Showing posts with label reunited. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reunited. Show all posts

Saturday, May 30, 2020

Edwin Jonas Kosier

I have 2 binders stuffed full of photos I bought from antique stores. Some which I've started research on, but most that I haven't.

Do you think I spent a solid 3 hours on any of them last night?

NOPE!

Because my very good friend who knows I love this stuff sent me these two screengrabs from a local Chandler, AZ Facebook group she's part of and I absolutely could not resist. Look at this AMAZING photo!!!







And honestly, bless whichever child labeled the back of the photo with his birthday. With no photographer's mark denoting a location I could zero in on and with the last name being questionable (I was convinced at first it was Kosell, but also tried Kosiec), I finally gave up and just searched for an Edwin Jonas born on that date.

The 3rd result was a VA index for an Edwin Jonas Kosier. 

Lykens Register, 21 Dec 1967, Thu  •  Page 17
Edwin Jonas Kosier, born July 31st to George & Elizabeth Kosier (nee Williard). Oldest of two (younger sister Emily Catherine, born February 4th, 1901). He worked as an architect from at least the late 1920s-1940s per census records & his obituary, as well as a WWI vetran. In January 1928 he  married Mary Jane Speraw and they had 6 children (Edwin Jonas Jr, Robert Charles, Howard Whitmoyer, Patricia A, James F C and Mary Katherine). At some point he and Mary Jane separated, because his obituary states that he's married to Dorthea Emma Kosier (nee Dockey). He died December 11, 1967. 

I found one of his granddaughters on Facebook and messaged her through her business page, and now this amazing photo is heading home!




Thursday, March 16, 2017

Gatemans & Goettlings

I've previously made smaller posts about this batch of photos (Ernest Goettling & Susanna Gateman and Sophia Goettling)... and had a draft of a post sitting in my Blogger since January where I was going to post more.



But as fate would have it, Sophia's great grandson found me and reached out! So today the 11 photos I bought of the Gateman/Goettling families were sent off! I'm delighted to be able to send them off - not just because it clears 11 spaces in my overstuffed binder - but because I've had these photos for almost 2 years and was starting to hit that "maybe nobody wants these" point.

So yay! On to the next!

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Re: Frances Virginia Wilcoxen

I have been notoriously bad at updating this blog this year for reasons... but I did want to take a second to post that I finally reunited this adorable photo of Frances Wilcoxen to her great grandson's family last week! :) My original research post from last March is here.

Frances went home!

My antique store photo binder is still overflowing with other ancestors that I haven't even started researching. Perhaps that will be part of my New Years resolutions.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

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.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

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

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Elton Levi Henry Cook & Sadie Imogene Cook


Sadie and Elton Cook

So I spent a week or so completely convinced that I could trace these two back to Mayflower descendants since their paternal grandparent's names were Cook and Howland and they lived in Massachusetts - and how awesome would it have been to reunite a photo and say, "OH BY THE WAY, you can apply to the Mayflower Society. Here's all my research." Alas, I couldn't get anything to link up. I couldn't even get further back then their great grandfather Artemas Cook. Still have no clue who his parents were.

I DID however discover that Sadie connects to my tree. She married a 4th cousin of mine. But I digress.

Elton Levi Henry Cook was born on December 27, 1893, in Taunton, Massachusetts to parents Walter & Helen Cook (nee Welch). He had one son and one daughter with Ruth A between 1930 and 1935. He died on September 6, 1958, at the age of 64.

Sadie Imogene Cook was born on February 1, 1896, in Taunton, Massachusetts,  She married Hatsel Keith Crosby on October 14, 1914, in Massachusetts. They had one child during their marriage. She died in February 1967 in Hyannis, Massachusetts, at the age of 71.

Hastel & Sadie Crosby headstone
Photo by Caryn via FindAGrave.com
I traced Sadie's line down to her great grandkids and found her great granddaughter on Facebook. So this photo has been reunited with a direct descendant. 

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

David George & Bessie Pearl Mulkins (nee Porter)

Last month I stumbled across this golden anniversary certificate kind of awkwardly laid out on a table at an antique store. It was only $4, and I knew I had to buy it.



David George Mulkins was born April 20, 1879 to Joab & Margaret Isabel Mulkins (nee Creighton) in Franklin County, Iowa. September 15, 1909 he married Bessie Pearl Porter - born July 1886 to John & Ellen Porter (nee Towslee). They had 4 children - Guyida Pearl, Floyd David, Edith Lucille and Claude Russell. David died June 18, 1966 and Bessie died September 19, 1971.

Photo by Melissa Lively Sherry via FindAGrave.com

For some reason I've had a bit of difficulty finding much online about the family. I think Guyida is the only child with living descendants. I'm about 75% sure I've found the snail mail address for one of Guyida's children so I'll send a note off to them and see if they're interested in the certificate. Hopefully they still live there. And don't think I'm some weird stalker person.

Rosemarie Amelia Helfrich


This diploma is the main reason I started this blog 5 months ago. A friend of my mom's had been holding onto this diploma for years after her husband had found it in the attic of an house he used to live in in Pittsburgh. They took it with them when they moved to Arizona in hopes that they could one day send it back to Rosemarie's family.

I had only just started buying antique store photos when my mom brought this diploma over and asked me to see if I could find a relative who wanted it.

Rosemarie Amelia Helfrich was born February 1, 1901 in Pennsylvannia to parents Charles W Helfrich and Catherine G Emerich. She had a younger brother Raymond (born 1904). Rosemarie died unmarried March 15, 1997 in Sherman Oaks, California.

Her brother did marry and have children. In fact, right off I found her great niece on Ancestry, but she didn't want the diploma. Months went by and I had kinda put Rosemarie on the back burner until last week I decided to see if anybody had saved anything from my Antique Store Photo tree out on Ancestry. Which is how I got in contact with Rosemarie's 1st cousin 1x removed! A descendant of Catherine's sister Amelia happily agreed to take the orphaned diploma in.

It got mailed off on Monday.

I'm really happy I was finally able to find somebody who wanted the diploma. And best part is.... she had a photo of Rosemarie so I finally got to see the face of the woman whose college diploma has been sitting in my living room for months.

Rosemarie in 1996.
I bet she was a great lady. :)

Sunday, February 1, 2015

The Barnes Family

So, after posting that last post about Frank & Nellie, I remembered that the same time I had purchased that photo (over a month ago)... I had also purchased a few other photos labeled Barnes.

Surprise! They're Nellie's relatives!

Harry, Joseph Alexander & Belle Barnes

So I haven't figured out where Belle fits in the tree yet... but Harry is Nellie's brother and Joseph is her half-brother. 

TO BE CONTINUED....




Friday, January 30, 2015

William Franklin & Ellen "Nellie" Altenburg (nee Barnes)

Frank & Nellie Altenburg

So this was a bit of an adventure last night. :) The back of this photo is actually labeled "Nettie & Frank Altenburg, Earnest's sister". The photographer's mark on the front is from Ithaca, Michigan. So of course, the first thing I did was search for a Francis Altenburg... or an Antoinette Altenburg in Michigan and came up empty. These people don't exist.

Plan B was to do a public tree search on Ancestry for Frank Altenburg and see if any of them had a wife whose name could be shortened to Nettie. Which is how I found William Franklin Altenburg and his wife Ellen - AKA Nellie. They lived in Newark, Michigan according to the 1910, 1920 and 1930 census records.

Despite having most of my extended family in Michigan, I don't actually know distances between Michigan cities. Luckily, Google Maps knows. Google knows everything.


You could probably spit into Ithaca from Newark if you had a good tail wind to help you (okay, maybe not... but they are REALLY close). This already seems pretty likely that William Franklin and Ellen are the people in this picture.

But of course I can't just stop the verification there. I had to find out if Ellen had a brother Earnest. According to Ellen's marriage record (and also the 1880 census), her parents were J.H. Barnes and Mary Harlow. I kinda cheated and went back to the public trees which had her father listed as John H and searched census records for John and Mary. Both the 1900 and 1910 censuses show John and Mary of having a son named Earnest (Ernie on 1900, Ernest on 1910).

The pièce de résistance... both Frank & Nellie are buried in Ithaca Cemetery. So I feel 99.9% confident that William Franklin Altenburg and Ellen "Nellie" Barnes are the two individuals in this photo and whoever labeled the back of it was a more distant relative of Frank's who thought his wife's name was Nettie instead of Nellie. Easy mistake to make if you weren't close.

Alas, Frank & Nellie did not have any children. Nellie died in 1935 and Frank remarried a woman who had 6 kids from a previous marriage.

Frank had a brother and sister (Warren & Sarah)... and Nellie had a crapton of siblings (Elizabeth, Lottie, Harry, Vern, Earnest, Leroy & Dewey)... so now it's just a matter of tracking down their descendants and reuniting this photo with them!

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Orlando Stephen Thompson

I keep putting off writing this post because I keep thinking I'll find something more interesting on Orlando. Alas, searching for newspaper articles on both Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank.com comes up with a lot of nothing. And a lot of articles from Orlando, Florida. Curse being named after a city!
Orlando Stephen Thompson
Orlando Stephen Thompson. Born 26 Feb 1894 in Harvey, Illinois to parents Wilder B Thompson and Laura Cloud. He married Polly Anna Randall and had a daughter Doris Jean (born 27 Jun 1919 also in Harvey, Illinois). He died 18 Jul 1988 in Englewood, Florida.

I actually found a pretty interesting article that mentioned Orlando's father Wilder from 1899. 



HARVEY HAS A SALOON FIGHT
------------------
Liquor Me Win First Round and Buy Lot Owned by Methodist

Harvey's saloon fight is on in earnest. Mayor Braley vetoed the license ordinance passed two weeks ago. Monday evening the ordinance was passed over the mayor's head by the two-thirds license majority in  the council. A saloon location near the Grand Trunk depot at One Hundred and Fifty-Second street and Columbia avenue has already been secured by George Freeman, alderman of the Second ward, and the keeper of a saloon just across the Harvey bored in Thornton.

Until the sale of this land to Freeman by Wilder B. Thompson, a prominent member of the Methodist church, the Anti-Salloon league had confidently counted on the inability of prospective seekers for saloon sites to find any desirable ones inside the city limits. 

"Brother Thompson will never sell his lot for saloon purposes," said a speaker at an anti-saloon mass meeting held in the Congregational church last Sunday afternoon. When the announcement concerning the probable action of "Brother" Thompson was made there were many "amens," and the meeting adjourned with a sense of security insofar as the invasion of the down-town section of Harvey was concerned.

Mr. Thompson, when seen in reference to the sale of his land, admitted it. There was another available lot adjacent to his property and if a saloon was to come he might as well sell as another. It was a business proposition and Mr. Thompson said he treated it from that standpoint.

The hope of the antis lies in Mayor Braley. The major is a large property owner. He will only sign the ordinance passed over his veto upon compulsion. There are said to be material flaws in the ordinance as passed, which even the friends of the measure admit to be one of the most "liberal" saloon license ordinances ever passed by a city council. 

Ejectment proceedings will be brought against certain border saloons. Eugene Carey, trustee, has served notice to vacate permises upon Simon F. Schuts, who recently purchased the saloon formerly kept by "Billy" McHatchy at Halsted street and One Hundred and Fifty-Fifth place. The ground of the action is a prohibitory clause in Eugene Carey subdivision similar to those upon Harvey lots.

Orlando had two brothers, Harwell Cloud and Albert Wilder Thompson. Harwell was a US air mail service pilot who died tragically in a plane crash.


Harwell Cloud Thompson


MAIL PILOT KILLED WHEN PLAN FALLS
-----------------
Pilot Harwell C. Thompson of the United States air mail service crashed to his death yesterday near Liberty Center, O., while carring mail from Cleveland to Chicago.

A veteran of this war, during which he served overseas as a lieutenant in the air service, and with three years experience in the air mail division. Thomspon came to his end when his plane sideslipped while he was trying to make a forced landing. He died shortly after being taken to the Wauseon (O.) hospital.

He left Cleveland with the Chicago mail yesterday morning at 9:07 and was due in Chicago at noon. Immediately upon receipt of word of Thompson's death, H.B. Shaver, superintendent of the air mail station at Glenn L. Martin field, sent Pilot Warren D. Williams to the scene of the wreck with orders to pick up the mail and carry on.

The article goes on to mention he left behind his wife who was 6 weeks away from giving birth. :( So sad.





His other brother Albert, lived the ripe old age of 95.

Albert Wilder Thompson, 95, former dean of the College of Sciences and Arts at Washington State University, died Sept. 19 at his Princeton, N.J. home of cancer.

He was born in Harvey, Ill. He recieved his bachelor's degree from the university of Illinois in 1922, a master's degree from Harvard in 1923 and a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1929. His specialty was old French.

He married Edna Sackett in 1923. 

In 1930 the couple came to Pullman, were they remained for 46 years. He became full professor at Washington State College, now WSU, in 1947, and later that year became chairman of the Division of Humanities. 

He was named dean of the College of Sciences at Arts in 1953, a position he held until his retirement in 1964. She died in 1982.

After his retirement he studied the history of the Northwest, in particular the early French Canadian explorers.

In 1972, the oldest building on the WSU campus, which had been declared a National Historical Landmark, was renamed Thompson Hall.

He and his wife moved to Princeton in 1976 to be near their daughter. 

He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Modern Language Association, the Medieval Academy of American and other professional organizations. 

He was a life  member of the NAACP and a patron of the Princeton NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He enjoy playing piano and traveling in Europe and the Northwest. 


I can only imagine... since both is brothers were such fascinating, brave, intelligent men, that Orlando was cut from the same cloth. 

I did find a school photo of him on DeadFred.com from 1917, but I don't know what he was majoring in. 

Orlando Stephen Thompson is #3.  Class of 1917.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I know that Orlando married Polly Anna "Annie" Randall in 1916 and that they had a daughter Doris Jean in 1919. I also know that Doris married a James Douglas Youd... and that they had 3 children (at least that I could find) together. Doris died in 1998. I assume her children are still alive, but nobody that I reached out to with the photo of Orlando has replied yet. :(


This photo was purchased from Covered Wagon Antique Mall in Mesa, Arizona

Saturday, January 3, 2015

The Jacobson Family


Last weekend I found a stack of photos - all labeled - of one family. I was beyond excited. These photos are amazing and I really hope I can track somebody down to claim them.

Back - Peter Jacobson, Charlie, Frank. Front - wife Anna, Oscar, Esther and Hilma

LEFT - Esther Jacobson
RIGHT- Esther, Anna and Hilma Jacobson


LEFT - Hilma & Esther Jacobson
RIGHT - Hilma Cecilia Jacobson


Hilma Jacobson Berg

So what I've found so far... Peter (born Jan 1855) & Anna Jacobson (nee Benson or Bentson, born Oct 1860) emigrated from Sweden in 1881. They settled in Rockford, Illinois for a while, where they had their 5 children - Hilma Cecilia (born January 25, 1882), Frank Walfred (born October 23, 1883), Charles Peter (born Dec 13, 1885), Oscar Edward (born June 14, 1889) and Esther M (born Dec 24, 1890). In 1905 they moved to Canada.

Which is where research on my part gets trickier, as my access to Canadian records and newspapers is quite limited.

Thanks to the backs of a couple photos, I know that Hilma married a man named Edwin Berg and that Esther had married a man whose surname was Gray... and they had a daughter Dorothy who died in a fire in 1918. I was able to verify that with a newspaper clipping and found a photo of their headstone, but can't find the first name of her husband.




Vancouver Daily World
(Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
31 Jan 1918, Thu • Page 12
Accessed From: Newspapers.com
Photo by Terrance B. Sweeney via FindAGrave.com
I'm pretty sure that Ocsar has living descendants and possibly Hilma. I did find one tree on Ancestry that had this family listed, and messaged them, but have not heard back. Which is killing me, because I'd really love to share the excitement of finding these photos.

Here's to hoping any descendants run across this blog. 

These photos were purchased from Antique Plaza in Mesa, Arizona.

Jan Fobes Mowat

Reunited! These two photos I purchased a couple weeks ago were mailed off to his son today!


In my initial 5 minute research I found that he was born November 18, 1892 in Ashland, Oregon to William Harrison Mowat and Ann Janette Fobes. He married Olive Margaret Day and they had 2 children. Passed away July 1980.

I also had found quite a few trees on Ancestry that had him on it, so I messaged every person with his photos. One of the people who wrote back was a very nice gentlemen from Australia who was actually in contact with Jan's son who expressed interest in having the physical copies of the photos. I got the son's email address, and the rest is history!

I'm super excited because these are the first photos I've got to physically reunite with family. Here's to many more in 2015!


These photos were purchased from Covered Wagon Antique Mall in Mesa, Arizona.