While visiting the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, this book jumped off the gift shop table and into my arms. You can read about it on the museum website. The sub title of 97 Orchard Street is yummy: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families In One New York Tenement.
Coincidentally, our community newsletter announced that Jane Zigelman, the author, will be visiting Temple Israel in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Sunday, November 21st at 12 Noon. Come and meet the author and a visit a synagogue established over 100 years ago. How much better can it get? Books, immigrants, food and history all rolled together. I love it.
The visit is co-sponsored by our locally owned and operated River Run Bookstore, through which you can pre-order a signed copy. More details can be found in the flier below or through the River Run Bookstore website. 
Sincerely,
Scrappy Gen
There is a recurring theme in my life…so many (blank), so little time. I have a pile of books in my house to be read, thus so many books, so little time. There are so many photos waiting to be included on scrapbook pages. There are so many ancestors waiting to be found. And there are so many photos waiting to be fixed and shared. Yesterday’s post about visiting my great grandmother Catherine’s birthplace began with this lovely although extremely damaged photograph of her at toddler age:
Three corners are missing. There are tears, creases, spots and stains. Is this photo a keeper? Absolutely, it’s my great grandmother! It does belong in an archival sleeve for storage to minimize any further damage, but a scan at 300 dpi will give us an image we can manipulate and also will serve as a visual index of the original copy.
When scanning your old photos, it is good to make use of the properties setting for the new image. Good photo indexing starts with giving all newly scanned photos descriptive names including a date (can be an estimate), last name, first name and sometimes birth year of the subject. Then, after saving the image with that descriptive file name, right click on it and choose properties. Click on the details tab (in Windows 7). Under this tab additional information regarding the photo can be added including title, subject, tags, comments and date acquired.
It's time to get back to the task at hand. First I opened the photo in Photoshop Elements 8
and cut out the areas of the scan that were not part of the picture:
The largest missing area on the lower left required some creativity in order to rebuild the missing parts of the wooden chair. I used the selection tool to copy a piece of the chair and paste it over the missing corner to continue the line toward the bottom of the photo. It looks a little funky to start, but it will get better.
Here I continued the process of selecting, copying and pasting pieces of the chair.
Here I have finished rebuilding the chair with both the the selection tool and the clone tool. Both tools are almost as easy to use as the cut and paste tool in a word document. My result is far from perfect on close inspection, but it is a big improvement.
The clone stamp tool easily repaired the upper left hand corner and the tears at the top middle and upper right corner.
Catherine’s face, hair and dress somehow remained undamaged. I did erase a couple of spots on her face and a stain or two from her dress using the clone tool in lighten mode.
I lightened the staining and spots on the rest of the background, again with (you guessed it!) the clone stamp tool. This photo is a little larger so that you can more easily see the details.
Because I couldn’t leave well enough alone I used the smudge tool on the background to clean it up more. Not sure which is better and I haven’t actually used the smudge tool for this purpose before. With more practice I think the effect could be subtler. Here is the finished photo with the damaged photo for comparison.
And because I really can’t leave well enough alone and because I don’t like how the color is looking in my finished photo, here are two more options that I like:
The possibilities are endless and it’s great to have options. This is a photo that can be put on a scrapbook page without worry about damaging the original. It can also be endlessly reprinted to share with all of Catherine's children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. Although Catherine is no longer living, her spirit and memory live large in her descendants.
Hope this has given you ideas for your own old and damaged photos.
Scrappy Gen
The second day of our frenetic visit to New York City found us here:
With my family in tow (in a hired car), I was looking for the home of this precious beauty, my great grandmother, Catherine:
It’s hard to say who was cuter, Catherine, or this kid:
You have to love those freckles. This adorable guy was Catherine's son and you already know him as Bubba, the Sailor Man. While we were in New York City, we visited 401 East 10th Street in Manhattan. This was the home address of Catherine’s parents, Edward and Sarah, at the time of her birth in 1899 as indicated on her birth certificate.
Here is the building (above) which is at the location Google Maps gives for 401 East 10th Street. The photo below shows the same building from the front, which faces Avenue C. The address above the door shows that it is number 170. A website of virtual walking tours in Manhattan called New York Songlines indicates it was built in 1967.
Obviously this was not the home of my great grandmother, although the 1900 U.S. census did show them living at 170 Avenue C and not 401 East 10th Street. I had expected them to be living in a building similar to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and similar to the buildings (shown below) across both Avenue C and East 10th Street from this more modern building.
I took a look at some old maps to see what the area looked like in the past. This snippet of an 1852 map from the David Rumsey Map Collection shows Stage Stables at the future location of 401 East 10th Street. Click on the map to be taken to the original image.
Here is a later image of the same address in 1891. The stables have become a Horse Car Stable and seem to take up a smaller area. The street number range provides for the house numbers in Catherine’s records.
The buildings along the stretch of Avenue C between from 162 through 172 appear to have been similar in size to other brick multifamily buildings still in existence today and which I photographed in the area. Most likely Catherine did live in a building similar to the Tenement Museum. Although I did not get to see the original home of my great grandmother, it still felt more concrete (no pun intended) to stand on the street where she lived. As much fun as I have with David Rumsey’s maps and Google Maps, nothing beats visiting a place in person.
This is my last installment of our two day whirlwind trip to New York City. You can read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 here.
Thanks for reading!
Scrappy Gen
%5B6%5D.jpg "Grace Cath option (1 of 1)")
