RE: The Barnes Family

I totally forgot to post about this! The Barnes family who I posted about back in February of last year (here and here!) were reunited with family last month! A very lovely lady who was a descendant of John Barnes found the photos on Ancestry and noticed they were in a tree called "Antique Store Photo Purchases", so she contacted us to ask if we still had them.

ALSO. She solved the mystery of Belle for me! She was Joseph Barnes' wife Lavina. Belle was her middle name which she went by! :D So huzzah! Another four photos successfully reunited with family. Always feels good.

John Wade Paul & Gertrude Florence Swik

John & Gertrude on their wedding day!

Antique Plaza continues to be my favourite place to buy old, labeled photos. Paul & Gertrude here were from a particularly good haul last month and a couple days ago when work was a little slow I decided to see what I could find on them. Unfortunately, the city name on the cabinet card at but cut off, so step one was seeing if I could find "McDonald" on 1537 Larimer St. Thanks to Google (and the Denver Public Library) that didn't take too long.

John Wade Paul was born in November 14, 1867 in Kansas to Julius Wilson Paul and Nancy Jane Jones. He was the 2nd of 8 kids.

On December 21, 1897 in Denver, Colorado he married Gertrude "Gertie" Florence Swik - born on August 23, 1877, in Germany to Herman & Martha Swik.

John & Gertie marriage record report

They had five children - Martha J, John W, Gladys Lillian, Violet L and Gertrude M.. John died on February 28, 1926, in Tempe, Arizona, at the age of 58 and Gertrude died on May 14, 1938, in Tempe, Arizona, at the age of 60.

John Wade Paul death certificate

Gertrude FlorencePaul death certificate
Can't make out mother's maiden name though. Clanker? Clunker?

I also found this news article about the Golden Anniversary of their daughter Violet that talks about how they came from Colorado to Arizona by wagon train in 1919, which is pretty interesting!

Arthur C. "Tubby" Upton had a delicious childhood - his father owned the Upton Ice Cream and Candy Co. 

Upton who was born into this happy circumstance in Quincy, Okla., moved with his family (via wagon train) to Globe in 1909. There the Upton Ice Cream and Candy Co. was established.

Violet Paul Upton traveled with her family (also by wagon train) from Arvada, Colo., to Flagstaff in the summer of 1919. Later that year they moved to Globe where she met her favorite "candyman" and married him on Aug. 11, 1924, in Florence. 


Anywho, long story short... I tracked this family down to a living descendant through John & Gertie's daughter Gladys.... and she LITERALLY lives less then a mile away from my parents in Mesa. So I'll be going over to her house this afternoon and giving her the photo along with my 3 days of research since she sounded interested in genealogy. She probably has everything I've collected since, as I mentioned, it's really only 3 days of research. But maybe she doesn't. I don't know. I just want to be nice. <3