Ancestry Saturday: Just Need to Convince The Unconvinced

A convincing 1900 Census record?

My great grandfather Andrew Alfred Baker's parents have been the toughest ancestors to research. 

I'm convinced his father's name is Michael Baker and his mother was Barbara Fries.  A wedding record of him and one for his sister are the keys to the proof.  I wish there were more, though.

I keep hoping that someone else holds some more keys.  I just need to find them and convince them to share.

My research shows he had two sisters that came to Germany with him and his mother.  One was Lizzie and the other was Lena.  Barbara, his mother, had married Jacob Albert before coming to America in 1884.  There were several Albert children, half brothers and sisters to Andrew.

The Albert cousins have been located and are convinced.  They don't have any more than me, though.

The Baker cousins have been hard to bring around.  What they have or don't have hasn't been shaken loose.

Lizzie married a Luebke, a Perger, and a Carson.  She died in Cleveland in 1941 and is buried in an unmarked grave at Calvary Cemetery there.

Lena I've never found.

Lizzie had at least one child with Fritz Luebke.  Their daughter Cora had four children.  However, all of them passed on without bearing children.  No relatives, thus, survive.

Fritz' son Frederick may have also been Lizzie's son.  He was born before Fritz and Lizzie were married so uncertainty abounds.  No birth record or baptismal record has been found to put the blood line to rest.

Though Frederick has several offspring, the offspring haven't researched their family roots or, at least, reached the same conclusions as me.

I contacted one who, initially, was intrigued by the connection.  His intrigue went away quickly, though, and I count him as now unconvinced.

Here's the data:

Multiple records tie Lizzie Baker to Barbara Fries and, thus, Michael Baker.

That same Lizzie was living with her son, or at least step son, Frederick Luebke in the 1900 Census next door to Barbara Fries and her second husband after Michael Baker died, Jacob Albert.  Next door!

When Frederick died, one of his sons witnessed the death certificate and noted his mother as "Elizabeth Unknown."  At least he acknowledged Elizabeth though.

I wonder out loud.  What's that one more thing I need to convince the unconvinced?

Ancestry Saturday: The Quest for Family Tree Photos

For the 30 ancestors in my five-generation family tree, I have photos for all but four. 

 

My great great grandparents Amos Platt, Melinda Milliron, Michael Baecker, and Barbara Fries were all born in an era where photography was common enough that photos of them existed.  Photos of them remain elusive to me though.

I'm hopeful the list of the missing could soon shrink to three.

There's no headstone at the burial plot in Cleveland for Barbara (Fries) Baker Albert, but there could be a photo of her coming soon.

In a couple of weeks, two of my newly-found second cousins descended from the Albert family are pledged to go through a box of unlabeled family photos and share them.  Though it's regretful the photos never got labeled, it's encouraging they were, at least, kept all these years.

My research uncovered photos of Barbara's son, my great grandfather Alfred Baker, with his wife and daughters.  I've shared these.

Another passed-down family story is that Barbara always wore black.  My cousins knew that.



Photos of my grandmother Dena (left) and her sister Adele (right) could be clues to their paternal grandmother's identity.

The combination could be strong clues to figuring out who Barbara was. 

Surely, if there are photos of Barbara, it stands to reason that some of her oldest grandchildren, my grandma Dena and her sister Adele, would be in them.  My grandma was born in 1908 and her grandmother lived until 1935.  There's 27 years worth of potential photos to match.

Ancestry Saturday: Proximity Builds Confidence

I'm pursuing the hypothesis that the Baecker family in Bindersbach and Annweiler, Bavaria is the family from where my great grandfather Andrew Alfred Baker came. His father was Michael Baker, aka Baecker.

The pieces have been coming together at both Andrew's side and the Baecker side. The link is elusive though.

A recent birth record yielded the fact that Jacob Albert, Andrew's stepfather, was born in Homburg, Germany. The Cleveland, Ohio-bound Albert family started in Homburg. Jacob Albert married my great great grandmother Barbara Fries circa 1877 in Germany.

Homburg is less than an hour drive from Annweiler and Bindersbach.

That proximity is interesting to me as it gives me increasing confidence that I'm on the right track with the Baecker family ancestors that I'm showing in those towns. I've found numerous records for those Baeckers and can't match them to anyone else on ancestry.com, but also can't be totally confident they are "my" Bakers.

Proximity isn't proof, but it is a confidence builder.

Ancestry Saturday: Snow Gone, No Stone

In six inches of snow in Cleveland, I went hunting for the gravestone for my great great grandmother Barbara Fries.  No luck.

When the snow cleared, I found there was no stone at all in the first place.

That's too bad.

Ancestry Saturday: Cousins With Photos

I wrote before about my third cousin sharing a chance to scan photos from her family collection.  I wouldn't have had photos of my great grandfather, Andrew Alfred Baker, without the Mogon attic collection. 

I didn't even know Sue until ancestry.com provided a linkage.

When she shared those photos, It's put me on a mission.  It struck me that if there is one person on ancestry.com who shares photos, then there must be at least ten others who don't share it online or aren't online at all. 

The mission?  Find those cousins with photos!  I'm calling them now.  And finding them.

As I complete out the vital details--birth, marriage, and death--of my closest ancestors, my attention turns to photos of gravestones and, most importantly, faces.

The Smith cousins, particularly second cousin, once removed Bill and his wife, Mary, have shared a collection that gave me photos of Nathan and Mary Ann Smith, my great great grandparents. It also produced a photo of my great grandmother Grace Smith Platt that helped me identify her in a large group photo I had seen more than a year ago.

A newly-found second cousin once removed in Northwest Ohio shared photos of my great great grandfather Amos Platt's brother, David Fulton Platte (he added an e).  Facial recognition software may help me verify his brother's face in a photo some day.

I've recently found more cousins from the Andrew Alfred Baker side and am encouraged that a gravestone and face photo of his mother, Barbara Fries, will be a near future find.

There's a couple of unknown cousins in Columbus that connect to Platts that remain faceless.  There are cousins in Florida with Baker connections.

I'll keep seeking out those cousins with photos.

Ancestry Saturday: Worse Than The Family Station Wagon

Now that I know when and how my Great Grandfather Andrew Alfred Baker immigrated from Germany, there's only the demand to know more. Where in Germany did he live the first eight years of his life? What fate did his father meet? Who was his great grandfather?

For now, the ship story fulfills that thirst. The ship he came on his it's own story too.

The Salier was in service from 1874-1896. It was a combination sailing and steamer ship.







Andrew Alfred, his mother, and siblings were in steerage which, according to one source, could have been as many as 500 people. Yikes!

Look at that ship. It's hard to imagine being an eight-year-old boy and stuck under deck with hundreds of people for such a long journey.

It sure makes my gripes about the family station wagon on vacation seem petty.

The Salier made the news in 1896. It wrecked off the coast of Spain and 281 people drowned. Sad.

Sunday Review: Why Was This Family Branch So Tough?

I just confirmed the names of two great great grandparents--Barbara (Fries) and Michael Baker.  Yesterday, I wrote about completing my five-generation family tree.

More than 22 months of research went into filling out the tree and these two were, by far, the most elusive.  I had everyone else's name within the first three months.

Why were they so tough?  What were the lessons?  Here's my sense of it.

Big Cities and Common Surnames Are Intimidating
I was looking for the surname Baker in big city Cleveland.  I'll always remember the look of that Cleveland librarian when I asked if they had a surname file on the Baker family.

The search for a common surname in a big city can be intimidating.  Plus, frankly, big city libraries and big city genealogy sources aren't as helpful to the researcher as smaller ones are often found to be. 

It didn't stop me.  However, regrettably, two trips to the Cleveland Library and one to the Western Reserve Historical Society produced nothing to help me close the gap in my research. 

I should add.  I did find one of the most helpful researchers on the planet at WRHS.  This past Fall, he spent more than four hours trying to be the hero and find these people, but it was just as elusive to him as it was to me.

The Family Stories Were Incomplete or Inaccurate
My grandmother, Eugenia Baker Platt, was only 15 when her father died and she didn't share much information about her father.  Plus, her only sibling, Adele Marie, reportedly had thrown away all of the family records.

All I really had to go on from passed on stories was the names Barbara and Elizabeth to associate with Andrew Alfred Baker.  I was told he was from Germany.  I also knew he was in the Spanish-American War.  He lived in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Youngstown.  He was a draftsman and, before that, a professional musician.

Incomplete and inaccurate family stories is nothing new.  It's just in this case, it was downright dumbfounding.  There was more needed to complete the story and work backward in the family tree.

Conflicting Information in Official Records Made it Tough
I went to online searches and found conflicting information everyplace there too.  Andrew Alfred Baker's Youngstown obituary said he was born in Cleveland.  His Stark County, Ohio-issued death certificate said Germany and so did two Censuses.  His World War I draft registration was not apparently correct in his place of birth or year of birth.

Despite the conflicts, I chose to focus on Germany.  My late father's notes and his sister's complete insistence kept me focused on Germany too.  The search for immigrants rather than native-born proved to be the right one.  I now believe he was born in Germany May 13, 1876.

A Conflicting Immigration Record Made it Tougher
My Dad had the story of Andrew's immigrating and soon after "climbing over his mother's fence" to join the Army.  That would have placed his immigration at 1897. 

My Aunt, though, told me in September 2013 that her version was that Andrew Alfred was as young as three when he came over from Germany.  That would have placed the immigration in the 1879-1882 time frame. 

Despite such a wide disparity, I looked in digital search engines for him among the vast immigration papers out there.  I had found numerous Andrew or Alfred Bakers who immigrated in those time periods and some with mothers and/or sisters named Barbara and Elizabeth. 

I also could not find naturalization papers, which would have been required if he came in 1897 and was no longer a minor.  His war record neither mentioned foreign-birth nor naturalization.

All of those searches proved fruitless, I now know, because he was listed as sharing his mother's remarried surname, Albert.  Plus, the immigration record was ripped where his name appears.  No digital search was ever going to produce his name.  I now believe it is him that immigrated in 1884 with his mother, sisters, and a step brother.  His step father, Jacob Albert, came the year before.

I Was Mostly Alone In This Quest
Ancestry.com advertises on television so much that they have, almost single handedly, sparked a huge boom in family history research.  Most of my great great grandparents have multiple people sharing in the research efforts on the website.  However, there was no one looking for Andrew Alfred Baker's parents on the website.  The "hints" that Ancestry.com is so well known for were just not there.

Andrew had two children, two grandchildren, four great grandchildren, and six great great grandchildren.  In the grand scheme of things, that's not very many offspring.  Plus, I'm the only one researching family history.

Though I've now found family members from his sister and step sister's descendants, they, too, did not have research or family stories that helped them connect back to Barbara (Fries) and Michael Baker.  I was alone in this quest.

I've now spoken to a second cousin, once removed and attempted to correspond with others.  The quest is growing.

A Sequence of Clues
When he gave his next of kin in his War physical record, the street address was given that was a big clue. I had that in 2012, I just didn't have enough information to go with it to help me match up the family living at that address--the Alberts--until later.

His obit I obtained in October 2012 concluded he was survived "by his mother, two sisters, and a brother in Cleveland."  That turned out to be true.  However, without the names in the obit, it was mostly useless until the end of the research.

My Dad had the names Barbara and Elizabeth and his sister confirmed those two names too.  It wasn't clear which was the mother and which the sister.  Given the puzzle this turned out to be, though, these name clues were crucial to keeping the hunt going.

However, another key clue came from a family generational chart that I didn't know I had until November 2013.  It was when I got the name Michael Baker that I first found Barbara Fries and Elizabeth Baker with whom to associate.  That association was key.

The spark, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, was my Aunt sharing the contents of a marriage certificate that confirmed Michael and Barbara Baker were Andrew's parent's names.  That confirmation from something more than just memorized records or stories helped to focus attention on the people I had been researching.

Things I Now Know That I Wish I Knew Then
FamilySearch.org tends to work best sometimes when you enter less information rather than more.  Instead of entering Barbara Fries, my great great grandmother's maiden name, to search for her, I should have sooner than I did enter Barbara for her first name, Fries for her father's last name, and Ohio after 1923 for her place of death.  I had those clues months before.

SteveMorse.org has a feature to search for street names in some Census years.  Though it didn't help me find my great grandfather in the 1900 Census, it could have helped me find his mother and sister sooner if I had used the tool to look for 1054 Lorain Street in the 1900 Census in Cleveland.  I still would have needed something more to help me link the Alberts to my ancestors, but this tool is useful nonetheless.

Lastly, there was no shortcut.  If some other family member had done this research, I might have had more clues.  I could have found them at small-town genealogy centers or online.  But since it hadn't been done before as best I can tell, this was the path that it took. 

Good things come to those who wait, and persevere.

Ancestry Saturday: Five-Generation Chart Confirmed

My Aunt's email sparked a flood gate opening.  She shared that she had found a marriage certificate for my great grandparents, Andrew Alfred Baker and Beatrice Merz Baker, with the names of Andrew Alfred's parents--Michael and Barbara Baker.

Now, those names weren't particularly new.  They were, however, more definitive in this document than the anecdotal information passed down previously.

That motivated me to look back at my notes.

A couple months ago, I had found an Elizabeth Baker in Cleveland with parents Michael and Barbara (Fries) Baker. I, even, went so far as to leave a voice mail with a living step great grandson of hers a few weeks ago.

These folks were my top suspects.  Family stories had a sister Elizabeth in the mix.  This Elizabeth was close in age to Alfred, also imigrated from Germany, and lived on the West Side of Cleveland.  It sure seemed more than coincidental that her parents were named Michael and Barbara too.

But I could not find what happened to Barbara Fries or link her or Elizabeth to Alfred.

Then it occurred to me to look for the first name Barbara with the last name Fries for the father in the Ohio Death Index on FamilySearch.org.  Pay dirt.

This death record gives a married name Albert that I didn't have before.  It stood to reason that she remarried as every family story had Alfred's father dying before the family came to America.  

The married name gave me the clue that linked them to Alfred.  In the 1900 Census, Barbara (Fries) Albert is living at 1054 Lorain St in Cleveland with her husband, Jacob.  Further, living next door is Elizabeth Luebke.  That's Alfred's presumed sister. 

1054 Lorain is significant because that's the same address Andrew Alfred Baker gave for next of kin in his Spanish-American War physical record.  Though the record gave Jacob Baker as the person, it's fair to say it was actually his step father Jacob to which it referred. 

The Censuses had clues to immigration and marriage years.  Soon, a naturalization record for Jacob Albert gave way to verifying that Jacob immigrated in 1883 and Barbara and the kids came over in 1884.

Though a tear in the stewarge list covers the 8 year old boy's name who came over with Barb, showing Elisa and Johannes (step brother John) on the same ship tells us this is the arrival record for my Great Grandfather.

Sorry for a long post, but this one has been a long mystery.  Even though some more records would perfect this find, I declare the names solved.

But now that I've filled in all of the names for my five-generation chart, it's time to tackle the sixth!

Ohio Ancestors 2013 Year in Review

I'm reading newspaper updates on the stories of the past year.  Why not a blog version?

Here's some updates on the ohioancestors.blogspot.com columns from the past year.

My column of the year was the eight-part series titled Solved: The Their-Disselbrede Mystery.  The update is that my father-in-law has, for the first time, visited the cemetery where his grandparents William and Barbara Disselbrett are buried.  It was a less than 30 minute trip, but he never knew where to look.

Trading Finds was about Elaine in Wisconsin.  She sent me a photo of my kids' third great grandfather as a trade for my finding some records for her.  I traded back again when I sent her one that included her great grandfather a few months later in Are These The Same People?

I preached, mostly to myself, the need to document vital records for my five-generation family tree in March.  I celebrated finding the elusive Gretna Green marriage of Royal and Grace Smith Platt in August though.

The digital photo matching search for which regimental band trombonist was my great grandfather proved right on.  More From The Mogon Attic brought an end to the mystery and showed the value of digital photo face matching software.

That great Mogon Attic find was a true highlight for the year too.  I'm Facebook friends with my second cousin once removed, third cousin, and third cousin once removed in Pittsburgh now.  There's little chance of losing that connection now.

I puzzled about Group Think in Genealogy that had me wondering who were the  parents of Thomas Worthington Sanders.  Now, months later, I found my cousin in Eastern Ohio admitting that he doesn't know where the name Worthington as Thomas' middle name came from in the first place.  I've taken that name down and posted an update to the columns on it.  Since I've now also located an obit and a photo of Thomas W. Sanders, I'll have more to say about this in the future.

In September, I sweated out the acceptance of my "proof" of James McConnell being in Ohio pre-statehood.  Not long after, I got accepted into the First Families of Ohio lineage society with the coveted pre-statehood status to boot thanks to James McConnell.  Oh yeah, they generously added some ancestors I hadn't even sought too.

On Veterans' Day, I put my first list of Revolutionary War patriots together and marveled that my kids could boast, by my research, at least 21 patriots in their bloodline.  This month, I grew the list to 27.

2014 has more mysteries to solve.  Stay tuned.

Ancestry Saturday: More From The Mogon Attic

 

Remember the OVI 10th Regimental Band?  I spent last Fall trying to figure out which trombonist in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry Spanish-American War regiment was my great grandfather.

 

I wrote about using facial recognition software to narrow the list down to one man who seemed to be my great grandfather.

The trombonist presumed to be Andrew Alfred Baker

I just assumed that I would never know for sure what he really looked like.

 

Then, my third cousin Sue let me scan in some photos from a box she inherited in her Mogon grandparents' attic and "Uncle Alfred" was in photo form right before me.  Uncle to Sue was Great Grandpa to me.



The real Andrew Alfred Baker

What do you think?  I agree.  I think I got it right back in the Fall.  Facial recognition software worked.

Ancestry Saturday: Ah, Those Photos in The Attic

"I have several pictures of the Merz family and Eugenia and the Bakers, they were in a trunk at my grandparents house--the Mogon's--and when they passed they ended up here."

This July e-mail from my new-found third cousin Sue in Pittsburgh, along with an invitation to visit, practically had me getting in my car that instant.

When I actually accepted the invite in early August, what I found confirmed my sense of urgency.  What a treasure!




All told, Sue had five generations of family photos that included my 3GG Mary Elizabeth (Dickman) Schroeder, my 2GG's Eugene and Clara (Schroeder) Merz, my Great Grandparents Alfred and Beatrice (Merz) Baker, my Grandmother Eugenia (Baker) Platt, and my Aunt Charmion (Platt) Harrigan as a child.

The photo above included my grandma (youngest child at right) to my 3G grandmother (middle, left).

Treasure indeed.

Ancestry Saturday: 113 Years Early For a Bad Place To Live

The "A" marks the now-dubious address in Cleveland.  The street at the top of the screen has ancestral connections from 113 years ago.

Our ancestors can't have known back then what we know now when they made choices where to live. 

If you could, it's doubtful anyone would want to have lived in the neighborhood where the horrible abductions in Cleveland took place.  2207 Seymour Avenue will never be an address where anyone will want to live again.  The horrors are too much to want to conjure up every day. 

Go back 113 years, though, and that's the neighborhood where my Great Grandfather Andrew Baker lived.  It was an ethnic German neighborhood then.

The City Directory had him there in 1899 and 1900 after his service in the Spanish-American War.  Wade Ave, one block parallel to the north, was the street he lived on before he left for the Pittsburgh area sometime before 1905. 

His actual dwelling, converted after numbering in 1906, would have put him at 3511 Wade Avenue, a home that long-ago gave way to Interstate 90 right of way.  That's three blocks west and one full block north of the now-dubious address.

Who could have known?  No one.

Ancestry Saturday: 10th Ohio Regiment, Spanish-American War

The Ohio Historical Society has a small collection of photos of the 10th Ohio Regiment stationed at Camp Meade in 1898. Records show my Great Grandfather Andrew Alfred Baker was there. Somewhere.









Later, the regiment paraded in downtown Cleveland, which was great grandfather's hometown at the time.

Location:Middletown, Pennsylvania

Ancestry Saturday: National Archives Deserves Praise

A couple of weeks ago, I griped about the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's utterly lacking responsiveness to records research.  I devoted a day this week to rehashing my spat with a Department of Commerce bureaucrat.

I owe it to our government to take the positive side now and then.

The National Archives responded to a request for my great grandfather's Spanish-American War veterans' records in amazingly fast time.

Andrew Alfred Baker was my German-born great grandfather who was a member of the Regimental Band of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  He's been a Saturday topic before too.

His record verified that service, and more.  I found that he was charged with AWOL one time for not being at a rollcall.  He was later acquitted.

I also found a next of kin notice record showing Jacob Baker of Cleveland.  He was probably his brother, but I have yet to determine the relation for sure.

The speediness and the adaptation to technology are a great credit to the work of the National Archives. 

Ancestry Saturday: More Use of Facial Recognition Software For Genealogy Matching

Recall I tried to match one of six trombone players in the Regimental Band of the Tenth Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry of the Spanish-American War to my grandmother and great aunt.  I really do want to scientifically attempt to verify which person is my great grandfather rather than go by a poll or my gut.

I tried some more use of the MyHeritage.com Look-alike-Meter app to see if I could make a better, more scientific case for deciding to conclude that one trombonist was my great grandfather as opposed to one of the other five.

The app is designed to be more gimmick, than tool.  One enters photos of a mother, a father, and a child to let the software tell you whether the child more resembles the mother or the father.

I still found a way to manipulate use of the tool to reach a conclusion.  As a result, I'm more convinced than ever that this is, indeed, my great grandfather.

Here's how I did it:

I took four random photos from the Internet of women who could be considered resembling the trombonist.  I plugged in those strangers with this trombonist and then used the Look-alike-Meter to see whether the app thought those random women more resembled my grandmother and aunt than the trombonist.

After all, if the trombonist was a completely random person then there should be a no better than 50/50 chance he resembled my relatives more than the random women. 

Turns out, there was not one out of eight cases that the Meter said the random women more resembled the trombonist.  That's a breakthrough!

In my great aunt's case, the resemblance favoring the trombonist in four cases was never less than 45% resemblance factor.  For comparison, consider that my grandmother, known to be a relative, tested in resemblance to my great aunt at only 12%.  Thus, that's a pretty significant find.

In my grandmother's case, the resemblance was a much lower percentage with even one person near flip-of-a-coin resemblance (maybe that model is related?).  However, the other three out of four favored the trombonist in resembling my grandmother versus a random woman.

I think we found him.

Just sharing.

Ancestry Saturday: Using Photo Resemblance Tools For Genealogy Research

It's Saturday.  I'm writing about my genealogical research hobby.

My latest celebrated  research find came from a book--Boys of '98: A History of the Tenth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  I now know that the Library of Congress has a copy online, though I found the book itself at the Columbus Public Library courtesy of an extremely helpful librarian and some dumb luck.

My great grandfather Andrew Alfred Baker was very likely in this photo.  He was a musician in the band of the Tenth Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry for the Spanish-American War.

I was extremely pleased with the find, but, alas, which one is he?  There's no captioned list with the photograph.

I asked my aunt, his nearest living relative, and she'd never seen a photo of him to which to compare. He died 15 years before she was born and no photographs passed down.  Of course, I don't know what he looked like either.

A later page in the book says he was among the trombonists in the band.  That narrowed it down to six.

The likely three youngest trombone players.

I was able to find ages for the other trombone players.  He was one of three of the youngest members and, in my opinion, age distinctions are visible enough in this photo to narrow down to three distinct bandsmen.

I polled some folks.

All six I asked picked the same person--the trombone player with no facial hair is the unanimous pick to have been my great grandfather.



The unanimous pick.

Of course, Presidents make national policy choices on overnight polling, but choosing what my great grandfather looked like for my family tree collection requires more science. Right?

There are ways to get through this somewhat scientifically.  Here's a few I pondered and tried:



The unanimous pick among trombone players side by side with my grandmother (left) and great aunt (right).

I compared his photo to my grandmother and Aunt and did a little amateur biometrics.  I think there's reason to think the pick among trombone players could be the father of these two.  The noses are extremely similar.  The mouths and chins are simliar.  The space between the eyes is close in comparison.

Using facial recognition software to find a resemblance was worth a try.

Windows 7's Windows Live Photo Gallery program has a way to tag faces and then have it search other photos on the PC that it's algorithm believes match that face.  I did that, thinking that if it tried to match my grandmother's photo to his that there was some increased likelihood of a match.  It didn't take.

I tried MyHeritage.com's feature advertised to be the first family genealogy service to deploy face recognition software matching faces. My experience from browsing is that they haven't graduated to this type of relatives comparison, yet.  I'll share some more on this one in the future.

The Resemblance Lens feature on my kids' Nintendo DSI XL's was my next try. I've found that capability pretty impressive in the past matching my kids to their uncle, even. I couldn't get it work in this case though. I think it doesn't like black and white photos.

Technology is getting close though I think.  It can't be long before someone figures out how to deploy facial recognition software to tag relatives.

The best, most scientific option left is trying to find an identified photograph somewhere.  I'm going to keep trying, of course.

In the meantime, I opted to post the photo of the polled favorite trombone player with my great grandfather in my Ancestry.com family tree.

Do you think the match is right?