Identifying the People on the Postcard

My husband is blessed with probably hundreds of old family photos through one of his grandparent’s lines: his Payton family. Many of these photos are labeled. But, his mom, dad, and I worked on labeling more of these this weekend.

I was intrigued by one photo that was sent as a postcard. The picture was of an unknown mother and baby. The back was written to “Aunt Ella” and signed “Maud Vassar.”

Three other people were mentioned: Myrtle, Ben, and Leona. I had three questions:

• • Who were the people in the photo?
  • What year was the photo taken?
  • And who were the people mentioned in the postcard?

Aunt Ella, Ben, & Leona

A penciled label on the side helped me determine that “Aunt Ella” was Mary Ella (Gilbert) Payton, my husband’s great, great grandmother. Ben, her oldest son, was my husband’s great grandfather. Leona was Ella’s second oldest child.

Niece Maud Vassar

I originally misread the letter and thought two nieces – Maud and Myrtle – were writing their Aunt Ella. I did identify Maud. She was a daughter of Ella’s sister, Waity Belle (Gilbert) Robbins. And Maud’s married surname was Vassar.

Without information on many of Ella and Waity Belle’s nine siblings, I could not find another niece named Myrtle. I did notice that Maud had two daughters who appeared to be twins on the 1920 census; Mabel and Myrtle who were both listed as 7 years old that year.

The FamilySearch Tree

To try to determine if one of Ella’s other siblings had a daughter named Maud, I turned to the FamilySearch tree. The tree did have more information – some sourced and some not sourced – and I will have to do more research before adding these people to my tree. But, I was susprised to see that Maud’s daughters, Mabel and Myrtle, were not twins! According to the birthdates listed on this tree, Myrtle was born 19 January 1912, and Mabel was born less than a year later on 5 January 1913.

The Mother/Daughter in the Photo

Finding out that Maud’s first daughter was named Myrtle helped me to read the postcard with a different viewpoint. I had thought the letter was from Maud and Myrtle. But the letter actually starts by saying “this is me and Myrtle.” So, the mother is Maud and the baby is her daughter, Myrtle! And, since Myrtle was born in January of 1912, this photo was taken in 1912. At the time, Maud must have been pregnant with her second daughter, Mabel.

Strangely, the Vassar family lived in Washington though the postcard says it’s by the “Stanton Photo Novelty Co” of Springfield, Ohio. The family might have been on vacation when this photo was taken.

It was exciting to do the detective work to not only identify the people mentioned in the postcard, but also to identify the mother, daughter, and year of the photo!

UPDATE: My friend, Natalie, shared some information about novelty photo companies and Stanton in particular. These companies ran ads in various publications offering photograph reprints. She also sent a link to a blogpost about Stanton Photo Novelty Company on a website called Evermore.