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.