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: 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: 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?