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...
When my husband’s grandmother was 16, her 7-year-old brother died from injuries after he was hit by a car. He was hit while crossing a highway on his way home from school. The newspaper account says that an officer had stopped to tell the children to face the traffic to safely cross the highway. Little Obel Jene ran from behind the police car and was hit by a car. His little body was then thrown into traffic coming from the other direction and he was hit a second time. Another motorist picked him up, but Obel Jene died before he...
To label the people in this group photo of my husband’s family, I used PhotoShop Elements to create a faded version of the photo and then number each person. I then posted both photos on Facebook and asked for help filling in the names of individuals my in-laws had not identified. because of this process, we now have 25 of the 30 people in this photograph identified. Also, a relative had photos from this same day in a scrapbook and provided us with a month and year for the gathering. Payton Family “Reunion” Photo, April 1942, Muskogee, Oklahoma List of...
My husband’s favorite Christmas movie is A Christmas Story in which Ralphie wants a BB gun but the adults all tell him, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” It’s taken me years to appreciate this movie, but now I look forward to seeing it every year. A few months ago, I found a newspaper clipping at newspapers.com which was a “Dear Santa” letter from my husband’s grand uncle (his grandmother’s brother). I was amused to see that this 7-year-old was also asking for a BB gun. But, he was also asking for things my husband’s other grandparents talked about getting at...
Randy posted his Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Challenge… and it’s based on one of my posts! Neat! So, here are the rules: Dana Leeds on the Enthusiastic Genealogist blog asks “Did/Do Your Children Know Any of Their Great-Grandparents?“ I thought that would be a great Saturday Night Genealogy Fun question – so please share your response with us in a blog post of your own, in a comment on this blog post, or in a Facebook or Google+ post. For extra credit, or in case the answer is “No,” then please answer the question for yourself, or your parents Randy,...
Paula Stuart-Warren posted about the birth of her first great grandchild. Then, she talked about how many great-grandparents her children knew, and how many great-grandparents she knew. That got me thinking about the relationship my daughter has had with four of her great-grandparents. (I only had one great-grandparent living when I was born, but she lived across the country and died when I was less than 2 months old.) One of my husband’s grandmother’s died when my daughter was about 14 months old. Sadly, she had an advanced case of Alzheimer’s. She kept thinking my baby girl was a baby...
I have been having a lot of success lately with newspapers.com, my favorite site for newspaper research. Their search engine seems to work better than than the other sites, or at least I’ve figured it out better! Or maybe they just have more newspapers that are relevant to my family! Ben Payton and family, Haskell News, Haskell, Oklahoma, 04 Oct 1917, page 5, column 3; digital image newspapers.com, (http://www.newspapers.com: accessed 14 Sep 2014) This weekend, I decided to research some of my husband’s family members and I came across the above article about one of his ancestors, Ben Payton. It...
