My First Blogiversary - The Truth Revealed

Genealogical research is about building family trees. It felt fitting to begin this blog with the story of my favorite tree, a metaphor for my own family. Originally posted as the banner for my blog on 13 October 2010, I later changed it to a blog post on 22 October 2010. This tree and its story had been engraved in my memory from childhood...or, so I thought.

Find proof. I thought I had. My memory was proof, right? The answer is a definitive no! Thankfully no one cited me as a source on this one. When I received the slide scans from FotoBridge earlier this year, I realized my memory was invented. Invented! By me! Today, on The Scrappy Genealogist, I come clean and reveal the whole truth.

The Evidence

1. This flattering photo of two unhappy girls was taken in the fall of 1975. We were thrilled to be moving.

2. Bubba and me in the corner of our backyard in Longmeadow. He documented this day. My sister probably took this photo. You can tell because she likes to cut off feet in photos. Hi Mary! :) Take note of the handle. That is a clue.

3. This piece of evidence is the most damaging. What? What is that tree doing there, planted in the backyard in Longmeadow? I have no memory of this whatsoever. It sure made me feel better that my sister didn't remember it either. She has a memory like an elephant. She remembers things I wish she would forget, but I love her anyway.

4. My tree is obviously thriving in its final home in The Magic Backyard.

My little tree in September 2008. My how she has grown. Today she is watched over by my aunt, who took over the homestead after my grandparents passed away.

We all know that memories are to be taken with a grain of salt. Oral interviews give wonderful clues when we are researching our family trees. Frequently we are interviewing older relatives, but obviously this story teaches us to suspect even the memories of the younger members of our families. My sister has been telling me this for years and now I believe her. 

Thank you Bubba for being so present in our lives that you were able to recognize the importance of this tree for me and that you took the time to document its journey. I will love you always. 

Have a great day!

Love, 

Scrappy Gen

Let's Remember!

Photo Edits: Color & Damage and Photo Clues: Hats

Here is one of my favorite photos of my great great grandparents, William and Anna Hill. 

Yes, it is faded, damaged and discolored, but I love the look on William's face. His eyes are smiling and he sports a dimple. Could it be that he is fond of the photographer? Perhaps he is just happy. William is wearing a boutonniere. He was always photographed in a suit, but the white bow tie makes me think that it might have been a special occasion. What do you think? 

Look what happens when I convert this photo to black and white using Lightroom 3. 

What I like about doing this conversion is that the subjects' faces pop and their personalities become visible. The down side is that all the pookies (this is a technical term) and damaged areas also pop! There is more than enough work in Photoshop Elements 9 for another day.


Just want to point out one more thing that I love about this photo. Look at the festive straw hat in the lower right corner. I love hats. My head is too big to wear them, but I love them anyway, especially because they are so helpful in determining the time period of a photo. Here are two websites for looking at old hat and hair styles; fashion-era for women and Fabulous Hats for men. 

When do you think this photo might have been taken? The note on the back mentions that it was taken in Beachmont, Massachusetts. It also suggests a date. Let's see who can get closest. Leave a comment below.

Thanks for playing and happy Thursday!

Scrappy Gen

Let's Remember!
 


Related articles

• Spring Is Here: Use Lightroom to Process It (sullivanjphotography.com)
•  http://vintagefashionguild.org/fashion-history/the-history-of-womens-hats/

not so Wordless Wednesday - Mystery Slide

Do you need more motivation to get those slides scanned?

How about this mystery slide?*

Found with Bubba's Slides - January 2011

Let's say my sister and I never went through Bubba's slides. Pretend you are one of my great grandchildren and you find this slide. What would you think? Any clues?

Happy Snowy Wednesday from NH! 

Scrappy Gen

Let's Remember!

*Slide was not scanned by FotoBridge.

Photo Edits–Rescuing an Old Faded Photo–PT Boat 328

This photo is blown up from another (location unknown) damaged photo. The damage that is visible is part of the image. We actually found two copies kept in archival sleeves, so it is most likely that it was an important picture to Bubba. You can read more about it here.


For this photo, I am not interested in a full restoration. The quality isn’t such that I would ever hang it on my wall, but I would like to be able to more clearly read the number on the side of the boat and perhaps during the process other photo clues might become apparent.


As always I begin the process with my trusty Epson 4490 scanner, scanning the photo at 600 dpi and saving in both TIFF and JPG formats. This is a bit of overkill I know, but most websites will not accept the TIFF format and I like to have JPG version handy if I know I will be putting it online. I open the TIFF version in Lightroom to make my photo adjustments. Have I said before that one of the reasons I love Lightroom is that it leaves the original image untouched? Your edits are made and saved in the Lightroom Catalog. You can save new versions to your photo folders by clicking Export, but your original is always available.


Here are the photo adjustments I made.

1. Adjusted Blacks +63


2. Adjusted Clarity +100


3. Lowered the Contrast –45


4. Lowered the brightness –61


5. There is more substance to the photo, but some of the detail has been lost, so raised Contrast +120


6. Can’t leave that brightness alone because I think I see some clouds in the sky. Brightness –32


7. It isn’t a color photo, so that isn’t really blue sky peaking through, but I do think clouds are visible.
    A little too dark still. Exposure + 48.


Here are the things I have noticed while working with this photo. There are clouds in the sky and land is visible in the background. The two men sitting at the front are not on high alert. Their shoulders and backs are slumped as if they are relaxing (or exhausted) and enjoying a nice boat ride. The boat is flying the American flag. The number 328 is certainly clearly visible on the side, but I didn't notice with the original version that it is also visible on the top of the boat right in front of the radar pole. There may be two or three more men sitting at the top.


Here again is the original scan of the faded photo.


I love a good black and white photo as you know from here and here.

You can’t see the clouds as well, but if you were putting together a project with a cohesive look, it might be worth the extra step to convert the photo to black and white. I think it is a little less distracting to the subject.

Happy Photo Editing!

Scrappy Gen

Photo Clues for Genealogical Success – Bubbie’s Parents and Siblings

MJ’s cousin Cathy brought some treasures to show us during our dinner at Sammy’s. This jewel was particularly touching:

According to Cathy, this is a picture of Bubbie’s parents, sisters and brother. Someone identified the oldest girl as Ida and the youngest girl as Esther. The boy she believes is Bubbie’s brother, Joseph. She cannot identify the middle daughter. Bubbie left Latvia for Michigan in 1909. Her sister, Ida, left in 1908 for New York, where another sister Lena had settled in 1906. If the oldest girl is Ida, then this picture was most likely taken in Russia after Lena had gone, perhaps to send to her in America. This means that one of the two younger daughters is probably Bubbie, but that is a photo clue adventure for another day.

Seeing this photograph was an emotional experience for MJ and me. Growing up MJ knew that his Bubbie’s family had perished in the Holocaust, but to gaze into the eyes of these souls and to picture their tragic fate was deeply moving. At the time of World War II, Esther was married and had a family in the Riga area. Joseph may have as well. Cathy knows this because of the treasure trove of memorabilia that her family has collected since the early twentieth century. She has letters from Esther and other family members in Latvia, letters that suddenly stopped in 1941.

We feel so grateful that we met Cathy and that she is so generously sharing a big piece of Bubbie’s ancestry with us through, as she puts it, her family’s pack-rat habits. Personally, I love pack-rats. Thank you Cathy!

Love,

Scrappy Gen

Footnote Friday – Photo Clues for Genealogical Success - Glasgow Postcard

Below you will find my post from November fourth.This is my first attempt in publicly presenting genealogical work with source citations. If I don’t suffer utter humiliation and decide to stop doing genealogy and hide under a rock, I will continue to post work on Footnote Fridays. 

Because I am away from home and did not have my hard copy of Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills, I bought and downloaded the pdf version of it from footnote.com. I was hoping to buy a Kindle version of the second edition, but it is not available in this format. It looks like I will be ordering the second edition in hard copy when I return home as the third source citation I wanted to add concerned Google Earth. After much online searching for the magic formula and back and forth conversation with myself, I decided that there did not need to be a source citation for my simple search of Google Earth. What do you think?

Please let me know if I made any big errors and thank you!

Scrappy Gen

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I have been thinking about this mysterious postcard:

It is addressed to Miss Hill or Cousin Ethel, the sister of my great grandmother, Mabel (sometimes Mabelle). It was located with pictures and other ephemera that Mabel and then my grandmother, Barbara, had saved. My father now holds the physical collection¹ and I have created a digital archive.

It’s an excellent postcard. It has a pretty picture on the front:


It has a clear cancellation mark:


The mark reads Glasgow, 11 AM, Oct 19 07. I am not sure whether 19 07 refers to the year 1907 or the nineteenth day of October, 1907, but it is not relevant to this post. My astute eleven year old son looked over my shoulder just now and asked “How do you know it is 1907?”. Good question! I could research the cost to send a postcard in 1907 from Glasgow, Scotland to Revere, Massachusetts, but, fortunately, from the 1910 US census we know that Miss Ethel Hill was living at 95 Reservoir Avenue in Revere. Most likely great great Aunt Ethel was already living there in 1907. ²

Another great thing about this postcard is that the writer gives his first and last names as well as his street address:


It reads Robert McAulay, 109 Roslea Drive. A simple search on Google Earth showed that this address does exist in Glasgow.³

In addition to thoughtfully addressing his postcard to Cousin Ethel, Robert gifts us with two names, two relationships and a location in the body of his text. He tells us about Cousin Charlotte, who is in New York, and about his mother and John, who are possibly living with or near him in Glasgow. Yes, it’s a great postcard, full of genealogical clues, except for the fact that I have no idea who this Robert McAulay is. Why, oh why, didn’t Grandma show and tell me about her collection of old photos, postcards and letters? And who is Robert McAulay?

Hopefulness is a positive quality, but after an hour of hopeful searching on Ancestry.com, I realized that simply locating a Robert McAulay living at 109 Roslea Drive during the time of the 1901 Scotland census was not a task that was going to be easily completed. There were multiple Robert McAulay individuals living with their mothers and also with another household member named John and none were at Roslea Drive. I plan to create a spreadsheet of Robert McAulays living in Glasgow in 1891 and 1901 for further research into Scottish records and in anticipation of the release of the 1911 Scotland census.

Robert is going to remain elusive for now as I turn my search to the mysterious Cousin Charlotte in New York. Stay tuned for the next Photo Clues for Genealogical Success – Cousin Charlotte.

Thank you for reading!

Scrappy Gen

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      1. Rouken Glen, Glasgow postcard, ca. 1907; [NAME FOR PRIVATE USE] Family Collection, 1907—, privately held by Stephen [NAME FOR PRIVATE USE], [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE] Lincoln, RI; This color postcard, 4”x6”, was passed from the recipient Ethel Hill to her sister Mabel (BIRTH YEAR-DEATH YEAR) to her daughter Barbara (BIRTH YEAR-DEATH YEAR) from whom the current owner inherited it in 2005.
   2. 1910 U.S. census, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, population schedule, Revere, p. 14B, dwelling 222, family 280, Ethel W. Hill; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 5 November 2010); citing NARA microfilm publication T624, roll T624_626
   3. I decided that this did not actually need a source citation as anyone can do this simple search and easily find the information.

Texas Road, Butzbach, Germany

My mother produced a genealogical gem last night. I called to ask her exactly where we had lived in Butzbach, Germany. She told me to hang on while she dug out her old address book. She has had this book since before I was born and she easily told me the exact dates and addresses for each of the places she and my Dad (and eventually my sister and I) lived in Germany. Her old address book was always at hand's reach when I was growing up. It came out for making calls and sending cards, but my Mom kept it for an additional reason as well. She was documenting our places of residence because she knew we would be moving frequently and that a record of those places might someday be needed by her children.


When my parents first arrived in Germany, they lived on Richard-Wagner-Strasse in Butzbach. This was temporary housing and my mother says she was very happy to move ten days after I was born because the apartment had hot water only in the shower. I asked and yes, they sometimes washed their dishes in the shower.


When I was ten days old we moved to Texas Road in Butzbach. This was in United States military housing. I found a blog called Forgotten Memories, which has a group of pictures taken in 2008 of the then defunct complex. The complex is still visible today through Google Maps. It looks like there may be people living in the buildings again as there are cars parked throughout the complex. I will have a chance to see these buildings in person in just a couple of months as I will be journeying to Frankfurt and Butzbach with my parents and sister to revisit the places where we were born (2 different hospitals) and the homes where we lived.


I pulled out an old picture of me taken in 1967. I have adjusted the contrast and a few other things in order to make visible what can be seen out the window just behind me.

How lucky it is that this photo wasn't taken during today's digital era. It might have been cropped to show just the cute little girl in the picture and would have eliminated the view of the apartment building across the way. Comparing this photo to the image on Google Maps, you can see that the little windows on the roof are still visible. The buildings look pretty much the same as they did 43 years ago.


I put a couple of pictures together on another scrapbook page for the Donna Downey class I am taking through Big Picture Classes. I am going to add additional information giving further details about our home in Butzbach to the back of the fabric page. Then this page will go into a little album I am making which will chronicle all of the homes I have had.

Texas Road, Butzbach