Sepia Saturday: The Gazette

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday photo of the woman factory worker dressed in white brought to mind a beautiful graduation picture of my maternal grandfather’s cousin, Elta G. Sullivan Farrar.

I’m assuming this was a high school graduation picture, taken before 1920.

My grandparents maintained a lifelong friendship with their cousins, and they visited often.  So as a kid, I met a lot of old people.  My memories of most of them are rather dim.  But my memories of Elta are clear because she was just so darn nice.  And friendly.  And cheerful.

In the Cradock neighborhood of Portsmouth, Virginia where I grew up, if you wanted to know what was going on in the community, you didn’t need to read the newspaper or wait for the news broadcast.  You just had to check with cousin Elta.  “Elta the Gazette” – that’s what my grandparents called her. 

Four of the Sullivan sisters
Back:  Minnie Sullivan Breeden
Left to right: Pearl S. Strole,
Elta S. Farrar, Floral S. Merica
about 1901

Who died? Who is getting married?  When is the baby due? The preacher said what?  Elta the Gazette was our source for any and all details that mattered.   My grandmother could be telling about how many flowers were at so-n-so’s funeral and about some store going out of business.  If we asked where she heard that, her answer was usually, “The Gazette.”  Oh well, then, it had to be true.

How Elta managed to gather all the latest news (and gossip) from the local community as well as from “back home” in Shenandoah where she and my grandparents grew up was always the mystery.  Did she have a Deep Throat source we didn’t know about? 

Left: My grandmother Lucille Rucker Davis
Right:  Elta Sullivan Farrar

Maybe Elta’s knack for getting the scoop was just her sweet and engaging personality that made people want to tell her things.   

Be sweet and stop by Sepia Saturday. 

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Wordless Wednesday: Wedding Portrait?

Wordless Wednesday is a daily prompt at Geneabloggers that asks family historians to create a post in which the main focus is a photograph or image.

I need help identifying this couple in a tintype found in an album belonging to my great-grandmother Mary Frances Jollett Davis.  I wonder if maybe they were her in-laws, Mitchell and Martha Willson Davis.  Does he look at least twelve years older than his bride? 

One reason I think this is a Davis is that the man seems so dapper, much like my great-grandfather Walter Davis as seen here.

Walter B. Davis 1933

Who is this handsome couple and why didn’t I inherit those good looks?  

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Saturday Night Fun: Ancestor Roulette

Every Saturday Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings presents a fun challenge.  This time it’s a game of Ancestor Roulette.  Here are the rules:

1) What year was one of your great-grandfathers born? Divide this number by 100 and round the number off to a whole number. This is your "roulette number."

2) Use your pedigree charts or your family tree genealogy software program to find the person with that number in your ancestral name list (some people call it an "ahnentafel").  Who is that person, and what is his/her vital information?

3) Tell us three facts about that person in your ancestral name list with the "roulette number."

4) Write about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a Facebook status or a Google Stream post, or as a comment on Randy's blog post.

5) NOTE: If you do not have a person's name for your "roulette number" then "spin" the wheel again - pick a great-grandmother, a grandfather, a parent, a favorite aunt or cousin, yourself, or even your children!

Here’s mine:

1.  All of my great-grandparents were born in the latter half of the 1800s, which with rounding up puts me at #19.  However, I have no #19.  If I round down to 18, I’m in no better shape because there is no #18 either.  When I use myself or my children, I have to round up to 20. 

2. Drum roll, please.  The person who occupies #20 is Patrick Walsh, one of my great-great grandfathers on my father’s side.  Patrick was born somewhere between 1830-1840. He married a girl named Mary.  And he died.  Yes, I’m pretty sure he died; however, I don’t know when.

3.  Three facts:

• Patrick must have lived in the United States since his son claims to have been born in either Virginia or Michigan, depending on whether we trust the 1910 census or family lore.
• Patrick was born in Ireland according to the marriage register of my great grandparents John Fleming Walsh and Mary Theresa Sheehan Killeen Walsh.
• If we can trust family lore, Patrick broke away from his Walsh family that either owned or operated a distillery.  I have found a James Walsh Distillery operating in the 1870s in Indiana, and Paris Distilling operated by N. J. Walsh in Ohio 1890s. If one of these is "ours," that would be any Irish descendant's dream, wouldn't it?

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Sepia Saturday: Who Dat?

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week Sepia Saturday encourages all Homo-Sepians to blog about those unidentified people in the photos passed down through the generations.  Does Alan think he’s being funny?  Being UNable to identify people is my life!  More often than not my blogs are attempts to put names with those unnamed faces on cabinet cards and on wrinkled or fading photos glued to brittle black pages of scrapbooks.  In short, I got this.

While I have lots of photos to choose from, this one is most similar to the prompt photo.

For a long time I was caught up in the notion that the photos passed down in an old dress box had belonged to my great-grandmother Mary Frances Jollett Davis.  Every unidentified face prompted me to compare pictures to those of known ancestors.  If no match was apparent, I assumed the person was some distant cousin, an aunt or uncle, or maybe even a neighbor. 

Foolishly, I overlooked the idea that some old photos may have come along with a marriage into my family, that these Great Unknowns were “the outlaws,” as I like to call them:  those parents and siblings of the men and women who married into my family but whose genealogy isn’t my concern.

So while this family is technically unknown to me, I do have a guess:  maybe my great-aunt Velma Davis Woodring’s husband "Woody" as a child.

Does the boy look like he might have grown up to look like this?

Arthur H. "Woody" Woodring
1903 - 1951

                                                                                                                                                     

Or like this?

Woody 1929

Woody

How about like this?

Unfortunately, anyone who knows the answer is long gone, so this family photo remains among “The Unknown.”

Please visit Sepia Saturday.  It’s a virtual “Who’s Who” of “Who knows who.” 

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Wordless Wednesday: Who Are They?

Wordless Wednesday is a daily prompt at Geneabloggers that asks family historians to create a post in which the main focus is a photograph or image.

In my continuing effort to identify faces in the many photos passed down in my family, I present yet another family whose names are unknown.   Possibly they are related to my great-grandmother Mary Frances Jollett Davis who grew up in Greene County but lived her adult life in Shenandoah, Page County, Virginia.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Sepia Saturday: Tears for Turtles

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday photo prompt of the pipe-smoking soldier inspecting the battalion mascot conjured up the faint memory of my sister’s pet turtle, Terri.  It’s a sad story.  Prepare to weep.

People who grew up with dogs are usually sympathetic to the plight of a child who longs for the companionship of man’s best friend, a loyal companion who would enjoy a run through the neighborhood, a game of fetch, a belly-rub, a snuggle. 

Uncle Renza Davis, Momma, her brother
Orvin Davis, Jr. and Fritz

My mother always had a dog as a child.  (I wrote about Fritz previously HERE.) 

But contrary to the belief that once a dog person always a dog person, Momma refused to allow my sister or me to have a dog.  No cat, either.  What?  Hadn’t she read the parenting magazines that promised having a pet would teach responsibility and compassion?

Momma did, however, give in and let us have a goldfish, four of them, actually:  Pixie and Dixie, Charlie (no doubt named in honor of the popular StarKist tag-line “Sorry, Charlie”), and some other one whose name is long forgotten, probably something equally clever like “Goldie.”

Once we mastered goldfish-level responsibility and compassion, we moved up to Turtle.  I was over the need for a pet by then, so Terri was Mary Jollette’s pet and her responsibility. 

Photo courtesy HA HA of
my sister at age 6
Terri is the little brown thing on the left.

Terri had a bowl with a palm tree and colorful gravel.  She could walk in a circle and enjoy the view from the ever-clouding plastic bowl.  After awhile she quit walking.  Her shell turned brown and soft.  We thought she was dying, but our neighbor assured us this weird look was normal for such a turtle. 

But eventually it was clear that Terri was not going to make it.  She was buried in a box in the backyard.  We held a funeral and we all cried. 

Mary Jollette on the right with her friend Susan.
Terri is buried somewhere close to this area
under a fig tree that Daddy cut down.  

After that traumatic experience, I understood the popularity of the pet rock.  No tears for them!  

Come out of your shell and visit Sepia Saturday to see what other bloggers have made of this week’s theme.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.

Wordless Wednesday: Are These the Knights?

Wordless Wednesday is a daily prompt at Geneabloggers that asks family historians to create a post in which the main focus is a photograph or image.

I wonder if this could be my great-grand aunt Leanna Jollett Knight (1867-1936) and her husband James Mitchell Knight (1866-1942) who lived in Greene County, Virginia.  There are so few pictures of her as a young woman, yet my great grandmother Mary Frances Jollett Davis had pictures of her other brothers and sisters.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.