Hello Great Great GrandPappy!

So there I was, stuck in an endless loop of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result. Let me back up a little. I was working on finding sources for one of the (few) unsourced people in my tree. He was my mother's Aunt Opal's 3rd husband. I know he existed because his surname is in the Social Security records for Aunt Opal. His last name is Couch. His given name? I wish I knew! 

While most trees have her first two husbands (and associated children), few have any mention of the third husband. One Ancestry user tree shows him as Frank (but has no sources). Ancestry helpfully shows me several Joe Couch records....but Aunt Opal was Opal Estelle Robertson and Joe was married to Opal Fay White. Another dead end (and a good reminder how important it is to really delve into a hint to be sure it's correct). I'd searched every way I could think of several times over, but wasn't getting anywhere on any site I tried.

Then I had a brilliant flash of memory! Didn't I see a photo of Aunt Opal in one of the albums I brought home from my father's house? I'm sure I did! And don't I very clearly remember on the back of one a photography studio stamp with Couch in it? Maybe? Yes, definitely maybe! Off to the storage bin to see if I could locate it. Half an hour later, having dug out and looked thru several albums (but not the boxes of loose photos) I hadn't found a single image of Aunt Opal. But I was happily lifting photos off the not so sticky anymore pages looking at the backs to see if there were any identifying notes. And then I saw it! 

"Well there's someone I don't recognize" I thought to myself. It was a dapper older gentleman in a nice enough suit, staring thoughtfully into the distance. On the back of the photo, in my mother's beautiful script was "William Jefferson Robertson, Grandpa Robbie's father). It took me a moment to understand who Grandpa Robbie was. I didn't have any great grandpa Robert, Robbie, Robby or Bob. Then it hit me, my great grandfather Nathan Newell Robertson must have been called Grandpa Robbie (presumably for his surname Robertson)....this was his father, who I had identified in the past, but had never seen a photo of before. 

After I carefully tracked back the generations one finger at a time, mom...grandma...Nathan Newell...William...four fingers...I exclaimed "Hello Great Great GrandPappy! It's nice to meet you!" His photo is shown above. The facial shape reminds me a little of my grandmother, but I would never have figured out who it was without the note my mother carefully penned. I'm so glad she did. While I don't know for sure the year this was taken, I uploaded the image to MyHeritage. I hadn't tried the photo dating there yet and this seemed a good way to test it out. It estimated the image as being around 1921. 

William was born in 1857 in South Carolina. As with many of my ancestors, he was a farmer. By the 1870 census he had moved to Georgia. In 1881 he married Eliza Elvira Kuhn, and somewhere between 1911-1914 he married Ida Franklin. He had 3 sons between the two marriages. By 1890, property tax records show he owned a farm, and by the 1910 census his property was valued at $1500. From all appearances, he was a moderately successful farmer. While his life seems somewhat unremarkable, I'm sure he was a hard worker because farming is not an easy occupation. He died in Georgia in 1946 and is buried there.

I never did find the picture of Aunt Opal (but I will eventually go through the box of loose photos at some point). Finding this photo knocked me out of my insanity loop and "introduced" me to someone I never thought I'd "see".

Original photo in possession of Ancestry User patndoris94

Genealogy Heroes: Volunteers, Angels and Helpers

Image created with DALL-E and ChatGPT

There are so many wonderful and giving genealogists out there who make it their mission to help others. I'm always amazed at how giving and warm most genealogists are. Just researching your own tree could be a full time job for...well, basically forever! It's hard to imagine the time and effort these volunteers give on top of their own research. 

Here are just a few of many great projects I've heard of:

• Search Angels is a non-profit organization assisting with genealogy and DNA test results for those in search of their biological family roots (basic adoptive search is free)
• Family Treasures Found works to reunite lost treasures with their families
• Megan Smolenyak has researched and helped identify 188 soldiers of various US wars. For 25 years, she's assisted the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) with identification of soldiers who gave their lives in war, but had not yet been accounted for
• DNA Doe Project has a mission to identify John and Jane Does using investigative genetic genealogy
• Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) is a place where volunteers offer to provide research time (without charge) to researchers who need "boots on the ground" genealogy help in a distant location
• 10 Million Names is dedicated to recovering the names of the estimated 10 million men, women, and children of African descent who were enslaved in pre- and post-colonial America
• Project Infant a site dedicated to every victim of the Mother & Baby Homes in Ireland

If you're thinking of giving of your time, in addition to the above projects, here are a couple ideas almost any of us can do:

• Assist with indexing, transcribing and proof-reading: Family Search has a whole page of volunteer opportunities
• Volunteer with a genealogical society such as the National Genealogical Society (NGS) or American Ancestors or ask your local genealogical society how you can volunteer with them
• Take photos or transcribe for BillionGraves or FindAGrave

For more ideas and sites: 

• Check out Cyndi's List for sites working to return reunite old photos with their family and other lost and found projects
• Investigate the numerous volunteer projects on Cyndi's List
• Browse Facebook groups - there are tons of them depending on your area of interest

While we all give in our own way, preserving and telling the stories of our ancestors - volunteers, helpers and angels are the unsung genealogy heroes. From transcribing documents to adding photos, I'd venture every one of us has benefited from the generosity of these amazing people. We may know some of their names, others remain in the shadows. If you're keen to give back to the genealogy community, take a few moments to look through some of these projects and ideas.

I've added a Volunteer Opportunities section on my Genealogy Toolbox page where you can find all of these links easily.

Testing Ancestry's Photo Facial Recognition

One of the newer Ancestry.com updates is AI assisted facial recognition. I saw it mentioned in an email and quickly clicked on the button to test it out! I was directed to my media gallery, but was presented with no information on actually using the feature. A quick hop over to the help pages didn't yield any clues, so I started playing around.

From my media gallery, I selected a photo where I knew who was shown. In this picture is my mother as a young girl. To start facial recognition, first click on the "tag" button (shown with a red arrow in the photo).

Then click on the face of the person you want to search. A box will appear around the face and a pop up will appear where you can select someone in your tree, or choose "Recognize Ancestors". I chose "Recognize Ancestors". CAUTION: If you select someone in your tree, it will simply tag the selected person in the photo with the name chosen. It will NOT compare the photo to other photos of the person you may already have in your media gallery.

You'll be presented with possible matches for the person you selected, and an analysis of how viable the match suggestion may be. AI is searching other media in the database to look for potential matches. In this example, the top option is labelled "Great" for this match (but it does show it's a match to my own tree), none the less, it did match to the correct person, my mother, who was already in my tree. It matched her face to exactly the same photo, so it was easy to confirm AI did a good job analyzing this photo. 

While the first photo worked quite well, when I tried it on another photo of my mother, you can see from the results below, it did not do so well at all. I was presented with two potential matches, but none of the options were listed as "Great", only "Good" and "Fair". And none of the suggestions were actually the person in the photo. 

I tried the same test with 2 photos on another person in my tree, and I had the same results. It was 50/50 on how well the AI did. To use this feature, the media item must already be saved in your gallery. I tried this on a regular photo hint, but could not select to tag the person. It makes sense to only allow you to tag media you've already saved. But, on the flip side, it would be nice to be able to do facial recognition without actually tagging anyone at all, in advance of saving a photo hint. We all know, some photos are not of the person the original poster attributed them to, and it could potentially prevent (or at least limit) people from perpetuating incorrect information if they could verify before saving. To some extent, if you already have media saved, there's a reasonable chance you already know who's in the photo. But certainly, there are times when there are unknown people, or you take the details of a photo at face value, and would just like a way to see if the info may be correct.

The takeaway? While this is a great new tool to potentially help identify unknown people in a photo (or perhaps confirm your suspicions), it should be used with caution. Ideally, you'll be searching for people who you already have a photo of in your tree, where you'll be able to do your own comparison to see if you think the AI is correct. As with anything AI, it's best to double check everything. This is a big step in a new direction, but it's not a magic bullet.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay
Photos of Margaret Irene LeRoy are from my media gallery

Favorite Photos: Genealogists Who Graciously Share

Photos seem to be a constant point of contention for many family historians. Some seem to get upset, even downright angry, when they've posted a photo online and others then save it to their trees, and/or it's reshared. It's a recurring theme in online groups (especially on Facebook). It's a sentiment I just can't wrap my head around. Genealogy is all about sharing. Sharing our finds, stories and photos helps others in their own research. 

While research is often a solitary endeavor for many of us, the information we gather is the result of someone else's sharing (whether we realize it or not). None of us would be where we are in our research without others who researched before us. From an oral family story sparking our initial interest...to photos...to family bibles with lists of births, deaths and marriages...to the algorithms finding additional records we've attached to our tree, so they can be recommended to others...sharing is a necessary part of effective genealogy. Even the person who recorded an original document was, in a way, sharing. It may be been legally required, or it may have been their choice. But were it not for someone passing along records, none of us would have anything to research.

My first problem with the closed-minded  "mine, mine, mine, all mine" attitude about photos begins with the person posting the photo online in the first place, presumably publicly. Any time you share anything on the internet (no matter how private you may believe it is) there's always the chance it will become public. I'm not entirely sure why anyone posting a picture to Ancestry (or any other online site) thinks there's any sort of expectation the photo is entirely private. It's up to each individual user to choose if their tree is public or private, and if private, whether the tree is searchable. Even private trees are not really private if you give access to others. It's not Ancestry's fault, nor the fault of other users, if someone doesn't understand privacy settings or doesn't bother with them. If one truly doesn't intend for a photo to be shared, what exactly is the purpose of putting it online? Use desktop software to organize and save anything you may not want to have circulated.

My second frustration is the "I have the original" belief some folks have, whereby they and only they, are entitled to possess a particular photograph. The reality is, in the past, the same photo was often copied and distributed to many family members. Not unlike many (if not most) of us have experienced with school photos, lovingly labelled and passed out or mailed to just about every family member and friend our parents could think of. Just because a user happens to have an old photograph, does not necessarily mean it's the only copy. But, if you have a photo you believe is the only one, and you truly don't want it shared - then don't share it yourself. Save it privately offline. I'm not sure why anyone would feel so strongly no other related family member should ever be allowed to see a photo of their relatives (no matter how distant) but I can respect it. If the image then shows up online, you now know you didn't really have the only copy. Simple.

Certainly, there are valid copyright issues to consider. For photos, copyright is the life of the creator, plus 70 years. Just because you happen to have a photo in your possession doesn't necessarily mean it's yours to post (although to be fair, most of us are unlikely to face any complaints from a long deceased person's family...in fact, they might be glad others are remembering the person). For more recent photos, try to find out who took the photo and ask permission before posting online. Personally, whenever I save another user's photo even though Ancestry shows who posted it when I attach it in my tree, I still copy the information into the photo description to give credit where credit is due, as a common courtesy. If I find multiple copies of the same photo in my hints, I try to choose one with the earliest posting date (hoping it is truly the original poster of the image). I may not be able to credit the person who actually took the photo, but I can certainly try to credit the person who I believe provided it. I also have family members who've sent me many family photos I've shared in my tree. Along with requesting permission before posting, I acknowledge the person who provided the photos to me in my photo description (since I don't know who took them).

I'm personally very excited when I find new photos of family members online. It helps me visualize the person, and how the facts I'm finding about their life may have impacted them. The posture, the eyes, the expressions, the clothing, the setting....everything we see in a photo gives us a little glimpse into the person we're researching. I personally have a custom tag (on Ancestry) I use when I find a photo of particular interest. I enjoy photos with period clothing, military uniforms, old cars and adorably cute children.

In fact, one of my favorite photo "finds" is of Lillian Jane Kenney (1919-2003) the grandaunt of my ex-husband, shared by a relative. It shows her as a small child, and the note on the back of the photo states "Aunt Jane loved to poke out the eyes of her dolls. Look closely and you’ll see that’s what she’s doing in this photo." I don't know precisely why this is one of my favorites, but it is! Were it not for the family member graciously sharing this photo, I'd have never known it existed. I'm including it as the feature photo in this post...look closely and you'll see what she's doing! Both the owner of the photo and I believe copyright is out of play, and I have her permission to include the photo here. 

I've always been thankful for the generous genealogists and family historians who embrace sharing anything and everything they can to help others with their journey. I welcome others to save photos I share. Photos are small glimpses into our ancestors lives and we should treasure those elusive moments in time, captured on film. 

Image shared courtesy of Ancestry user brownray921

Dead Fred Genealogy Photo Archive

DeadFred.com is one of those rabbit hole sites for me. It's a genealogy photo archive allowing users to search for, upload, and research historical photographs. It's a FREE resource for those interested in genealogy and family history, particularly identifying and preserving old family photos. Users can browse through a vast collection of photographs, including those submitted by other users from around the world. Photographs often include detailed information such as names, dates, and locations. The hope is to reconnect individuals with their past. While I've not found any confirmed photos of my family on the site (yet), I do so enjoy poking around and browsing aimlessly through their collections. I find it fascinating...especially period clothing!

Here are some of the features of the site:

Search Functionality: Users can search the archive for specific names, locations, or keywords to find photographs potentially related to their family. Currently, the site boasts 159,354 records!

Surname Search: There's an extensive surname list for photos where a surname has been provided. 23,354 surnames to be exact! Note: It may be difficult to figure out if the person is "the person" you're looking for. Don't assume just because the name is right, it's the relative you're seeking. Try to find corroborating evidence and keep in mind, the oldest surviving photo is from 1826. Photography really didn't take off until the mid 1800's. So if you find a photo of someone who lived before those dates, it's not the person you're looking for.

Photo Submission: Users are encouraged to upload their own old family photos to the archive, along with any known information about the photographs, to assist others in their research. You can even mail them old photos you don't want any longer and they'll add them to the archive.

Vintage Yearbooks: Yearbook photos from pre-1935 vintage yearbooks submitted to the site. (I'd imagine there's a potential for overlap with collections already available on some of the big sites, but you never know!)

Mystery Photos: Photos submitted without surnames are posted in a special section. These photos may be even harder to identify. But you might be lucky enough to spot one of someone you already know from existing photos and can give the person a full name. Or maybe you recognize grandma's house in the picture and can help establish a location.

Potential to Reunite Photos with Families: If you find you're related to someone in a photo posted on the site, and the photo is owned by DeadFred.com, you can request the original photo be sent to you. So far, they've reunited 3,347 photos! However, if the photo was posted by another user, it will be up to them if they want to reunite the photo. Either way, you can easily download a copy of any photos (for your personal use).

The only major site I'm aware of where Dead Fred photos are included in their searchable collections is MyHeritage.com. As of today, they show the collection having 65,976 items, less than half the total records on the site. Even if you're familiar with the database from MyHeritage, it never hurts to go direct to the source!

Dead Fred is a totally FREE site. They do not charge users to upload photos. Nor do they charge for reuniting photos. But since there are tangible costs associated with maintaining the site, they do take donations by check or PayPal if you want to support the project. Unlike many sites who reunite photos by doing extensive research themselves and contacting potential family members directly - an act of kindness many greatly appreciate - this site emphasizes collaboration, relying on its users to contribute content and providing any known details to help others in their research. The site aims to assist in the discovery of lost family connections and the preservation of historical photographs for future generations of genealogists. If you've never visited before, head on over to DeadFred.com and check it out.

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

Potential Treasure Troves In User Submitted Media

I previously wrote about linking photos to everyone shown and the importance of noting all the unknown babies. Tonight these two concepts solidly collided as I researched William Harrison Short Sr (1837-1898), the 3rd great-grandfather of my ex-husband. The result was immensely gratifying!

I've previously corresponded with 2 DNA matches, who both have well researched trees with lots of user uploaded media items. One of the trees is a person who's been researching over 25 years. While I have, on occasion, had a difference of opinion on a few people in his tree, for the most part, it's generally accurate. Some people would shy away from a tree with 54,000+ people as being just a name collector. I cautiously view it as an opportunity. So long as the person has conducted research, why should I discount a large tree? There could be wonderful discoveries to be made! Tonight, this proved true.

I also recognize lots of users may be frustrated with user submitted media at times. Lately, the proliferation of color enhance images has frustrated me. While it's fun to see what our ancestors may have "really" looked like, I personally won't save these images. To me, the original is the best version since it's representative of the time it was taken. We all know what it's like to see census images uploaded by others, but they're just duplicates of hints we already have (and most Ancestry images are far better than the user uploaded ones). And when the same image comes up over and over as a hint, and you ignore it just as many times as being information you already have, only to have it popup again from another user...it can be...well, maddening. We all want to get to the valuable hints right? Not sift thru duplicate image after duplicate image, Word and PDF versions of the same transcription, or image vs transcription of the same document/article. But taking the time to look at each image or story before dismissing it is actually important. You might think all the information is the same...but you may be very wrong.

I freely admit, the sheer number of obituaries, items related to his numerous children and wife, and military records for William himself was daunting. I've been working on him all week and I'm not quite half way through all the hints and media items. He served in the Civil War for the Union. It would appear he may have volunteered, as he enlisted prior to the first draft. He fought in an impressive number of famous battles and skirmishes in several states. He suffered permanent injuries from a gunshot wound in his last battle and lay injured and suffering on the battlefield between 8-13 days (depending on the article). 

Equally impressive (in her own way) was his wife, Mary Ann Kemp (1844-1910). Over a 25 year period, starting when she was jut 17 years old, she bore 14 children. As of the 1900 census, she had 10 living children...and I had 4 unknown babies. I honestly didn't hold out much hope of finding their names. I felt very lucky to discover the name of one in an 1870 census, but I still had 3 I thought I might never know. Then I reviewed 2 seemingly similar user uploaded media items...

The first was an image of a single page from the Short Family Bible. The handwriting was clear enough and I set out to mine all the details. As I did, I gleefully discovered the names and birth dates for the other 3 missing babies! I'd now been introduced to Ida Almeta, Louisa Decia, Mary Ellen, and Ada Augusta Short  None of the other 3 were enumerated in any census or shown in any other records I've found. The eldest was a mere 5 years old when she passed away. The others were between 3 months and a year old.

Now, here's the important part. The 2nd image I reviewed was a 1950 transcription of the family Bible. One might assume it would just be a duplicate of the image I'd just finished working with. But unbeknownst to me, there were obviously more pages in the Bible. The transcription included death dates for all 4 babies who died before 1900, marriage dates for almost all the other children (some were just verification of already known facts), and birth/death/marriage information on Mary's parents (Edward Kemp and Elizabeth Jackson, who I already knew but some of the information was new to me or provided possible alternate dates to information I'd found elsewhere). There were additional notes about Mary's parents I need to review in the future because there are discrepancies with information I already have and they don't totally makes sense to me yet. There was also a notation about William's grandfather and when he moved to Indiana from Virginia in 1807. I don't know his grandfather's name yet, but it's still an important piece of information I'll be definitely be using in future research.

There's also a final paragraph with details about Mary's grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather and a potential link to President Andrew Jackson (including how they were his closest blood relatives who had any descendants). I'm going to need to review this particular information very carefully and find records to verify because I know how easy it is for family lore to spawn based solely on a matching surname. It seems a bit fantastical, and it may or may not be true. Stories morph as they're passed down. But even if it isn't true, I'll still record the information as a family story at some point, after I've determined if there's any validity to it at all.

As you can see, 2 similar images - one a photo of a page from a Bible, and the other a transcription of the information - were actually 2 very different documents, each providing their own wealth of details. There were 28 different people to link these 2 images to, and it took me a couple of hours to attach and cite them all, but it was so worth it! I now have no unknown babies for William and Mary and I'm positively thrilled! So next time you have 2 seemingly duplicate images, documents, transcriptions or stories, take the time to really compare them before dismissing either of them as not being useful. Even similar headstone images can provide different details, or one may be much clearer than the other. User submitted media can be a treasure trove of it's own, Make the most of mining those details!

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay 

Using OCR for Transcribing Newspaper Articles

Newspaper articles and obituaries can provide a lot of information. You're likely to find names of relatives and friends, possibly birth/death dates and places, residence, occupation/retirement or even cause of death. I personally like to transcribe newspaper clippings so I can easily work with the details...but transcribing can be a time consuming process depending on where you find the image. Enter optical character recognition (OCR). It's not perfect, but it can make the job a lot easier.

The majority of newspaper clippings are .jpg images (photos) so it's not as easy as copy/paste. If you're finding the image on a newspaper archive site, there's a reasonable chance an OCR transcription is already provided. Those are typically able to be copied and pasted (but you can't edit out errors directly on the webpages). Be sure to read both the source document and the transcription. Computers aren't infallible, and sometimes they have trouble with certain characters, old/faded images or when column borders exist. If you accidentally "transcribe" the column border, or catch some random characters from the next column, you'll have a lot of i's and l's and other gobbledygook where it doesn't belong. Articles spanning multiple columns may need to be transcribed in separate steps for each column. No matter how you cut it, OCR speeds up the process...just don't expect it to be perfect.  Once copied/pasted, you can feel free to make any necessary edits before saving in your tree or using to mine the details.

If you don't have a "built in" transcription with the image, there are tools to make the job easier. My new favorite is the build in Windows Snipping Tool. Windows users can search for the app on their computer, and I highly suggest pinning it to your taskbar for easy access. OCR was added in the last few months. Open the image you want to transcribe, and select the area with the text. Then, click the OCR button as shown in the image. All the text will be highlighted and you'll see an option to Copy All Text. This will put the text on your clipboard and you can paste it into the program of your choice (notepad, Word, Google Docs, etc.). For additional information on using Windows Snipping tool for OCR please watch the video linked at the end of this post. The biggest caveat is all the text needs to appear on your screen before snipping. Snipping Tool won't let you scroll to capture text. This can be problematic with longer articles/obits when the text becomes too small for the computer to "read" it. 

If you have a longer article, where the text is too small for Snipping Tool to work well, try using Google Docs! (Yup, it works! I use it all the time.) Simply upload the .jpg from your computer to Google Docs. Right click it, select Open With and choose Google Docs. You'll see the image at the top, and when you scroll down, the OCR transcription will be below. You can edit the transcription as needed right in Google Docs. More detail on using Google Docs for OCR can be found here.

If you happen to be lucky enough to have a PDF of the document you're working with, but can't just copy/paste the info (thank you Adobe and other PDF editors for locking down some documents), you can use the same Google Docs trick. You can also open PDFs in Word (though I've had mixed success) or you can use the PDFCandy.com OCR tool for free (though you are limited to how frequently you can use it at no charge. See my previous post here for the limitations.)

We all use transcriptions a little differently. There's no right or wrong way to go about it. If you like to do it old school and enjoy reading, then typing, then reading, then typing, then....well, you get the idea...that's fine! I personally prefer to let the computer do the heavy lifting, then I'll just do a little housekeeping to tidy up the text. Please keep copyright in mind if you're planning on posting/sharing any transcriptions, and always credit the newspaper, poster, etc. appropriately. If you have another suggestion for OCR transcription, connect with me on my socials. I'd love to hear how you handle transcribing from images and PDFs. 

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5tDJCLnShw

Link Pictures to Everyone Shown

I always try to link photos to every person shown (assuming they're related by blood or marriage, the criteria I use for adding people in my tree). I do this when saving the image the first time. This helps avoid duplicate photos in my media gallery, and keeps the size of my offline database manageable.

I've noticed a trend in user photos where it's often linked to just one person. Sometimes the description includes other names. Often I'm able to reasonably discern someone in a photo based on other images I've saved. I look carefully at eyes, ears, nose, mouth and face shape to help me figure out who each person is likely to be. Even accessories such as glasses can help me make a determination.

Sometimes, I simply don't know who the others shown are and I typically annotate "others unknown" in the photo description to indicate this. If I think they may be family members I haven't added to my tree yet, I wait to attach the photo until I've found who the subjects are. Only when I feel I'm out of possibilities do I list someone as unknown. I make it a point to attempt to identify as many of the subjects in a photo as possible. Many times, the only photo I have of a person is because they were in an image with someone else. 

Photos really help bring people to life (especially with the many photo editing tools available today.) While Ancestry.com lets you colorize and crop, which serve most of my basic needs, for those who want to do more advanced or interesting techniques MyHeritage.com is the way to go. They offer colorizing, enhancing, animating (sorry, it's more than a little creepy to me), DeepStory and AI Time Machine™.  If you're a photo aficionado, a subscription to MyHeritage.com may be well be worth the cost. I'd be surprised if they don't continue to roll out more new photo features in the coming years as they seem to be at the forefront in this respect.

Recently, I found a photo of a tiny child in a casket in a family photo album. It was labelled as being the son of my great-uncle. Until I found the photo, I had no idea he had any children. The child passed at just a year old, and was never enumerated in any census or shown in any other records I've found. As soon as I entered his name the FindAGrave.com memorial hint popped right up. I doubt I'd ever known he existed were it not for the one single heartbreaking photo after his death.

I'll be putting my identification skills to the test in coming months. While cleaning out my childhood home, I recently acquired quite a few totes and boxes full of albums and loose photos. Some have names or descriptive information, some don't. Sometimes I can look at one and go "Oh! That's my cousin so-and-so". Other faces I'm seeing for the first time. I'm very excited to start making my way through the veritable treasure trove I've inherited!

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay