A comment left on my previous post prompted me to hunt down some of my old, mysterious photos. MooreGenealogy is not only a great blog, but I discovered he is a wonderful resource for the beginning genealogist – and finishing those family trees is one of my two resolutions this year.
OK- three, if you count the resolve to avoid car accidents this year. I think two new bumpers on my poor, besieged KIA is enough!
I only found four of the many mystery photos and I found them only because I had an idea where they were presently stored. I really need to get a handle on the photos around here! So maybe I should add another resolution: fill those photo albums finally. We’ll see. One day at a time, you know?
There is no photographer’s mark on this photo. I think she was a Cusick, but I can’t swear to it. I only know she came to me from my parents and the children are beautiful. It can’t be my father and his sister: the age spread is too wide and the baby is not fat enough. My dad was a fat baby. But the woman looks a little like my grandmother, Sylvia Cusick Wilcox. Same nose.
Whoever she was, she was glamorous, poised, and very pretty. My biggest problem with these photos is not who they are, but how beautiful the photos are: the staging, the lighting, the pose. Whoever the photographers were, they were professionals at getting their subjects to look natural and to hold that pose. It wasn’t point-and-shoot, but was a very long, drawn-out process to take one photograph.
I *love* this woman’s hair. She has that nose that is peculiar to both sides of my family: Melrose and Wilcox. She must be up the Wilcox line because the photo was taken in Chicago: Fordtran Studios, Blue Island, Chicage. Chicago Heights. Or she was a Kimmey. She could be a Kimmey.
This photo. Great Grandmother Wilcox with her baby girl, Mary Elizabeth. Mary Elizabeth shared a birthday with me: November 2. This photo was taken on6/24/1907.
Mary Elizabeth died on 8/13/1907.
I can only imagine the anguish of the young parents. My grandfather was 9 years old when his only sibling died. He named his first-born child, a daughter, Mary Elizabeth, after his sister.
She was such a happy baby. She looks so much like a Wilcox (poor thing).
I assume the woman holding her was my Great Grandmother.
Jaci Dawn 