Another Tale of Online Tree Errors: Wrong Photo

This is NOT John George Fischer

How exciting it is to find a photograph of your ancestor! Somehow that black-and-white image makes the person more real to us, not just a bunch of dates and places. But when the photo is attached to the wrong person in an online tree and then added by others to their trees because they assume it's accurate, it actually bothers me more than a wrong fact. How awful to share the wrong face!

Last week, I was following a lead to see if I could tie a Stenglein woman who died in 1910 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to my Stenglein branch. She had married a man named Johann Fischer in Bavaria before they came to the U.S. As I searched for as much information as I could about the couple and their children, I stumbled across multiple family trees with an incorrect photo of Johann's brother.

Johann Fischer remarried after his first wife died in 1910, and a trip was planned in 1922 to return to Europe to visit family. His brother also planned to go since both men completed passport applications. If you've looked at these documents on Ancestry, you know that a photograph is included on the more recent applications. The photo appears (and I stress this) on the second page.

When you find a match in this collection and view the image, you see two pages side by side. The page on the left is not related to your match; it's the previous person in the collection. The right side is your person, and it's important that you advance to the next image to see the second page of that application (which includes a photo). How very sad that the trees I saw last week used the photo that first popped up when they viewed their match, instead of looking at page 2.

The photo at the beginning of this post is attached to multiple family trees as the face of John George Fischer, Johann's brother. It is actually a man named Abraham Jeremiasz. Unfortunately, these people don't realize that below is the real face of John George Fischer with his wife Theresa and son Joseph:

This is the correct photo of John George Fischer and family

Note: I added a comment to the incorrect photo in each tree, and one person has already replaced it. I don't feel any glee in pointing out mistakes, but I had to try to right this particular wrong. Hey, we all make mistakes, and I must say it's nice to see that we can work together to improve each other's research.

A Brother's Visit to Kansas

These Cowden brothers were farmers born in Pennsylvania. One stayed there his entire life, but the other moved to Kansas. This photograph taken in a Kansas studio shows that the brothers were lucky enough to see each other at least one time after that move.

On the back of this photo, the two brothers are identified as James Nelson Cowden and John Cowden. Both men were born in Mt. Pleasant, Washington County, Pennsylvania. John, who was my husband's 2nd great-grandfather, was older by 8 years. James was living in Kansas by 1895.

This wonderful photograph commemorates a visit to Kansas by the older brother. It may have been the last time they saw each other, since John died in 1909.

James Nelson Cowden (left) and John Cowden (right);
Photographer: Miller of Arkansas City, Kansas

Portrait on a 1910 Christmas Postcard

Have you seen a portrait postcard like this? It's absolutely lovely, and I couldn't let it go when I saw it in an antique shop.

The recipient of the postcard, Mrs. Libbie T. Reeves, was a postmaster in Ohio for more than three decades. The sender is a little harder to identify. The postmark is 1910 from Downington, Ohio, in Meigs County. There were three women with the name Aura who were living in that county in 1910. The most likely match is Aura Mae Wilcox Wood. She was the closest to Libbie's age, and her husband Frank was a mail carrier.

I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and hope that you enjoy every moment with your family and friends!

Photographs: Unknown Cowden Relatives, Rothwell Studio

As I've mentioned before, my mother-in-law gave me dozens of photographs of her husband's Cowden family. The 5 cabinet cards below were taken at Rothwell Studio in Washington, Washington County, Pennsylvania. 

The first three photos measure 4.25 inches wide by 6.5 inches high, and the last two are smaller at 2.5 inches wide by 4 inches high. The first two men seem to be wearing the same suit, so they could be brothers.

As far as I can tell from newspaper articles and census records, James Wesley Rothwell was the first photographer in Washington, Pa. and worked there from 1870 until at least 1900. However, it's unknown if another photographer kept the studio name after Rothwell's death in 1904.

If you are one of my husband's cousins and can help identify these Cowden photographs, I would love to hear from you!

Related Posts:

• Photographs: Cowden Family
• Photographs: Unknown Cowden Relatives, Taken in Canonsburg Pa.

Photographs: Unknown Cowden Relatives, Taken in Canonsburg Pa.

As I mentioned last week, my mother-in-law gave me dozens of photographs of her husband's Cowden family. The 5 cabinet cards below were taken at the studio of Ern K. Weller in Canonsburg, Washington County, Pennsylvania, and include some of my favorites. I just love the women's clothes! All of these photos measure 4 inches wide by 6.25 inches high.

According to a newspaper article in The Daily Notes (Canonsburg, Pa.), Mr. Weller bought his first studio from his employer and mentor in 1890. He was definitely in business on his own in 1891 since he placed an advertisement in the newspaper. Weller also had a studio in the city of Washington, Pennsylvania, and I'll share those cabinet cards in a future post.

As far as I can tell, Weller's studio operated in Canonsburg until 1915 when he sold it to R.N. Sandberg. So I'm assuming the photos below can be dated as 1890-1915. If you are one of my husband's cousins and can help identify these Cowden photographs, I would love to hear from you!

Related Post: 

• Photographs: Cowden Family

Article: Headstone Photographs

The Observer-Reporter (Washington, Pennsylvania) posted this article over the weekend: "What's old is new again with gravestone photographs." One of the captions says, "Tombstone photos were popular in the early 1900s but are gaining new popularity. The photos started as an ethnic tradition but are becoming a more widespread tradition as a way to honor and remember loved ones."

I've seen these photographs during some of my cemetery walks, and they always make me stop and wonder about the person's life. The images below are from a headstone I saw in Melrose Cemetery located in Bridgeville, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

Sylvester Selva
Born June 24 1871
Died Sept. 30 1921
Leaving Wife and Children
(Photo taken by the author)

Photographs: Cowden Family

My mother-in-law recently gave me dozens of photographs, mostly cabinet cards, saying that they were unknown members of her husband's family. All but two were unmarked, and I haven't found any Cowden photos on Ancestry.com to help me identify the individuals.

Here are the only photos that have a name on them: one is Elmer Cowden (1884-1958) which was taken in front of a house in Canonburg, Pennsylvania, and the other is his sister Elva Cowden Hardesty (1890-1955). It's possible that the second man with Elmer is his only brother Harry.

Elmer Cowden, also marked "Cannonsburg [sic], Pa."

Closer view of photograph above

Elva Cowden Hardesty

I'll be sharing the rest of the photographs in future posts with the hope that a Cowden relative may find my blog and help identify them. If you are a cousin of my husband's family, I would love to hear from you!

Photograph: Identifying a Police Officer

I found the photograph below in a small box that belonged to my grandmother. There's an 'X' by the feet of one of the police officers, and on the back is just a surname: "Scheppner."

My great-grandfather was a policeman, and he married Christina Schoeppner in 1921 after his first wife died. So my first thought was that this was her father. But all records for Joseph Schoeppner showed that he was a laborer.

Christina also had three brothers--Joseph, Herman, and Michael Schoeppner--so I took a look at each of them. The younger Joseph was a mill worker and then became a grocer. Herman died when he was 16 years old. Michael was a steel worker in the 1900 census, and I couldn't find him in 1910.

So I put the photo away and forgot about it.

But then when I was recently searching for the surname Schoeppner on Newspapers.com, I came across an article that reminded me of that photograph:

The Pittsburg Post, May 11, 1905

I pulled up Michael's record in my database and saw that I didn't have a record of his death. I searched the Pennsylvania death certificates on Ancestry.com and found out that he died on December 22, 1913 of influenza and pneumonia. Michael's occupation? Police officer.

It's such a great feeling to be able to identify family members in old photographs!

Note: A report on Pittsburgh, which included an evaluation of the city's police force, was published in 1913, the same year Michael Schoeppner died. It was titled, The City of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania: Report on a Survey of the Department of Public Health, and I found this section very interesting:

"Policemen receive no training whatever for their work. The moment a patrolman has been appointed he is assigned to duty and little or no instruction is given him. He is required to learn the duties of his office as best he can or, as the authorities in charge of the bureau put it, 'by experience.' He is not even placed under the charge of an older patrolman or required to perform duty with him for a definite number of days so as to become familiar with the merest routine. ... Policemen are given revolvers to use without a single lesson in target practice."

Related Post:

• Photograph: Genealogy Mystery 

Photograph: Genealogy Mystery

The Pennsylvania death certificates on Ancestry.com helped me solve a genealogy mystery. You see, the photograph below was in a box with other loose photos that were passed to my father after both of his parents died. But we had no idea who some of the people were. And if you look closely, you will notice something that I missed several times when I looked at this photograph. The man in the middle is missing his right arm. Who was he?

My grandfather and his sister are the children in the first row, and I know the photo was taken before 1918 because, as I wrote in an earlier post, that was the year their mother Albertina died of the Spanish Influenza. She's in the middle of the back row. The only other people I know in the photo are my 2nd great-grandparents: the woman seated in the front row is Mary Baker Klein and the man in the back is her husband Jacob. The other three are a mystery.

I felt the man had to be a close relative because the little girl (my great-aunt Mildred) was leaning against his leg, something I don't think a child would do to a stranger or someone she didn't see often. But I had no idea how to figure out his identity, so I put the photo back in the box where it stayed for several years.

When Ancestry.com added a batch of Pennsylvania death certificates up to the year 1944, I entered each family surname into the search box and found the death records for many of my relatives. When I looked at the image of James Baker's death certificate, I knew I had the answer to the mystery of the photograph.

James was a younger brother of Mary Baker Klein, was born in Canada in 1861, and died in Pittsburgh on June 29, 1944. The cause of death was listed as congestive heart failure due to hypertensive heart disease. And next to Other Conditions was written "old amputation of right arm from accident 40 years ago." It was a great genealogy moment.

Please post a comment if you have a similar story of how a death certificate helped you solve a family mystery.

View Ancestor Homes without Traveling

My family doesn't have many old photographs. I can't look at images of my ancestors in front of their homes or in their neighborhoods. Census records and city directories tell me that Henry Jay, the brother of my great-grandfather, lived in and owned a grocery store at 2910 East Carson Street on the South Side of Pittsburgh from 1893 to the 1920s, but what did it look like? 

Well, there are places online you can search to try to get a glimpse of the past. One resource, of course, is Google Maps. This great shot of my great-uncle's home/store is courtesy of Google. The building still has its historic charm, so I can imagine that it looked very similar when his family lived there and neighbors stopped in to buy their weekly groceries.

There also are some local government websites that may have photographs, basic floor plans, and the age of homes where your ancestors lived. In the Pittsburgh area, the Allegheny County Office of Property Assessments has images of every home and is searchable by address. Wapello County, Iowa, and Cook County, Illinois, are just two others that have similar property search sites with photographs.

If you live far from your ancestral roots, try digging for similar websites. No travel required.