The History of a generational home

My grandmother was almost ninety- four years old when she passed away from dementia. She was born, raised and spent her whole life in Santa Clara County, mostly in the Rose Lawn area of San Jose. When she passed, our family was fortunate enough to save her home at 438 Rutland Avenue. Built in 1925 with two bedrooms and one bath, this eight hundred and forty square foot Craftsman style bungalow with its welcoming front porch was constructed on a four thousand one hundred and twenty-foot lot in the area once known as Rancho de Los Coches. 

   This twenty two- hundred acre piece of land was deeded to Santa Clara Mission Indian Roberto Balmerino in 1844 and sold it to an American settler Antonio Suñol two years later. During the 1860’s the Rancho de Los Coches area was sold to Henry Naglee and subdivided and the area surrounding the eventual Rose lawn area became known as Buena Vista.  (https://www.bvnasj.org/then-and-now)Mr. Naglee continued to break off and sell other pieces of this land and in 1873 the Burbank area was purchase by Mr. Elisha Lafayette Bradley. Fruit trees were planted and the area began to develop along the San Jose-Los Gatos Interurban railroad. By 1904 the south side of this railroad became known as Rose Lawn. (http://www.burbankscc.org/community/)

Antone Golarte was the first known relative to live on Rutland Avenue. According to census records, he was thought to have immigrated to California between 1880 and 1884. In 1900 he was living at 429 Bellamy Street in Santa Clara with his wife Mary and their two young boys Aloysius, my great grandfather, and Charles. Antone was a farmer who could not read, write or speak English. The census has Antone listed as single and Mary listed as his sister, this could have been because of his language barrier and the fact that Mary was eight years younger than him. One interesting note on this census is that the Costa family was also living on this street at the time. Nineteen years later Al and Carrie would be married and living on Rutland Avenue.

The family is not found again until the census in 1910 where Antone and Mary are not only living on a farm on Fruitdale Avenue in Campbell, but have a new addition to their family, another son Clarence. Sadly, between 1900 and 1910 Mary lost two babies. Any other information on this is unknown.  Also according to this census Antone considers his occupation in orchard and brick yard. Being an orchardist it is easy to see why he would have been drawn to an area abundant in horticulture. Both the Golart’s and Costa’s have a deep background in the orchards and canneries well known to Santa Clara County. His second occupation working at a local brick yard most likely would have been with the San Jose Brick Company located at 1916 Fruitdale Avenue. Brick making was also an important foundation in San Jose history and the bricks found around the Rutland avenue house could have been made and laid by Antone’s own hands. (https://calbricks.netfirms.com/brick.sj.html)

It was between 1912 and 1913 that Antone settled his family to the house at 111 Rutland Avenue. In 1915 the City Directory shows he owns a home at 123 Rutland Avenue. Until title records can be found and pulled it is unknown if 111 and 123 are the same house and if Antone purchased the house he was renting. 1915 was also the year the World’s Fair made it to San Francisco. In these early days before World War I it would have been quite a trip and expense to experience this once in a lifetime event! 

During the early days on Rutland avenue this area of Burbank later known as Rose Lawn was a thriving close knit community. The citizens in the early 1900’s created their own school, fire department and sanitation service and as a unincorporated community, they had access to the Interurban railroad from 1905 until the late 1920’s. The original Burbank School was built in 1906 and was the school my great-grandfather Al and his siblings attended. Five generations of our family have studied at this still one school district once made for the benefit of local farmers’ children.  

From 1915 to 1925 Antone Golart continued to live at 123 Rutland Avenue. On June 5^th, 1917 at twenty-one years old, his son Al, my great-grandfather, registered for the draft. According to his draft card he was living at 868 Shotwell Street in San Francisco and working for Union Ironworks. Union Ironworks was instrumental in building naval ships but it was also known for building locomotives and later became a powerhouse for PG&E. Union Iron Works was taken over by Bethlehem Steel in 1906 but continued to use the name Union Ironworks until after the war began in 1917. (http://shipbuildinghistory.com/shipyards/large/bethsanfrancisco.htm)

When the war ended in November of 1918 its possible my great grandfather proposed to my great grandmother in celebration of new times ahead. One year almost to the day, on November 16^th, 1919 my great-grandfather Aloysius Manuel Golart married his childhood sweetheart Caroline Isabel Costa and she was added to the family living at 123 Rutland Avenue on the 1920 census and from this time until 1923 Al and Carrie continued to live with Antone, Mary and Al’s brothers at 123 Rutland Avenue. Al and Carrie are not listed in the 1922 San Jose City Directory and are not listed at 123 Rutland Avenue. They may have been living with the Costa family as their daughter Betty was born in 1922. It is hard to know at this time without looking into other records. Both of Antone’s other sons however are listed with Antone until 1927. In 1923 Al is once again listed with Antone at the Rutland address and in 1924 my grandmother Thelma was born. The records for 1924 and 1925 do not change as it is believed Antone’s family continues to live under his roof in the little two bedroom, one bath house. His two little granddaughters growing up among the Golart family. 

1926 was the year the address changed. City directory records show the Antone and Mary and the two younger sons, Charles and Clarence still live on Rutland Avenue but the address is now 105 Rutland. This could be an error and the address could actually be 150 Rutland since the 1927 census shows Al and Carrie living at the 150 address and it is around this time Thelma remembered living at the house that has been known as 438 Rutland Avenue to family. 

More research is needed at this time since there are still many questions about the houses along this street. In 1920 when the family was at 123 Rutland, a man by the last name Camp was living at the 150 address but according to county assessor records this could not be the house we know today since the 438 address was not built until 1925. In 1926 Al and Carrie had their own little house at 115 Raymond Avenue. More than forty years later his granddaughter Gayle bought a house on the same street and lived there with her children for 5-6 years. During Al’s time on Raymond, although short, he was a boxmaker for a local packing company. This company may possibly have been the California Pine Box Distributors located on Auzurais Street. It would have been an important job in Santa Clara Valley as fruit growing, canning and packing were keeping the economy alive.

In 1927, after fifteen years on Rutland Avenue, Antone passes the house at 150 to his son Al and moves with Mary and Clarence to 98 Leland Avenue. City Directory records indicate he is the owner of both the Rutland Avenue house and the house on Leland. Charles has married and moved to 64 Raymond Avenue. Later, he and his wife Virginia move to Topeka Avenue and settle there for several years. 

From 1927 to 1932 AL and Carrie lived at 150 Rutland Avenue. The family story goes that Carrie saved her money from her job at the fruit cannery to buy the 438 Rutland Avenue house for two thousand dollars. Since the family was living at 123 Rutland until 1926 and the 438 house was built in 1925 this would be possible and the reason for the change in address. More research into the neighborhood is needed to confirm the family lore. 

The San Jose City Directory from 1928 is the first known record for Al Golart working for PG & E. His obituary states that he worked for the company for about forty-two years! In 1928 he was working as a ditchman for the company, the next year he was a machine operator. For some reason the City directory lists Al and Carrie living at 59 Raymond Avenue in 1928 but 150 Rutland after that and until 1933 when they are again back on Rutland. In 1930 Al and Carrie are on census records at 150 Rutland Avenue and cousin Eugene Carrera is also living with them. 

In 1933 their son Ronald was born in the front bedroom of the house at 438 Rutland. The address at the time was 148 Rutland Avenue and it does not become 438 until about 1941. The story of my uncle’s birth has been told to everyone who enters. When Nana Carrie was ready to give birth, her husband Al told his two girls Betty and Thelma that their mama was sick and they would need to go stay with their grandparents Costa in Santa Clara. Once Ronnie was born the girls were brought home just as the doctor was leaving. Noticing the new addition to the family the girls asked how the baby got there and the doctor replied, “in my little black doctor bag of course!” 

1933 is the first known record to show the house address as 148 Rutland Avenue. It continues to show Antone as the owner up until 1938. Antone and Mary live at 98 Leland Avenue until about 1936 when he is not found in the San Jose City directory. He has probably moved to Santa Clara at this point and directories for the City of Santa Clara were not available online at this time. The 1940 census shows Antone and Mary at 363 Santa Clara- Los Gatos Road. This was also declared their same address in 1935. More records are needed to determine other information about the family. 

The 1940 census shows that Al and Carrie owned their home on 148 Rutland Avenue. Betty was in her second year of High school at Santa Clara and Thelma, at age fifteen was in her first. Ron was only seven and in first grade. By the time the city directory came out in 1941 the address had officially changed to the address we all remember, 438 Rutland Avenue. 1941 was also the year the United States entered World War II. It was Ron’s ninth birthday when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941. Two months later at just seventeen years old, Thelma marries her childhood sweetheart Harry Wendell Camara. Four months after Thelma and “Wendy” were married, at age nineteen, he registered to join the war. 

Between the time Thelma and Wendy were married in 1942 until their daughter Gayle was born in 1945 it is believed they lived with Thelma’s parents Al and Carrie. Since Wendy was away at war this would have made sense for Wendy’s bride to be with family. Gayle was born on May 22, 1945 while her father was fighting the war. She was born in a hospital and would have come to the family home on Rutland. She would have taken her first steps here and she would meet her father here, at a year and a half years old, when he came home in 1946. 

After Thelma was diagnosed with Sundowners and eventually Dementia, she went to live with her daughter Gayle and then an assisted living home. Her only grandson, Erik, carried on the long family tradition of living and caring for the family home. He lives there today and raising his own children there. The home has been passed down to Gayle and her grandchildren, Anton Golarte’s three times great grandchildren, are the 6^thgeneration to live on Rutland Avenue. 

Finding Manuel Costa

Anyone who has tried searching for Portuguese ancestors, specifically Azorean ancestors knows how frustrating to the point of infuriating it can be. You'd think that being a small, tight knit group of islanders it should be a piece of cake but yet it seems that once the relatives left their home land, there wasn't a whole lot of looking back. The reality is that the Azorean people were a group a hearty natives who were at the mercy of all the explorers who stopped along the way.

theazoresislands.blogspot.com

Their Azorean landscape was rich and plentiful but over the centuries were stripped of resources. The people became poor and uneducated and when immigration to the New World became a possibility many jumped at the chance and boarded sailing ship bound for Massachusetts, and California as well as the Hawaiian Islands which was so much like home. Once they relocated, most could not afford to ever go back home. The Portuguese were not much more well off in their new environment but they were known to be hard working laborers, fishermen, and farmers. They were hired help that worked the land and seas. They brought new ideas into the orchards of California, the fishing towns of Massachusetts and villages of the Hawaiian Islands.

I recently found information on my 2x great grandfather. A man whose family had been a mystery for many years. He is the first of my Portuguese immigrant ancestors who I can trace back to his home town. Knowing this is a family treasure as many immigrants could not read or write and came to the U.S. in the 1800's at a time when assimilation was how you survived. Having any kind of foreign names, accents or distinguishing characteristics put you lower on the minority list. You spoke only English and children were not taught the native tongue. Many changed their names to sound more American and yet they somehow kept cultural  traditions alive through music, food and religion.

This is the history of Manuel Costa of Furnas, Sao Miguel, Azores.

Manuel was born 14 Setembro 1870 in Furnas, Sao Miguel, Azores to Manuel de Costa and Maria de Jesus. He was baptised by parish priest Fr. Francisco Ignacio Pacheco  on 18 Setembro 1870. Life in the islands was rough and farming was not always fruitful. Sometime in the early 1880's possibly even the late 1870's Manuel and his family left Sao Miguel and traveled the oceans to the Hawaiian Islands. It is believed that all but one of Manuel's siblings were born in Sao Miguel. Joao/John, born in 1884, was born in Hawaii.

S.S. Australia leaving Honolulu

When Manuel was a young man around the age of seventeen he was in Hawaii in the midst of a political firestorm. The Rebellion of 1887 hit in June of that year. Manuel and possible family members booked passage aboard the S.S.  Australia along with the Hawaiian Queen Kapiolani and beloved Princess Liliuokalani and sailed out on April 12, 1887. They arrived in San Francisco on April 20th to start their lives in Oakland, California. The Hawaiian royalty continued to sail toward England to escape the impeding threat of violence.  That summer King Kamehameha Kalakaua signed what is known as the 1887 Bayonet Constitution. It is not known which side the Costas were on but they avoided having to make or be forced to make vote.

From there you could say the rest is history. Manuel married Maria de Jesus in Oakland, California on 22 April 1897 and moved to Santa Clara by the time my great grandmother Caroline "Carrie" was born. There is oral history about the family's roots in or around San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. Nana Carrie would tell about her grandmother, probably Maria de Jesus (aka Mary Maurice) and how the earthquake left her house in shambles. Her grandmother then walked for about three days for a distance of twelve miles to get to South San Francisco where supposedly the family was living at the time.

Next week my blog post will discuss my process on finding the records on Manuel Costa and how I will continue to search for more stories and records on Manuel Costa. There are still questions to be asked. What was life like in Furnas? Why did they leave the Azores? When did they get to Hawaii and what ship did they take? Did Manuel's entire family travel to San Francisco? How did they end up in Santa Clara? What did he do there? A genealogist's work is never done!

Heidi

Writing Your Genealogy

I recently read NGS staff members Penny Stratton and Henry Hoff's newest edition of their book, "Guide to Genealogical Writing: How to Write and Publish Your Family History." 

Here is my review:

   Guide To Genealogical Writing: How To Write and Publish Your Family History. By Penelope L. Stratton and Henry B. Hoff, CG, FASG.  Published by New England Historic Genealogical Society; Boston, MA; 2014.

  As genealogists we live for the thrill of the chase so to speak but at what point do we stop chasing and start writing? In multiple genealogy circles the question, “what do I do with my work after I’ve gone?” comes up over and over again.  It’s easy as genealogists to get so caught up in research that we forget to create that which will last forever, The Story.  I recently read Guide To Genealogical Writing: How To Write and Publish Your Family History, the latest book by Penelope L. Stratton & Henry B. Hoff offered by the NEHGS.  According to the biographies, Penny is the current publishing director at NEHGS and Henry has been a member of their staff since 1996.  

     Right out of the gates this book says it’s “intended to walk you through the publication process” and each chapter takes you step by step from the initial idea to the end result. It suggests “shifting mental gears,” stop researching and start writing, and walks the reader through the entire process; writing, layout, illustrations and publishing as well as types of publications and how to get published in different formats.  It is less than two hundred pages and includes a genealogical manual style guide as well as an appendix for using MS Word for genealogical writing.  The chapters are short and well outlined.  Each contains several examples and highlighted tips, making the material easy to read and absorb. 

     As a genealogist and a writer myself, it seems only natural to bring the peanut butter and chocolate of my passions together but I wasn’t sure where to start.  This book sat me down and said, “You are going to do this.”  The first half of the book really gave me the diving board I needed to jump in and get writing.  It held my hand and gave me the tools I needed to start with a blank page and piles of research right down to showing me how to use my word processor specific to genealogy writing.  I am a very hands-on, visual person, so the samples and pop up tips helped me see what my process and product should look like and even explained past the writing to the publishing process.  It thoroughly discussed layout and suggested ways to use photos as illustrations.  No stone was left unturned in the creation process. 

    The second half of the book focused on publishing and types of publishing.  This is where my eyes started to glaze over and I felt a bit in over my head.  My impression was that writing and publishing a family history would be something I could do on my own.  I write a colorful account of family lore based on my research and then print it off or send it to some publishing website and voila, it’s topped off with a neat little bow.  This is not the case.  You cannot do the publishing on your own.   Publishing a professional account of family history will take time and money.  The publishing part felt a little misleading since several times along the way the book says “whether you produce the work yourself or work with a publisher,” when really most of what is within the chapters is telling you to use a publisher.  It should really just say, when you get done writing call a publisher to help with the rest and then explain what that will look like.

     The last part of the book is all about how to write articles for NEHGS and other similar journals as well as how to write informal family histories.  Overall, I do suggest this book to my fellow genealogists both professional and hobbyists.  We spend years researching and collecting copious amounts of information on family and sometimes forget, until it’s too late, how to pass our work on to future generations.  This book is the perfect stepping stone, from research to writing, that will leave something finished in a neat package for the next family historian to continue.

Seattle History: July 15, 1916

On this day in Seattle History....

July 15th 1916

 "William Boeing incorporates Pacific Aero Products Co. for $100,000. Boeing buys 998 of the 1,000 stocks issued and moves the operation to the shipyard he bought in 1910. Many years later, this "Red Barn" building is moved to Seattle's Museum of Flight."

<http://www.boeing.com/boeing/history/chronology/chron01.page> William E Boeing (1881-1956)  The first of William Boeing's flights almost didn't make take off.  According to Boeing history, "Conrad Westervelt was posted East before the plane was finished. William Boeing continued the project and, in 1916, completed two B & Ws. When it was time for the B & W's first flight, the pilot was late. Boeing grew impatient and took the controls himself. As the pilot rushed to the hangar, he saw Boeing taxi to the end of the lake, turn, gun the engine and lift off for a quarter-mile hop. Although the loss of Westervelt was a setback, it did not affect Boeing's commitment to his fledgling company."  In 1917, the name was changed to the Boeing Airplane Co. <http://www.boeing.com/boeing/history/narrative/n003boe.page> William E. Boeing and pilot Eddie Hubbard flew the first international mail flight to the U.S. on March 3, 1919 from Vancouver, B.C. to Seattle. UW alumnus Clairmont Egtvedt later designed the Model 40 plane that in 1927 won Boeing the contract to deliver mail from San Francisco to Chicago.

http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/11/09/uw-department-of-aeronautics-astronautics-named-for-william-e-boeing/

PART 3: UNLABELED-KNOWN photos

If you are following along this month's series of photo organization then hopefully you've been able to get your pile of photos down to something less overwhelming and more manageable.  Know that one size organization does not fit all.  My goal for this series is to help organize photos in a simple, genealogy based basic way that will not only help preserve and organize the photos but also jump start your own photo display and family storytelling.

Up until now we've organized identified photos and used genealogy tools to look at clues for better identification.  Now we get down to the tricky stuff.  In many cases there will be photos that will always be a mystery as to the who what when and where of it.  In some case we can still use basic genealogy sleuthing skills to discover a better idea of who the little girl with the teddy bear is.

Here we go! 

The first step in this part of the process is to go through the photos and find ones that you THINK you know or are SURE you know.  The one of your great grandfather holding a baby on the front porch where the baby is your uncle. Or you grandma's first communion photo.

 The photo does not tell you this but you can ask and answer 3 questions.

• Are you directly related to them?  Like your mom or siblings.
• Do you personally know them?  Like your uncle or grandparents.
• Do you have other photos from the same time period where the people are identified?

If the questions can not be positively answered then put them into a separate pile.  The last question is important but tricky.  The idea is to stay away from assumptions.  Just because a photo is identified as "Fanny Stowell 1895 6 mos." and shows a baby sitting in a fancy wicker or carved chair does not necessarily mean it's the same child in the chair 5 years later just because it's a girl about the same age that Fanny would have been.  The chair could have been give to a relative or the girl could have been a neighbor or friend and the chair was the fanciest one in town.  If it doesn't say, don't assume unless you can answer the 3 questions.  Instead the photos should be easier to identify with our 3 question rule, like your mom and dad's wedding picture or your mom as a baby with Aunt Sally who always wore big hats.  Once you've completed this task,  go back to step 1 from the first post and fill out your worksheet, labels and sleeves.  

 The next task is to use your sleuthing skills.  You might not be able to answer the three questions exactly on some photos.  Instead, you say "I think this is Aunt Rose." or "I think this looks like cousin Lavern."  If you can sort them into a surname category, then do that and put them into envelopes that you can take to show other relatives.  It's best to choose 10-20 photos, put them in sleeves for protection and bring a notebook.  You can use a basic label and give each photo a number and surname (if you know which family side it might belong to.) Like this:

You may also want to label the actual photo.  Be sure to use labels that are acid free and removable.  Your notebook should contain specific action items:

• Who
• What
• When 
• Where

In the picture above we can tell the male is wearing a sailor uniform of sorts.  The collection of photos was from a specific family member so I know the surname of family I can ask.  The time period can be identified to WWII so that narrows down the what and the when.  Now I just need to find someone in the family that can tell me the who and where.  The more information about the photo we have, the more accurate it will be.  The person giving the information should be able to answer the earlier 3 questions.  

This photo activity should keep you busy for awhile.  Just remember to break it down into manageable sections and only work on a few at a time, especially when visiting relatives.  

Look for a few other non photo related posts this week and like my Facebook page Emerald City Genealogy for interactive discussions on organization, Seattle history and more!

Organizational series-Photos Part 2: Who Are They Really?

 Last week I began a series on organizing your old photos. Let's recap!

 We sorted our photos into piles and started with one that were already identified by what was on the back. What that means is someone at some time wrote a sort of ID on it.  We then put them in sleeves, relabeled them, created a worksheet for them and then created a file folder for them.  You can learn how to do this here. One note of caution,  although your photos may have a name on the back or be identified as "my mother's wedding photo" mistakes and mis identification does happen.  This post explains how we will better identify what we have when all we know is "Nana's cousin."

The materials I suggested in the last post allows for easy adjustments. (Easy to remove photos from sleeves and removable labels, for example.) To sort our ID'd photos further we must examine each photo closely.  If your photo says something like "Betty Jean Oliver, age 6mos. 1895" then mostly likely the information is correct.  You can sometimes check the age by looking at clues like type of photo (cabinet card, tin type, etc.), clothing, hairstyles, backdrop, etc.  Even then errors can occur but unless you have reason to believe otherwise, the photos that look to be accurate with this information can be considered done and ready to be filed away.  There is always more we can do of course, like research the story behind the photo or research what the family was doing at the time the photo was taken, but for now take a deep breath and hold your itchy fingers still.  Today we are only organizing our mess of photos!

The next step is to turn our attention on photos that have identification but seem fishy.  They just don't seem accurate or are confusing, using nicknames or were written by grandma and just say "auntie's children." Here is a good example...


Take a look at these two photos.

The first one is labeled "my mother's in her wedding dress" but is crossed out and underneath is written "MD Pease" in some completely different handwriting. 

The second photo is labeled "Grandma Hubble in wedding dress".
Both photos were together in an album but not an album of the era.  For awhile I believed what was written.  They were added to my family tree as is.  Photo 1 was M.D. Pease and photo 2 was Elizabeth "Grandma" Hubble in her wedding dress.  I was wrong and so was the identification.  How do I know? After working on the family tree the photos didn't seem right anymore.  I decided to look at other clues.
Take photo #1. Is it "my mother" or "M.D. Pease?" The photos belonged to my father in law.  They were members of his family and the album they were in was not an album of the era. You know the kind, black paper that has every photo glued down for life.  Her aunt was M.D. Pease.  For those who know Seattle history, MD Pease was a well known woman business owner.  She sold hats in her popular millinery shop on Front St. in Seattle.  Her shop burned down with many others in the Great Seattle Fire. I needed to find out if it was his mother in her wedding dress or his grandmother in her wedding dress or if it was Aunt Pease.  I needed to use my genealogy skills for process elimination.  Which one was married during this time and who was in Seattle?  It was NOT Mrs. Pease.  I did a quick search and M.D. Pease was a widow in 1880 and did not show up in Washington Territory until 1887.
So it was either my father in law's mother, Hazel, or her mother, Elizabeth aka "Grandma."  Hazel was born in 1892 and married in 1917.  Looking at the backround and dress style I googled "wedding dress in 1917 U.S."and clicked on the image button.  I scrolled down and clicked on a link to one of my favorite sites for era clothing,  Fashion-Era.com.  The examples of styles in 1917 looked nothing like the picture.  So I canceled out Hazel and looked at Elizabeth.  Was this her? She was married in 1891 in Ohio.  She was not married in Seattle either!  I did the next logical thing, I looked up the photographer. "Braas."  I didn't need to know much, just when this business was up and running.  Thanks to google and University of Washington's digital collections, Braas was taking photos between 1889 and 1893.  Most likely this photo was of Elizabeth.  Hazel would have written "my mother's in her wedding dress" and someone else could have written M.D.Pease at a later date.

Now to confuse things. Let's look at photo #2.  "Grandma Hubble."  This was trickier except for 1 thing.  The photographer's name and date.  This took a trusty magnifier to see but I was able to identify "James Bushnell 1906" on the photo.  I also compared the 2 photos since they were together in the same album. The person in each photo looked like the same person or extremely related.  The eyes, eyebrows, chin and even the way the earring hung off her left ear as well as nostrils and lips and the tilt of her head.  This could be Elizabeth.  Now I had questions.  I knew the picture was taken by a James Bushnell in 1906, but where and why?  Back to google! That really didn't do much, so I went to Ancestry.com and went right to the Seattle city directory to find the name "Bushnell." Still not perfect.  The closest I came up with was a Correy Bushnell who worked for "James & Bushnell". More sleuthing! For only 1 picture!  So flip to James and find "James and Bushnell, photgrs." Bingo! I could also have gone straight to the back of the directory and looked under photographers.  Either way I found what I had hoped for.

So, my conclusion about the photos is that #1 is almost definitely Elizabeth Hubbell and not M.D. Pease.  It may be her wedding dress but it was not her wedding in 1892 Ohio.  Photo #2 was taken by James & Bushnell in 1906 in Seattle and is likely to be Elizabeth based on photo comparisons and other clues i.e written "Grandma Hubble," but it is not her wedding photo. It is unknown why it was taken.

What does this all mean for photo organization?  It gives you a good example of how slow going yet rewarding it can be.  Each piece plays a part in the discovery of the family history stories.  They are not just names and dates.  You may never find out who "Honey and Bud" were exactly but investigating the most likely relative they were connected to will start the clue solving. Sometimes the picture is not of a relative at all.   In case you were wondering, "Honey" was my grandmother's best friend. I made up Bud.  My grandmother has dementia now and can't tell the stories any longer but the name "Honey" is on the back of a photo.  Later I found a newspaper clipping in my grandmother's old album announcing the marriage of Violet.  It was Honey.

How does this all fit in to organization?  The goal is to identify as many of our photos as possible until we are left with (hopefully) just a small number of "who the heck are these people?" type photos.  Now finish up your next group of identified photos so we can move on to the next topic: Unlabeled photos.

Organization Series-Photos

     Today I am beginning an organizational series.  I'm starting off with PHOTOS.

I was inspired by the boxes of family photos I had been given by not only my side of the family but my husband's side as well.  I'm focusing on photos today because sometimes it's the pictures that starts a person asking questions about family.  I've become the token family historian and that is just fine by me. :) Many times it's the old photos that brings the younger and older generations together to bring out the stories.  This might be the catalyst for getting into genealogy.  So let's start there.  You've got a big or maybe just a handful of great grandma's old pictures.  Now what?
The first job is to SORT & SEPARATE.  This is very much like those home improvement shows you see where the organizer creates piles like "keep, toss & donate."

PART 1: IDENTIFIED.
 Let's start with the easy stuff first.  When going through that old box of family photos, find ones that have identified the people or person in the photo.  It can have the person's name or it might just say "My niece Linda" or "Uncle Joe's cousin."  Maybe it uses nicknames like "Honey and Bud." It doesn't matter yet if you know who they are or not. Just as long as there is some type of identification.  Remember, we are not guessing or assuming here. We will get to that later.  Just find photos that identify people.  Everything else can go back in the box for now.

The next step in The Great Photo Organization is to gather photo preserving supplies.  Some things we might need are:

• archival gloves
• photograph sleeves
• photo labels
• fine tip black pen
• magnifying loupe
• measuring tape
• Photo worksheets

The most necessary items are the sleeves and the labels.  These will protect your photos from wear and save them from further damage.  The other item I highly recommend is the photo identifying worksheet.  Family Tree University has several that are free to download.

Start by fitting your photo into a sleeve and adhere a label to the front.  If the photo is delicate or in poor shape, you may want to wear archival gloves when handling to prevent further damage.  The photos we are discussing should already have a name on the back so just put your photo in a sleeve and adhere the filled out label on the front. Like this:

Then fill out the photo worksheet you downloaded.  Make sure you attach a photo copied image to it as instructed.  When we get to the family filing system, the photo worksheet will be filed under the correct person's name and the original can either be kept in that file or in a photo box.  Your worksheet should look something like this:

Once you have your identified photos labeled and protected, you can scan them and organize them within your computer's photo software.  Add the word "scanned" to the bottom of your label.  At this point you can set these aside or you can get a head start on your filing cabinet filing system.  To do that you will need the following items:

• filing cabinet or file box
• hanging file folders
• tabbed file folders

Each finished photo will have a tabbed file folder.  Use a pencil and write the name on the top of each folder.  Each folder will have it's own hanging file.  Organizing has begun! Great job! Now, I know you are thinking I have a file named "Uncle Joe's cousin!" It's okay and that's why we use a pencil.  When you start researching people Uncle Joe may pop up and at some point we may find the cousin's name or at least, the surname.  Another method, if you have a ton of photos and many are identified is to create surname folders instead.  All the "Welch" family photos go into one folder for example.

The next post will be Part 2 in the photo series:  Unlabeled photos