Re: David & Luvisa Shanks (nee Fisher)

One of my New Years Resolutions this year is to be better at updating this blog even if nothing particularly exciting research-wise is happening. Also to get more photos sent back to their families because my binder of photos doth overfloweth! In August, I converted my secondary Facebook account (that I had previously used for spammy game stuff) into a Facebook account for Wayward Objects. Because really, Facebook SHOULD - in theory - make connecting photos back to families easier.

IN THEORY.

I've been trying to get a hold of somebody - anybody - descended from David & Luvisa Shanks (previously posted about back in April 2015). I have lots of options, they had 9 children and I have uncovered a lot of great great great grandchildren. The problem comes when they aren't very active on Facebook... or they are and they don't see my private message... or (in one case) they are and they are just blatantly ignoring me for some bizarre reason. But I won't give up! Short term goal is to get David & Luvisa back to their family before the month is over!

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.

The Wanker Sisters

Just a super quickie post since I'm mailing off a letter to a snail mail address I found and want to have a blog post about this awesome photo I bought a couple weekends ago. <3

Wanker Girls
Mary, Emma, Lesta, Ella, Nellie Pearl

Even though there was no photographer's mark with a location on this photo... I figured 5 women with the surname Wanker couldn't be that hard to find. I was right. I found Nellie Pearl right away.

The Wanker sisters (Emma M b.1870, Mary Ann b.1877, Celestia "Lesta" b.1878, Ella b.1884 and Nellie Pearl b.1888) were born to parents Antonio Wanker (Wauker?) who immigrated from France and Margaret Jane Swank. Antonio & Margaret also had 3 sons - Elijah, Samuel & Ralph.

I'm actually having a hell of a time getting further than the sister's children, with the exception Mary Ann's line. Still lots of research for me to try to do with this family - and I'll probably do a follow up post if this letter I'm sending doesn't reach it's intended target or an interested party - but I wanted to post something just in case. :)

UPDATE: Letter got returned. Bummer. :( Back to research.

UPDATE 7/8/16: Mailed off a note to a different descendant of Mary Ann's line who I think lives/lived in Prescott. Hoping for better results.

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

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. 

The Goettlings: Sophia Goettling (Part 2)

Continuing the Goettling family! Sophia is Ernest's sister. See "Part 1" post here.

Sophia Goettling

Sophia Goettling was born on February 28, 1870, in Beinstein, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. She married John Jacob Dinger and they had six children together (Walter G, Albert, Otto, Edward W, Victor E and Edith Delona). John died July 12, 1900. She then married Fredlieb Lautenschlager in 1917. She died in 1945 in Waterloo, Ontario, at the age of 75.

I couldn't find much on her beyond some Canadian census records. Her headstone was on Canada Gen Web, and another Ancestry user had uploaded her obituary.

Photo by Doug Smith via CanadaGenWeb

Mrs. Sophie Lautenschlager, a highly respected resident of New Dundee for many years passed away on Saturday after a brief illness at the home of her daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. L. Bacher, 744 King St. E., Kitchener.

She was born in Germany 75 years ago on Feb. 28, 1870, a daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Gottlieb Goettling. She came to Ontario with her parents at an early age and the family settled at Pine Hill. She was first married to John Jacob Dinger who predecesased her in 1900 and in 1917 she married Friedlieb Lautenschlager who passed away in 1932. Since the death of her husband the late Mrs. Lautenschlager has made her home with her son, Victor Dinger, New Dundee. The deceased was a member of the local Baptist Church and of the Women's Missionary Circle.

Surviving are: five sons, Walter, Albert, Otto and Edward Dinger of the United States and Victor Dinger of New Dundee; one daughter, Mrs. L. (Edith) Bacher, Kitchener; three stepsons, Phillip Lautenschlager, Southampton; Alvin Lautenschlager, New Dundee, and Sydney Lautenschlager, Kitchener; eleven grandchildren; seven great-grandchildren; one sister, Mrs. Pauline Riehm of Kitchener; and five brothers, Christian, Gottlieb and Ernest Goettling of the United States, William Goettling, New Dundee and Albert Goettling of Kitchener R.R. 2.

The funeral will be held on Wednesday afternoon at 2:30 o'clock from the home of her son, Victor Dinger to the Baptist Church for service. Rev. H.F. Schade will officiate and interment will be made in thew New Dundee Union Cemetery.

I suspect Sophia has quite a few living descendants between 6 children, most of who went on to have families of their own as far as I can tell. :) So it's just a matter of tracking one of them down or one of them stumbling across the blog!