G2G: 52 Ancestors Week 8: I Can Identify

Question

Week 8
From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 8 is "I Can Identify." Genealogy research is about identifying the correct people to attach to our family trees. Who have you worked hard to identify? Another way to interpret the theme would be to highlight someone like my grandfather, who could spot (and correctly identify all kinds of mushrooms. (My sisters and I never got the knack of doing that!)

Fess up. We've all had to work hard identifying the John Jones and Sarah Jane Smiths on our trees. 

Comments

hey, i resemble that remark!

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Properly identifying mushrooms is pretty important. 

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not so much, you can develop allergies to them over time   i ve known of people who have eaten morels for years  that get sickened by them now   as a kid we ate beefsteak mushrooms and loved them now i pass on them and wait for the morels  my dr says they will kill me sooner or later due to how i fix them   fry em crispy gold and follow them w/ some golden fresh crappie fillets piled high    but then again , what do they (drs) know, within the last week i have came across a cousin, who was a dr, that died after eating mushrooms  he must of ate them like i do b/c his wife was only sickened   then again, maybe she knew better than to eat them--- ever seen the movie The Beguiled

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Well, we know Alice has an affinity for shrooms. And Mario....

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I don't need to identify different types of mushrooms.  I simply avoid ALL of them.  Suffering severe anaphylaxis more than once due to undisclosed mushrooms in food, I inspect everything I don't cook myself.

Genealogically - too many to document here, but the ones I like to remember most fondly would be discovering my 3-greats-grandfather was Irish, not Scottish (identifying the Bounty Immigrant record card as his); and identifying my great-grandfather was not born in Liverpool, Lancashire, as he had claimed, but in Sweden.

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I so need to show Amy this thread....

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I've heard there are different versions of morels. All are essentially safe, but one kind can upset your stomach a bit. I'm not expert on that though.

Our family did pick and eat some mushrooms when I was a kid - meadow mushrooms and occasionally inky caps (I think inky caps are the ones you don't want to have alcohol in the same meal). Morels are hard to find but easy to identify. My parents got kind of into trying wild foods for a few years ... we always ate wild fruit: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, pin cherries, choke cherries, but we branched out into other things. Cattail stalks are pretty good. Obviously need to be careful about identifying mushrooms. My wife makes wild nettle soup (eastern European favorite).

But despite the books saying they were edible we could never prepare lily pad roots to be edible!

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I'm still new at this. I am asking the collaborative spirit to come together and "show me" (i'm from missouri) WikiTree at it's finest. Who said, "ever eat a pine tree? you know, many parts are edible." He was a Notable. I know he had parents, a wife and a kid or two yet, his profile is very skinny. here is a hint-4225

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I had to cheat and do an internet search for that. I'm barely too young to remember that quote, as it turns out.

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Using available resources isn't cheating, unless you get caught! It just means you tried harder than the guy willing to settle for second place.I checked to make sure he didn't die from mushrooms like one of my forefathers. Who would think to see if a pine tree is edible?

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I have...no idea what that references. But, I'll just smile and nod. Watch out for sap and read this blog:

https://allroadhaverhill.blogspot.com/2023/02/52-ancestors-week-8-i-can-identify.html

Answer 1

Boy, talk about well timed.  This is what I'm working on right now, solving the Ashton mystery.  Three of my 2nd great grandfather Captain Joseph Prichard's sons used Ashton as a middle name.  Joseph's brother Benson Prichard named a daughter Elizabeth Ashton Prichard.  But their mother's maiden name was Lindsay, not Ashton. Where did Ashton come from? It bothered me for years.  

Just learned there was another brother named John Prichard http://wikitree.com/wiki/Pritchard-5418.  He was a Timber Merchant who married Ann Ashton, daughter of Timber Merchant John Ashton.  They had two children, then she died, perhaps giving birth.  John and the children moved from Eldon Place, Liverpool with his parents to live with his in-laws, John and Ann Ashton on Great George Street.  He stayed with them until the end.  My ancestor Joseph was a sea captain who sailed back and forth across the Atlantic for 30 years.  He moved to New Brunswick but sailed to Liverpool many times a year.  He may have stayed with the Ashton family when he was in port.

Unless I can find more of a blood connection I think this is it.  I can identify the Ashton Mystery.  And John named his first son Joseph Ashton Prichard.  Was that after his brother Joseph?  Maybe.  Joseph Prichard Jr. named his first son John Ashton Prichard.

Comments

Pat, it looks like you solved the mystery!

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Thanks, Alexis.  Sometimes people chose names based on admiration or love, and not always on blood ties.

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Pat—yes, I go to church with Cary Grant.

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Forgive me, it's late and I thought...isn't he dead?  Then I got your joke and I was laughing myself silly. 

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Pat, Cary Grant and his wife Kay are my good friends.         I’m glad you got a laugh—Jack B. Quick and his wife Susie are also good friends.

Answer 2

I have really made an effort to identify members of my husband's family from the large box of photos I was able to obtain about six years ago. I was told if I didn't want them that they were going into the trash.

I can identify everyone in this 1926 photo. My husband's great grandmother Tennie Jones is sitting on the ground next to her youngest child Ellen. My husband's grandmother Audrey Nelson is holding her baby Eleanor, which is how I was able to identify the year as 1926. The three teenagers are Grace, Deanna, and Elwyn. I was fortunate to find a 1925 yearbook photo of Grace, or I still would be confused with her and Deanna. The little boy on the right is my dear father-in-law LeRoi Nelson.

Comments

These pictures are treasures!

I can relate, Alexis. I inherited photos of a family reunion held on 4 July 1926. Luckily someone had the bright idea to arrange people by family groups and the children were young enough to sort by age. That was a puzzle, but I solved it and labelled everyone! You can see my results @ http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hurd-3582

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Anonymous, that is wonderful that you were able to label everyone in that big 1926 reunion!!

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Lovely photo, Alexis. Your comment about the pictures ending up in the trash if you didn't want them, brought home to me the tragedy of all the lost images.  I'm sure that happened to many early photos that descendants would dearly love to have today.  Also, the unidentified.  In vintage stores there are so many photos from 1860 to 1915 for sale.  No idea who the people were.  I'm so glad to were able to identify everyone.

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Pat, thank you for your comment. The photos were going in the trash because there were no names on them. You and I so often think alike, and I figured that I would be able to identify some of them.

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A picture IS worth a thousand words. I gotta know, that one in the middle on the back row, you know, the one w/ her hand on her hip w/ a little attitude on exhibit- Was she a red-head by chance? Good work all the way around.

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K Smith, yes, there is a very good chance that her hair was a dark auburn red. My mother had fiery red hair, so I wish I had more photos of her in color. Thank you for a great comment!

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Thank you! I love me some old b&w photos.

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Alexis your husband has a gorgeous family I love there outfit they all look adorable

Thank you sweetheart for sharing this

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From composition to exposure, Ansel would be proud.

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Susan, thank you for your sweet comment. I feel very blessed that I have been able to save and identify these photos.

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You should be my dear friend your photos collection are always a treasure to look at I certainly love them ❤️❤️

Answer 3

It helped when my Jones married a Boody!

It's been a painstaking process to sort out my Sawyers and Prescotts. They settled in Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1634- I was born 13 miles from their houses. That's a lot of time to pile up multiple cousins of the same same in the same place at the same time! Fortunately, wills and land records have been preserved and there's enough descendants nearby to help those who have grown up "away."

Comments

from what i gather, i have cousins who live on the same property our ancestor lived on in early 1700's Maryland. Unfortunately for me, a lot of primary source documents were destroyed during the civil war and order #11 in jackson co

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Good job, Anonymous.  I have a Prescott from Lancaster too. Jonas, the blacksmith.  My 8th great.  I think we're 10th cousins through the Prescott family, closer on another line.  Amazing to grow up miles from their houses.

Answer 4

I have, maybe had, an uncle, james smith who was a well known hardware guy back in the day of real hardware stores. the old timers would bring him old broken pieces of relics to try and stump him. without fail, he would tell them what the piece was, what it went to or how it functioned. antique tools, cars, tractors, implements anything that was commonly found on a farm or home. The last visit to the local historical society, after i properly introduced myself. I was warned by a volunteer who worked there, and was very familiar to my family, to not request addendums to their materials.  Both of our families have long histories associated to the town. As i looked over some of the photos i noticed they had dad identified as his brother jim. i told her, that in good conscience, i could not let that go uncorrected as dad was named after his dad, who carried his grandmothers name as his middle name and that name is associated with some of the first settlers in that part of jackson co mo. (home of the CHIEFS!) The Hunter's were a large family of predominantly male children that settled there in about 1850's along the Santa Fe Trail, west of Independence. Most did not marry or have offspring, therefore were forgotten by the time the town was really settled post WWI. I also noted that they had a photo of the Hunter's house also as my gr grandfather's house. As there was another house visible in the distance, I suggested that was grandpa Smith's house as the Hunter's house was a good distance from town. I'm not sure I am welcome any more.

Comments

K, Either not so welcome, or they will vote you into office in absentia. Did you offer to write up or record some of your memories?

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They have two notebooks of photos, newspaper clippings and articles of family history. I like hearing people who haven't a clue tell about the local history. Back in the day, I had an old timer tell me that i probably wouldn't believe it but, i was related to half the people in town. after 6 months of genealogy, i think he underestimated that claim.

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I found your story fascinating.  Sort of, our history is 100% correct; don't try to update it, K Smith.  But about your Uncle James Smith, he should have appeared on that old game show where they made up stories about objects and the contestants guessed the true use.

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I sincerely doubt if there is much (good or bad) in the Historical Society's exhibits that cannot be tied to my family history. It is located in the first Fire House of Raytown which was the old icehouse back in the day. My great grandfather bought it and several lots back early 1900's. His son, Uncle Minor, sold it to the city when it was incorporated. Minor was the town's second Mayor who also donated the first motorized fire wagon. The first volunteer fire dept. consisted of my dad and his cousins, none of which were much older than 20 yo. I was surprised by how much stuff was on display. I could go there and get enough fodder to become the next John "Boy" Walton. Now that I got the bug, I want to know more about those they looked up to since they didn't write much of anything down.

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Was that What's My Line with Dorothy Kilgallen?

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No, that show they guessed occupations.  I think it was Liar's Club, or New Liar's Club.

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K, My dad was a volunteer firefighter also. He once told me that he and his buddies used to go to the station for some O2 when they'd been drinking. He very seldom got tipsy during my lifetime but something in the way he told this story suggested he partied a bit as a young man-possibly something he learned in the army. All his childhood friends (cousins) served. Those who saw action had things they wanted to unsee.

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@A   in my mid-20's, i found myself drinking in the local VFW Hall. On the wall was photo's of mom's who lost children in  WWI & II and Korea. As i studied the faces in the photos of MOM'S, that lost children in various wars, i began putting names and relationships together. As i began connecting the dots, i realized that i knew someone, that knew someone or was related to almost all the moms on the wall. If i went back there now, i would probably be WOWED  againby how many i am related or connected to.

Answer 5

My Dad use to come to a screeching halt on a dirt road for Morel mushrooms and or Mountain lillies, traveling at 40/50 mph.

Comments

Was that before seatbelts were commonly used?

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Yes and no. My Father lived in the same rural area most of his life. His favorite thing to do was "carry" a can of beer between his legs on those roads. It was an old Travelall, I don't think it had seatbelts. He's been dead for a number of years, so I'm not sure if one could get away with that now.

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I assure you this is still a favorite pastime on gravel roads and a convenient way to carry your favorite beverage. But now, everyone is doing it driving a side-by-side that costs more than my first house.

Answer 6

Genealogically speaking, I would love to be able to identify my 2nd grt. grandfathers father. Many years ago, someone decided he belonged with a certain family group, but, nothing fits.  His elder brother, Douglas, named his daughter for their grandmother, Alice Vinie Harrison Puckett. I have yet to be able to find her let alone the father. What I do know is that it is NOT Samuel from Estill, KY. In conversing with his descendants, I was told that he was too educated to fit in their line. He was an M.D. The only proof I can find of his existence are  some land records and he was a Judge for a bit in MO about 1840.

Comments

I also have a 2nd gr grandfather who is a stubborn brick wall. His death record has an age but not a birthrate, and a town where I can find no other people with his family name.

Answer 7

I was pretty proud of an instance where I was not identifying who, but identifying when.

My wife's grandmother (Freeda McCarthy) was a child when she got her photo taken with her family: https://www.wikitree.com/photo/jpg/McCarthy-3823

This is a photo, of a photocopy, of the actual photo, sent to my wife by another family member. (Yes, we'd like to get a digital scan of it at some point.)

We knew which one was her grandmother. She was leaning on her mother's leg. We had a pretty good idea of the children, based on name, gender, and dates. We also knew that one child was missing from the photo.

I went through several stages of research to narrow down and establish when the photo was taken:

The youngest child, Howard, is shown in the photo, below the father. Howard was born in 10 Apr 1916.

We saw that the missing child was missing from the photo because she had died young. This was Harriet, who died 29 Oct 1917.

The father, Samuel McCarthy died 1 May 1918.

So we knew that the photo was between 29 Oct 1917 and 1 May 1918.

But the clincher was with the oldest son, Raymond Roy McCarthy. I discovered a newspaper article in The Miller Press, 8 November, 1917:

Ray McCarthy arrived home Friday on a ten days’ furlough and is visiting at the home of his parents Mr. and Mrs. Samuel McCarthy of Alpha township. Ray was one of the first to enlist from Hand County, being stationed at Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis for some time. He is now located on the Mexican border at Columbus, New Mexico, and states that the two other boys who enlisted at the same time are there also. They are Wm. Neuendorff and Robt. Sherrill. 

The 8 November 1917 is a Thursday Which means that Ray arrived home on 2 November 1917 and was on a 10 days furlough. You can see Ray in the photo, behind and between his parents wearing his military uniform.

This means that this photo was taken probably sometime in the week of 2 November 1917 to 9 September 1917, while Ray was on leave. We have now narrowed the time of the photo to a period of a few days.

Because of identifying the date of this photo, the story is deeper and it also means that the circumstances of the photo is a tragedy. Harriet died at the age of 7 years old on 29 October 1917. Ray arrived home on furlough just 4 days later because of the family death. The newspaper article did not explain why Ray was home. But the data tells the story. Everyone in this photo is in mourning and probably still in shock. You can see how their mother, Addie McCarthy, is wearing black, and a choker. They likely wanted to get a photo of the whole family while their eldest son is back home from the military, in case something else happened to one of the members of the family. Remember that the United States entered World War I in April 1917. Perhaps the parents were concerned that Ray might be deployed at some point.

And then it's also sad to think that the father, Samuel, died just 6 months later on 1 May 1918. This means that this family photo is likely the last photo taken of Samuel, and likely the last family photo.

Hence the reason why I would like to get a better copy of the photo and get a real digital scan of the photo. It's very precious, even with such sad circumstances.

Comments

That's not a bad photo for the time, I've certainly seen worse. The lighting is a big uneven, hopefully that was part of the scanning process.

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Yes. As I mentioned, the original photo went through a copy machine (not scanned per se) that printed on paper, and then a photo taken of that. That's why it has the vertical scan lines through it and you can see where the paper wasn't even straight when the photo of it was taken. If we get a proper scan of the photo, at a higher resolution, then it should all turn out well.

Answer 8

This week I blogged about an unidentified baby photo. I wrote about the photo and how I used a known photo to conclude that it is most likely my grandfather, [[Kolk-91|William Clyde Kolk (abt.1898-1946)]].

Here is the identified photo

You can see the photos in my blog post.

https://familytreesandbranches.blogspot.com/2023/02/52-ancestors-in-52-weeks-week-8-i-can.html

Comments

Very interesting blog, Kim. I think you're probably correct.  It's the same baby, your grandfather William Kolk.  We see how much our own photos vary depending on mood, expression, lighting etc.

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Thanks for your response, Pat! It is really helpful to have another person confirm my thought process!

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It's a lovely picture Kim.

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What a wonderful photo it is so clear

Thank you Kim for sharing this treasure

Answer 9

My most exciting journey of identification so far was the line of my maternal ancestors by the name of Graul, my mother's LNAB. My mother had long said that nobody knew where that particular line came from. When we found a transcript of her grandfather's birth certificate, we knew that he was born in the village Hohenedlau, north of Halle/Saale in central Germany. It was about ten years ago that I started periodically searching the internet for anyone named Graul from the Edlau villages, and the only thing I found was a contract of purchase from 1726 between a Christian Graul of Mitteledlau and Prince Leopold I of Anhalt-Dessau. Now, how to connect the two Grauls with almost two centuries between them? In 2016, I had contact with Thomas Meißner, the pastor of Könnern Parish which includes the Edlau villages. He directed me to the church archives in Magdeburg. In August of 2017, I finally traveled there, having booked a slot on a microfiche reading machine for an entire day. For seven hours, I scrolled through scanned church register pages, often looking like this. At the end of the day, I had a splitting headache but also had expanded the Graul family tree from seven to fifty-one persons! And yes, I was able to identify the Christian Graul of the 1726 princely contract as my mother's sixth great grandfather. What a day!

Answer 10

I or more accurately my 2 C1R cousin have identified/clarified people with the same or very similar names within a family.

This situation is one many of us have needed to wade through, we know that it was common to give a child the same name as previous child who died.

Sometimes the previous child had not died. In my Richards family history, there are 2GG aunts who are sisters.

Sarah Jane Richards born May 1836, Wednesbury, Staffordshire, England, married Burns and died 3 July 1902 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England.

And her sister Sarah Richards born 7 Jan 1838, Wednesbury, Staffordshire, England, married Fowles and died Jan 1893 in Warwickshire, England.

This caused much confusion and consternation among the members of my Richards family history group.  

Eventually DNA came to the rescue, my cousin Robin’s DNA, matched with someone in Australia and a telephone contact was made.

Florence, a daughter of Sarah Jane Richards married Henry Willetts, they emigrated to Australia in 1911 with 4 children, one a daughter died at age 103 in 2003 and had lived long enough to pass on her family history to her children.

Finally, confirmation that the 2 Sarah’s actually existed, it appears that Sarah Jane was usually called Jane. Why 2 Sarah’s we still aren’t sure, their father had a sister named Sarah, she died unmarried at age 69.

There are no Janes in the immediate family history, though they the 2 Sarah’s had a 3 x GGA named Jane.

And I'm not getting into the Ellens/Helens in another family branch.

Comments

I was unfamiliar with the German system of names. Many of my ancestors had the first name Johann and a middle name. In practice, they went by their middle name. Some had a first name Johannes and no middle name, so they went by Johannes.

Eventually I learned that boys in this region were given the first name Johann in honor of St. John the Baptist. In some regions girls were given the first name of Maria for the mother of Jesus. That really helped clear up some confusion when I learned that.

On the English side of the family, sometimes boys were given a middle name of the mother's maiden name. That has helped confirm some connections for me as well.

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The German naming system doesn't actually know the concept of a "middle" name. All baptismal names are FNAB (and should be entered accordingly), and then any of those (usually three to four, depending on the number of godparents, from each of whom the child could get a name) could be used as a preferred name. And that can even change during different stages in one's life. For example, my 5th great grandfather Schlegel used five different FNAB at different times in his life! (Sorry, the notes are in German but you can see the different names highlighted.)

Answer 11

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1542027/52-weeks-of-us-black-heritage-notables-week-8-i-can-identify

This week, USBH is featuring 

Carter Godwin Woodson  As one of the first scholars to study African-American history, he can identify very well with the African-American community.

Evelyn Marie (Carmon) Nicol An American immunologist and microbiologist who worked to identify all sorts of things beneath the lens of a microscope.

Answer 12

I'm stubbornly trying to connect one unconnected branch. While doing that, I check different surnames to eventually find a connection. And while going through a surname list, I could identify the duplicate profiles of unconnected Christopher McIver and connected Christopher McIver. I initiated a merge.