The Slovak Yankee

Happy 60th Anniversary

Today is my parent's 60th anniversary.   This is a picture of their reception.  Only two people are still alive today in this photo.

Dead Fred

Among the pictures I am digitizing and organizing are some of people I cannot identify.  That's one problem that we all face.  What makes it a particular concern is that pictures come down to you from Relative A who may have inherited it from Relative B and it's B's in-laws, and not your family at all.  How do you know?  

Another set are pictures that are not my family but are identified on the back of the photo.  The solution here was advised to me by the Practical Archivist.  She said to upload it to Dead Fred.   Evidently this is an orphaned photo site.  Much like Findagrave, it is operated by volunteers uploading photos.  So I uploaded two that were clearly identified.  You can search Dead Fred on the other side too to find pictures of your long lost ancestors.  I did a broad search for the surname Pinkham and got two hits.  They were both group photos with men named Pinkham identified in the group.  Neither were any close relation to me.  The other surnames I searched all came up empty.  At present there are just over 100,000 photos in Dead Fred according to their website.

From what the Practical Archivist told me and the promos on Dead Fred, people have found pictures of their ancestors that they might not have found any other way.  So Kudos to Dead  Fred.  My next experiment will be to upload a purely unknown photo.

I told the Practical Archivist that I wanted to destroy the pictures I couldn't identify because I didn't want the next generation to be confused as to who might be in the photos.  It was then that she told me about Dead Fred.  I didn't have the heart to tell her my grandmother went through her photo albums and removed and destroyed all the non-family pictures, because she said, they had no meaning to anyone but herself.  I know this because I watched her do it.  Had there been an Internet then, I might have saved them and found out if anyone wanted them.  Now we can.

Archiving Photos

I've been spending one hour each weekend scanning old photos into my computer.  I then take the actual photos and carefully archive them.  As we all know scanning is a BORING albeit necessary task.  Here's some things I've learned and some of the questions I still have.

• I have no artistic talent at all.  I am the black hole of artistic talent.  So I'm scanning the photos as best as I can.  I try to adjust the quality, but am mostly leaving that to others.  If the photo is digitized, someone else can adjust color, tint, brightness, etc.  I have a slew of snapshots that came from the 1950s that are turning red and many from the 1920s and 1930s that are just fading away.  I'm sure there's a way to enhance the photos, but it's beyond my skill level.
• I find that naming the photos is difficult.  I think each file deserves a name.  There is a method that you can name the photo a number and keep a spreadsheet that has that number as a key and includes much more information.  However, I worry that means you need to keep track of two things and if the spreadsheet is somehow separated from the photos, others won't be able to identify the pictures.  So, I'm naming the principal person or event in the photo.  I'm being consistent in naming individuals.  I hope that when I make a book of this, I can put a list of who's who.  That is, there are no less that five Paul Dolinsky's.  So, I have keyed them in my mind, so I'll need to explain that to someone, if they can't catch on.  Also, I made the executive decision to call women by their maiden names in all cases.  I excluded all relationships (such as Aunt Pauline or Great-Grandma), because they are only relational to me and can confuse people.  I am trying to add metatags to the photos.  
• I never change what's already written on the backs of photos.
• On glossy photos, I use acid-free ink.  On paper photos I use pencil.  I've been counseled to a #1 pencil--but I cheat and lightly used a #2 pencil.
• All photos are put in acid-free sleeves and in an acid-free photo box.  Large  photos lie flat.  Smaller photos are sorted and stacked up like index cards.
• After I take a digital image, I send the original to the nearest relative of the subject.  I don't need all the wedding photos of my great-aunts and uncles, etc.  But my cousins probably want them!  One never knows if you are the one who was lucky enough to save the only original of such photos.
• I don't know the provenance of all the photos.  That's difficult in figuring out unknown faces.  Are they my family, or friends or in-laws of my family?  

So, this has been an ongoing project.  We'll see how it all turns out.

Old Group Photos and a Mystery

I posted this photo on Tuesday:

In the same collection is this picture:

The second picture is the mystery.  Clearly two of the people are the same.  They are my great-great-aunt Kristina with her husband Andrew Barbieri.  But who are the others?  Notice first that the picture of the child on the wall is the same.  However, the walls are different, so the rooms or houses are different.  The curtains are the same too.  So, is the second photo a later photo?  I can't be sure but the woman standing in the center in the first photo, whom I know to be my great-great-grandmother seems to be the same woman seated in the center of the second photograph.  She's older (by say ten years).  If that is so, then the man seated next to her must be her husband, and therefore I have a photo of my great-great-grandfather.  But this photo is not labelled.  And all the people who could corroborate it are now dead.  The irony is that their deaths brought the photo into my possession in the first place.  My fear is that the older couple is Andrew Barbieri's parents.  Is there a resemblance between the two men in the second photo?

My great-aunt Bette at my grandmother's funeral at which I sang, told me that my great-great-grandfather, whom she knew had the same type of voice, a big one that could fill a room easily.  He had thick hair and a mustache according to her description.  Is that this man?

Writing on Photographs

I already posted this picture before.  It is the only picture I have I can verify of any of my Slovak great-great-grandparents.  As you can see, someone wrote all the names of the persons in the photo, but one--the child seated in the center.

The word baba is Slovak for grandma.  So it means that the writer is that woman's great-grandchild, or someone from my father's generation.  However, that makes no sense.  I do believe I recognize the handwriting as my own grandmother.  Perhaps she was calling her own mother Baba in the sense of how one talks of someone to her own children.  In any case, in my trove of pictures from my great-great aunt, the same photo exists without the writing:

So thanks to the first picture I know everyone in the photo but one.  It is my great-great-grandmother with two of her children and their spouses.  However, this bottom photo is part of a mystery I'll post about next. 

85 Haskell Street

This is the house at 85 Haskell Street, Westbrook, Maine during winter somewhere around fifty years ago.  This is what the house looks like today and the unreliability of Google Maps in tracking down ancestral dwellings.

Susquehanna River Ferry

It's hard to believe that not long ago, there were no Interstates.  And in this case, no (automobile) bridge across the Susquehanna River.  This is the paddle wheel of the ferry that took a car across that river in 1937.  My grandparents were taking my infant father to see his paternal grandmother for the first time.  So with everyone whizzing on Interstates today to see fall foliage or coming back from the long weekend, this is a remembrance of a simpler and much slower time.

Treasure Chest Thursday: U. of Maine

Among all the photos I have are two from my great-uncle Warren during his days at the U. of Maine in Orono (he was class of 1935).  I've donated both to the archives of the university.  The first was a large portrait of his fraternity Lambda Alpha Chi.  The other was the photo below of he and his roommates.  I love the gun in the corner (how times have changed!), not to mention smoking indoors.

Treasure Chest Thursday: William J. Morrissey 1831-1916

 I think perhaps the quintessential 19th century heirloom must be the tintype photograph of a Civil War soldier in uniform.  This is Michael's great-great-grandfather, William J. Morrissey, who fought in Company K of the 77th Pennsylvania Volunteers.  He enlisted on 9 October 1861 and was mustered out on 20 December 1863 having been captured and ransomed back.  He suffered from both rheumatism and night blindness and was rejected when he tried to re-enlist in 1864.  Although badly scratched you can see him.  He migrated during the Great Famine era and was naturalized in 1854.  After the war he married Bridget Cashin, the daughter of James and Joanna (Wallace) Cashin.  They eventually settled in Steelton, Pennsylvania and raised ten children, the fifth of which was Johanna Morrissey, the wife of Edmund Berrigan.  She was born in 1869 and died in 1960 and Michael remembers her.

William Lynn Clark 1891-1958, U. of Oklahoma, 1914

Go Sooners!  All athletics at that time period were a gentlemen's sport.  I'm guessing that playing football in 1914 was different than being on the Sooner squad today.