my parents came to visit last month, I asked my mother to bring as much family history material as she could fit in her luggage. At first she said it wasn't a problem but when she saw the amount of photos and albums she started to get worried. Eventually we agreed that she would bring the best of the best, including my sister's entire roots project.
So it's been some time since I scanned everything and I am finally starting to get around to sorting everything and getting organized. I thought I would share some of these treasures with my readers.
First is probably the oldest photograph I have from my mother's side of the family. The photo below is in very bad shape. It was printed on cardboard and is severely deteriorating. It is the picture of my great grandfather, Moshe Zinberg, probably in his 20's, which would date the photo back to around 1920:
On the back of the photo is something that I believe to be a Russian newspaper. I am not sure how the cardboard photograph ended up glued to a piece of newspaper. You can also see my grandmother's handwriting, where she wrote her father's name in Hebrew:
Next up is my father side of the family and once again, a very old photo. In this photo of the Smorgonski family you can see my great grandfather Avraham Smorgonski and his second wife, Henia Segalchik. Henia was the sister of Avraham's first wife, Esther Segalchik, who died between 1917-1918. You can also see 6 of Avraham's 7 children:
Top row (left to right): Zipora (my grandmother), Shlomo and Pesia
Bottom row (left to right): Ida (Ita), Joseph Haim and Haya
Everyone in the picture except for the top row of older siblings perished in the holocaust. They were murdered by the Polish villagers in their town of Dolhinov by being herded into a barn that was then set on fire.
Staying a while longer with my grandmother, Zipora, we have some truly incredible identity cards for her and her husband, my grandfather, Avraham Kilchevsky, from Israel in 1939-1940:
But who issued identity cards in Israel nine years prior to it gaining Independence? See below:
The Government of Palestine? But hold on one second before you jump to conclusions and we start another 5000 year war. Palestine at the time was not an independent country. It was a British Colony. Like half the world at the time.
Now back to my mother's parents. I have never seen these photos from their wedding before. These were taken in Beltz, USSR (now Beltsy, Moldova) on October 6th 1945:
Aren't they a beautiful couple? Here's a close-up:
I loved my grandfather very much. He was a cool guy and always fun to hang out with. He was always taking things apart, fixing them and putting them back together. He had a tool shed inside his apartment. He once made a guy sell him a toy that he bought for his son so that he could give it to me. It was an elliptical race track and had these little cars that had rechargeable batteries. They were always breaking down and we would take them apart and fix them.
I know this has been a long post full of big images, but I will leave you with two more. The first is a typical pose for my grandfather. I call it the "What's the Problem?" pose:
That's him on the beach at the Dead Sea in Israel where he and my grandmother used to vacation often with their friends. I remember going out there with them several times.
And here's how you relax on your Dead Sea vacation. You just get in the water and float your troubles away:
This is my submission to the 7th edition of Smile for the Camera.
footnoteMaven has asked us to "Choose a photograph of an ancestor, relative, yourself, or an orphan photograph that is the epitome of Oh, Baby! and bring it to the carnival." I have a lot of baby pictures to chose from. I obviously have hundreds of photos of my daughter as well as many of myself, my wife, my sister and my nephew and niece. I even have a few of my mother and father, but I think I will save those for some special occasion.
I decided to go with another photo from my brith. I already posted the one of my grandfather wincing in pain as the rabbi does the deed. But the next photo is all smiles. I like to call it the 'Lion King' photo:
I am not sure if this was the custom in 1970 in Israel. It always struck me as odd that Rabbi Rafiki is holding me, an 8-day old Baby Simba, high up in the air while King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi show absolutely no sign of worry for their newborn son. My mother does seem to be a little bit sedated, but my dad is totally carefree and has the biggest smile on his face.
I guess times have changed a bit, because today, if I caught anyone holding up my child like that, it would probably be the last time in a long time that they were able to hold up their arms. I'm kidding. But I would not be happy. At all.
I still love this photo, though. Everyone looks so happy. Except for me.
Circle of Life. Oh Baby!
Terry Thornton who writes the terrific Hill Country of Monroe County blog has started a new endeavor called The Association of Graveyard Rabbits. It's an association of genealogy bloggers who write specific blogs about cemeteries, grave markers, burial customs and more. I would love to join, but I just don't see having the time right now and my geographical region is not extremely exciting for me and my current research. I haven't even scraped the surface of our family history so this will have to wait for a later date.
Schelly Talalay Dardashti, who writes the excellent Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog, has started up a Jewish Graveyard Rabbit blog as part of the association. I sent her a link to the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the grave of my great-grandfather Moshe Zinberg. But looking through all the photos my mother brought on her last visit I found another interesting aspect of Jewish cemeteries.
In many cemeteries in Israel you will find memorial monuments to holocaust victims. The one above is for the victims from Grajewo, Szczuczyn, Rajgród and Radziłów in Poland. As you may recall my paternal grandfather was born in Radziłów. The inscription on the monument reads:
Grajewo
Szczuczyn
Rajgród
Radziłów
Saints of Grajewo, Szczuczyn and Rajgród perished in the village of Bogusze near Grajewo
Saints of Radziłów were burned alive in a barn
May the Lord revenge their blood (HY"D)
I put together a map of the area as well:
If you want to learn about honorifics for the dead in Judaism, you can find more on Wikipedia by clicking here.
To learn more about reading Hebrew gravestones, click here. This is a must-have document for anyone trying to understand a Jewish grave.
I have not posted anything new for a while not because I had nothing new to report but rather because there was too much going on. My parents arrived for a visit and we had a great time together. One of the things I had asked my mother to do was to bring as many old photos as she could. She did not disappoint!
I started scanning and cataloging all these terrific pictures and it's going to take a long time to get through everything. The method I've been using is to place as many photos as I can on the scanner and scan them as an entire page:
I scan them at a high DPI on the A4 paper setting so that I can use the entire scanner. Then I flip them over and scan the backs:
The next step in the process is to start cropping and aligning the images correctly and then saving them in the proper directories in my photo filing system. That's a lot of work, but I really look forward to it.
Last week I received Maureen Taylor's (the photo detective) book "Uncovering Your Ancestry through Family Photograph" from Amazon (where's my second book Bezos?) and started reading through that. Even though my photos are not very old I have been learning some research methodology and a few helpful tips about how to catalog and record what is on them.
Here's one of my favorite photos so far:
It's a photo of my great-grandfather Moshe Zinberg's grave site in Beltsy, Moldova (previously Romania and also Russia). I don't know who took it. I don't know when it was taken. I don't know how it ended up in my hands (I will have to ask my grandmother but my guess is her mother brought it with her on her visit to Israel many years ago). I don't know who the two men in the picture are but my best guess is that they are cemetery workers. I don't even know if the grave is still there!
What I do know is the following:
1) The plot is very large and fenced, which is not common.
2) The name in Hebrew would be pronounced "Tzimbarg". What does it say in Russian?
3) From what I could tell he was a VIP (Ish Ha'Tov) and a Cohen. It says he is Moshe, son of Aaron the Cohen.
4) There is a small picture of Moshe at the top of the tombstone.
5) There is a bunch of stuff in Russian which I couldn't read.
6) I couldn't figure out his date of death either (too fuzzy when I zoom in - I will try with a magnifying glass on the original).
I also scanned the back and sent it to two of Moshe's grandchildren to see if they could read it and translate it for me:.jpg)
Does anyone know what it says?
I can't wait to get into all the other photos. Some are complete mysteries...
Submitted for the 6th edition of the Smile for the Camera blog carnival. Theme: Funny Bone.
I guess it's blog carnival post day today. I really enjoy all the different genea-blogs about photos and so I decided to submit my entry as well. The instructions said to "Show us that picture that never fails to bring a smile to your face! An amusing incident, a funny face, an unusual situation. Share!"
I think I have a winner here with this photo taken at the most critical moment of my Brit:
As the Rabbi leans over for the delivery of a most precision cut, my paternal grandfather, Avraham Kilchevsky, just can't bare to watch. The look on his face is priceless. It's an amazing blend of extreme happiness, some sadness, pain and sheer terror.
You see, I was his first grandchild. The first of nine to come after me. He was a very religious man who went to synagogue and prayed every day, so this was a big deal for him. He and his sister, Sarah, were the only ones from their family who survived the holocaust, so this was the continuation of our family.
You can just stare at this picture and feel all these emotions he is experiencing at the exact moment the shutter snapped.
But you can also look at this picture and laugh every time. Which is pretty much what I do.
This last Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day here in sunny Atlanta. We had to get out and do something so I came up with the brilliant idea of finding Cynthia's ancestors' homes in the city of Atlanta. I had found some of the addresses in the US Census images on Ancestry and remembered that most of them were easy to find. So with a 1/4 tank of gas we set off on our first genealogy road trip.
What struck us as very interesting is that these folks had moved from outside the city closer in over the years and eventually from the west side to the east of the city. Here's a map of our route that shows that west-to-east path:
I have a lot more investigating to do, as you will see, but here is the preliminary trip report:
A) 6 Edwin Place, Cook's District, Fulton County, Georgia. 1910 home of Emily Greenawalt, widow of Alexander McD. Wiley, parents of James Tecumseh Wiley Sr., husband of Pattie Stone Tuggle. Pattie, or as I found out this weekend was lovingly called 'Mama Pat', was my wife's great-grandmother. I need to do some digging to find out exactly what Cook's District was, but it was in Fulton County and is now part of the city of Atlanta. This house was on a beautiful wooded looped street that had a park inside the loop. Here's the picture:
B) 44 Neal Street, Cook's District, Fulton County, Georgia. 1900 home of Milton B. Tuggle, Anna Frances Dean and their daughter, Pattie Stone Tuggle ('Mama Pat'). Looking back on my notes, I have no idea how I came to the conclusion that this was the correct address. I have added this to my to do list. We couldn't find the actual house because the street numbers had changed. They are all triple digits now and that part of the city is not one where I wanted to get out and investigate. Does anyone know where I should look for house number changes? My guess would be somewhere in Fulton County. Right before we got there, we found an open gas station, but our luck ran out and the car in front of us was the last one to fill up.
C) 256 E. Fair Street, Atlanta, Georgia. 1920 home of William T. Brannon and Selena Bishop, parents of my wife's elusive grandfather, Lawrence Jefferson Brannon. This one was another no go. Fair Street is a fairly short street sliced in half by rail tracks with no crossing. The lower side had been torn down and some sort of warehouse has been built in it's place. That half of the street doesn't exist any more. The good news was that we found another open gas station and filled up!
D) 1186 Stewart Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia. 1930 home of Selena Bishop and her son Lawrence Brannon. Both Google Maps and my GPS found this address even though the street is now called Metropolitan Parkway. I was telling this story to a father of one of my daughter's friends and he said they changed the name to try to revive that part of town. The house was boarded up and up for auction after being foreclosed. As we drove off my wife saw a sign that read: "Pittsburgh Community est. 1883 - "A Weed & Seed Community". I need to check that out as well. Here's the picture:
E) 17 E. Ashland Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia. 1920 home of James T. Wiley, Pattie Stone Tuggle and their daughter Emily Anne Wiley (my wife's grandmother). Once again, we couldn't find the actual house because the numbers have been changed. It's a tiny street in the Inman Park / Little Five Points area. Pattie's parents, Milton and Anna lived in the house in 1910 and after Milton passed away in early 1910, Anna ran a boarding house at this location. By 1920 their daughter Pattie is living there with her family.
F) 215 Winter Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia. 1930 home of James and Pattie. This house was in the family for several decades and was owned at a value of $6000 with a mortgage in 1930. I have found correspondence in the late 1950's for the same address. The house is on a beautiful and quiet side street in Decatur and both Cynthia and her older brother Frank remember it from their childhood. Here's the photo:
At the end of this trip down history lane we decided to go pay a visit to Cynthia's brother, Frank, and his family. We haven't seen them in a long time and wanted to see the renovations they have been doing to their house. We asked Kiki whether she wanted to go to Fernbank Museum or go visit her cousins and the decision was quickly made. And this is where the buried treasure part comes into play.
Frank had a box loaded with pictures, letters, love letters, memory books, and even old audio records (electronic transcriptions) that Emily Anne recorded especially for her husband who was a career military officer and stationed all over the world.
This is not a shoebox. This is a BIG moving box and it will take me a lot of time to go through it, scan, catalog and store everything. I will have a few posts detailing what I find, but for now I will leave you with a beautiful colored photo of Emily Anne and her second husband, Wallace H. Brannon. This was originally a black & white photo and on the back it lists all the colors that were used to paint it:
E. Hazel
H. Brown
Sweater Yellow
Dickie White
E. Blue
H. Brown
Bars Silver
Pre-Pearl Harbor
Good-Conduct
Leave last one uncolored
It also has the numbers 5-14 and 156787 on the back in pencil.
The photo is in a cardboard case and the only details is a small stamp at the bottom that reads: Dunbar, Charlotte, N.C.
I just ordered "Preserving Your Family Photographs: How to Organize, Present, and Restore Your Precious Family Images" and "Uncovering Your Ancestry through Family Photograph" both by Maureen A. Taylor. Maybe I can start using the correct terminology and figure out a little more about these amazing photos.
Well, that's it folks. Our first ever "Ancestor Field Trip" was a huge success and we look forward to many others. If you have any comments or ideas about how I should proceed with some of this new information, please let me know.
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:.jpg)
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.
I received a package in the mail today from my wife's uncle, Glenn. Inside I found some photocopies of census information about his family as well as some amazing photographs. Two photos immediately caught my eye. The first is of my wife's 2nd-great-grandmother, dated around 1900. It doesn't seem to be a reproduction and is in pretty bad shape, but still amazingly clear and detailed. I need to scan it and research it some more, but this might be my oldest photo to date.
The second is a terrific picture of the swim team from Langley High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1930:.jpg)
On the front you can see 14 of the team mates in quite the serious pose. The handsome fellow in the center of the second row is my wife's grandfather, Louis Milton (Pete) Hytowitz (Hyde). Pete was a great swimmer and Uncle Glenn has a few of his medals:
When you flip this photo over you get a lot more detail:
.jpg)
Seems that the team had won the City Championship and Carnegie Teck Relay in 1930. I need to follow up on all these details and see what else I can find about these events. Also, several team members are named. I uploaded the photo to Footnote.com and added annotations and spotlights to all the people I found. I think this is a very cool feature and I intend to use it a lot. Here's another example of a great swimmer:
I am getting very excited about all these photos and can't wait for my parents to bring some over from my family on their next visit. I have some real gems on my (less documented) of the tree.
On the way to dinner with my wife last night, we discussed my new hobby and how enthusiastic I am about it. I lamented the fact that I would really love to have some actual physical evidence to work with, rather than websites and online databases. I want to roll up my sleeves and dive into some photographs and aged documents. Most of that stuff on my side of the family is scattered amongst my relatives in Israel. I don't know how difficult it is going to be to pry it out of their hands, but I will give it a shot.
My wife said she thinks she might have some old photos and perhaps a copy of the eulogy for her grandmother given by her priest. She sent herself a reminder to check it out when we got home.
BINGO!
One of the storage boxes she had so neatly organized was titled "Brannon Family". When we opened it up we found a lot of scattered photos, documents, war bonds, letters and a photo album. Some of the photos were labeled with names and dates. Some had complete stories printed on the back. Some were in great shape and some not so much. But all I could think of was, wow! This stuff is awesome!
Turns out my wife's great-grandmother, Pattie, was a photographer (among some of her talents). She even had these little stamps on the back stating that the photo was taken by her and what her address was. Amazing!
After going through the box I decided to see what else was in that cabinet. I found some additional photos from the Hytowitz side (my wife's maternal lineage) sent two years ago to my mother-in-law. They are reproductions of older photos by they are splendid. I also found something I had tucked away and had forgotten about. The last copy of The Wall Street Journal for the 20th century and the first copy of the 21st century. You can see those in the photo above.
The album that was discovered is a travel journal of my wife's grandmother, Emily-Ann, traveling to Germany with her husband who served there with the US Air Force. It included beautiful portraits and even some postcards sent to her from her husband while he was away on a mission looking for a downed bomber in North Africa.
Today I started organizing all these photographs. I saw that there were a lot that had the same theme, size and texture, so I grouped them together. Then I saw that on the back they had some markings, like a studio stamp with 3-4 numbers and sometimes a letter. I used those to group the photos again. I tried to find out what these mean, but was unsuccessful. Any one have an idea about these markings?As you can see from the image on the left I laid them all out on my poker table and tried to get an idea of what I was dealing with. This afternoon I went to Michael's (the craft store) and got a photo organizer box that can handle about 2000 photos in separate compartments. So now all the photos are nicely sorted in that new box. I have a lot of work ahead of me.
I'll leave you with a portrait of Joseph W. (Hytowitz) Hyde, who would have been 100 years old last month. Handsome fellow, don't you think?
UPDATE: I added a sample of the markings on the backs of the photos I found. Click to enlarge:
