Breathing new life into old photos since 2012.
I liked this picture so much that I put it on my first business card back in 2012. This is the Balmer family, circa 1898. The woman standing at right is Bertha, the subject of today’s episode of 52 Ancestors. She was my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother—my great-great-grandmother, that is—and she’s unmistakable. Continue reading
Today is the Fourth of July, and I can not think of a better way to spend the day than to write up a short profile on the first—and so far the only—direct ancestor I’ve found to be a Revolutionary War veteran! There are bound to be more, but let’s start with this one: Mr. John Hougendobler, an ancestor of my paternal grandmother. Continue reading
As a young girl, my mother discovered in a closet a plaque that eerily bore her own name, Celia Anflick, along with birth and death dates. It was a metal plaque that my mother described as the sort of thing one might see hung in a mausoleum. Of course, the plaque was not my mother’s memorial from a past life. Rather, it was a memorial to an aunt whom my mother would never meet. Continue reading
Because this website, and the business it represents, are image-oriented, I try to have some sort of stimulating GIMP work at the top of each post. The cost of this self-imposed policy is that many fascinating family history stories will go overlooked—unless I manufacture some visually stimulating way to represent the story.
Having recently made a bit of a breakthrough on today’s features ancestor, I wanted to write-up here what I had found. I don’t have a photograph of him, though, so I had to get resourceful. Here before you is the grave of Denis Graham, who was the uncle of my great-great-grandfather, John C. Graham. I’m not really one to doctor gravestone images, but since I recently picked up a few new tricks, I thought I’d see how far I could take them.
In this image, I’ve attempted to remove the rain-induced dampness in the original photograph to present the gravestone as if it were dry. The results were middling, in my opinion. Had I attempted this project for a client, I would have given it more time. Since I’m already a week overdue on Ancestor #25, I figured I’d post what I have and move along. The hardest part of this project is putting life back into the engraved flowers. There wasn’t much left in them after removing darkness of color. Continue reading
Mother’s Day is my clue that Father’s day is not too far away, and I have to come up with some offering of roughly equal market and sentimental value. I feel pretty bad when I don’t come through, but my Pop is pretty easy-going, and helps a lot with occasional and unintentional gifting inequalities. For example, this year, I had published my mother’s tribute on time, on Mother’s day. My father get’s his tribute on the Tuesday after Father’s Day.
Why? Well, this weekend my father was helping me puzzle through some tech stuff that might improve my standing for a job I had interviewed for. That kinda needed to get done. That’s one of the great things about my dad: If you come to him with any sort of puzzle that needs a solving, he’s happy to help. He really invests himself, too. His interest is genuine. It’s as if his success relied on mine, or whosoever’s he happens to help. Continue reading
We all have them in our old photo boxes by the score: nameless, ageless people. Who are they? Are they relatives? Are they friends? Are co-workers or business partners? We’ll probably never know. This unidentified man is special to me. He’s the one who got away. Continue reading
Today’s subject is my great-great-great-grandfather, Peter Staaf. This is my grandmother’s great-grandfather, that is, my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s father. Peter was the immigrant ancestor of this line. I found his passenger list on Ancestry.com, which led me to his hometown of Sterbfritz, which is right in the heart of Germany. He left that place and arrived in Baltimore on the sixth of May, 1854, with his wife and daughter, both named Margaret. He settled in Butler County, Western Pennsylvania.
Mailbag!
The Staaf family line is the only one I’ve been able to trace back to the motherland, several generations prior to the emigration. This was thanks to a great stroke of luck, in the first place, and then the diligent efforts of a professional genealogist who happened to live right in that area. I learned about Mr. Clemens Schreiber in 2009, when I happened upon this web site that provided his contact information. He happened to live in Schlüchtern, which is a drive of mere minutes from Sterbfritz. Mr. Schreiber happened to charge a very reasonable fee: $7.00 for a family group record. At that price, I purchased the whole Staaf line by mail, going back to 1613. Mr. Schreiber told me that the line of Peter’s wife, Margaret Lotz, went back even further, to about 1450, and asked if I was interested in purchasing that as well. I did not have funds to purchase all of that at the time, but I’m glad to know that information is available. Continue reading
Here is another of my earliest attempts at photo restoration—a “Throwback Tuesday”, if you will, from early 2012. Looking back, it turned out okay. I posted it as I fount it. What you see is what you get. On the left, the baby’s face had some sort of darkness across it that seems like it shouldn’t be there. A little digital wizardry, and poof! Bye-bye darkness. A little contrast boost, and there you have it. Not bad.
Young Julia and her sisters, Helen (standing) and Mary (seated).
This is an image of my great-grandmother, Julia Corr, when she was a wee babe. She was born in Philadelphia on October 6, 1904 to John and Julia (Foley) Corr. John was an Irish immigrant who built a successful wool recycling business from the $1.25 he brought with him to the New World. The elder Julia was the daughter of Irish immigrants Edward Foley and Mary Mahoney. After the elder Julia died of stomach cancer in 1906, baby Julia and her siblings were raised by their stepmother, Mary (Comey) Corr.
Young Julia Corr was the baby of the family. Her eldest sister, Mary, was about seventeen years her senior. Julia also had these other siblings: Helen, John A., another baby Julia who died in infancy, Edward, and Joseph. Like her descendants, Julia grew up in Philadelphia, but enjoyed summers by the Jersey Shore: Atlantic City, I believe, in her case. Julia married my great-grandfather, Joseph on April 10th, 1928. Their original marriage certificate is the only one I have yet to see. Continue reading
I’m doing something a little different today. My normal M. O. is to profile ancestors who have long passed, and are no longer around to either defend themselves or allege privacy invasion. Today, I’m profiling my mother, who is alive and well, and whom I image will read her profile shortly. Today is Mother’s Day, and so today I recognize my mother as a family hero who has earned her place in history. Continue reading
I’m enjoying a nice little vacation this week, but taking a vacation from my vacation to publish this blog on Ancestor No. 18, my maternal grandfather’s mother. She was born Minnie Snyder in what was once the Russian Empire, sometime in the early 1890s. Telling exactly when she was born is difficult. I suspect that several of the young ladies on this branch of the family falsified their ages on official documents, such as marriage records. Suffice to say, the birth dates on the documents vary widely. Immigration documents place her residence at the time of emigration in a place called Mogilev. There are a few places with that name, the most well known of which, I believe, is in Belarus. There is another place, in what is now the Ukraine, called Mogilev-Podolskiy. I suspect Minnie was from the latter because of its proximity to the birthplace of her future husband’s family, and also because of its strong Jewish heritage, but I’m not completely sure in which of the towns she lived. Continue reading
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