Five Generations, Sixty-Five Years, Twenty-Six Hundred Miles

Browsing through old family pictures  -- and discovering ones that haven’t been scanned yet --  I came up with some pretty interesting juxtapositions.

To the left, below, are Dr. Cornelius Cain, my great-grandfather, Rev. John Wesley Cain, his son, and Howard Hamilton Cain, his grandson (and my father). This was taken in Clarksburg, Indiana, in about 1899.

 The next shot is of of Howard holding his son, Thomas Hayden Cain, in 1943, in Riverside, California.

The color photo, taken about 1966, shows Thomas again, and Jonathan Minton, my son, in San Mateo County, California. Not satisfied with just a beard, or a mustache, like his two forebears, Tom is sporting both.

I'm ba-a-a-a-ck (sort of)

Yes, I’ve been away for a few weeks, doing something besides genealogy, if you can believe it. You've probably read of my travails trying to get the workroom cleaned up, which meant dealing with family photos, among other things. (I took a trip, too.) The attached picture is one of many I unearthed. It shows me with my parents and an aunt, at our Mojave Desert (California) property in about 1936. Love those automobiles!

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Here are a couple of stories that caught my eye before the hiatus, and might intrigue you as well.

“Obsessively seeking original occupant” -- a New York Times article which appeared in the Real Estate section on May 9. The new tenant was fascinated with the idea of finding out more about who first lived in this West 90th St apartment after it was built in 1910. His research, and a lucky find behind an old cupboard, helped.

“Sculptor’s unique grave markers honor deceased” -- Sigrid Herr creates unique bronze grave markers. “What you’re saying is, ‘I was here. I matter.’ And you’re saying that to the other people: ‘You were here, and you matter.’ ” San Francisco Chronicle, 3 May, 2010.

To read either story in full, go to Google and enter the selected headline as shown above, including quotation marks.

I hope to be back on track shortly, with more stories and ideas about genealogy-related matters. (I consider getting rid of the clutter a related matter, because if there's a mess I can't work on genealogy!)

Picture this

For many of the lucky ones,Thanksgiving means a family gathering -- I hope you had a good visit and perhaps gleaned a few nuggets of genealogical information from those aunts and uncles and cousins (and perhaps passed some on to nieces and nephews).

And now it is time to begin thinking about Christmas. Of course some smart people have been planning ahead and are just about ready to mail out their Christmas cards and notes. Let’s not think about those over-achievers right now.

My brother and two of my children have December birthdays as well, so it is a serious gift-giving month for me.

In all the flurry of scanning family photos in the past few months, with an eye to making CDs for safekeeping, it occurred to me that it would be wise to include a chart of some sort, showing the connections among these pictured individuals. Otherwise, a cabinet photo of Lucy and Lillian as children, though quite charming, might not mean much. This thought led to my exploration of the Reunion (Macintosh) program’s chart-making capabilities. (Most genealogical programs today, for Mac or PC, have a similar feature.)

There is no better way to learn than by doing! I decided on a four-generation pedigree chart because that will fit on a single standard sheet of paper in landscape mode. Also, in my family this goes back into the 19th century and I have photos for most of these folks.The possibilities and options are many, but I tried to keep it fairly simple.

For my brother I did a chart showing both our parents and their ancestors, starting with him.For my children I am doing a chart showing their dad’s ancestors, and another one for mine. (Don't tell them.)

This, of course, does not cover all the family photos I have, but a printed copy can accompany the CD, and perhaps more detailed explanations can be included to connect the rest of the group. Or, I can make additional charts showing some individual families and all their children.

Since I was involved in all this in a big way, it seemed logical to do a simple slideshow of pictures for my son’s birthday, beginning with his birth announcement and coming up to the present day, with most of them coming from his childhood. The Mac’s iPhoto feature makes slide show production pretty easy, and there are many ways to fancy it up. The trick is to know when to stop!

So, while I have not been doing much research lately, I am still involved in family history!

[The young lad pictured above is my father, Howard Hamilton Cain, and was taken around 1898)

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ID, please

The family photo sorting and scanning went smoothly until I turned to the bankers’ box labelled “misc.” It is so daunting I think I will put the project aside for a while. Maybe going back later with a fresh eye will yield better results. Meanwhile, the point of the undertaking was to preserve the most important images by putting them on CDs or DVDs and storing them away from home -- easily accomplished by giving copies to family members.

At the same time I was bringing together these top priority photographs, I was revising and supplementing the physical (hard copy) albums, and making sure they were archivally “correct.” And it strikes me -- belatedly -- that the collection of real (non-digital) photos ends with the purchase of my first digital camera. All the more reason to get everything copied onto CDs.

Of course it is possible to order prints from digital photos -- most photo management programs enable this if the computer has an internet connection. But it is important to remember such photos are available only in standard sizes, so a picture which has been cropped to non-conforming proportions (like square, or tall and narrow) may come out looking rather odd.

One thing this project has reminded me of is the importance of identifying people in photos! Fortunately I had an aunt who was able to put names and places to many of the group pictures from that side of the family, and my mother did the same for her line. But there are a few which need further work. One photo is of a lovely young woman with two small children. Sadly, she was killed in an accident at the age of 26. I know her name, and that of her surviving spouse, but not the children’s names. However, with the date of death, it should not be too difficult to find an obituary.

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In other news, you should know about the extraordinary work going on through the auspices of the LDS Church (which also sponsors the Family History Library). The Mormons are supervising the indexing of immense numbers of documents and posting the results online. As with their Family History Library data, use of these is FREE. To take a look, go to familysearchlabs.org, click on “record search,” then “search ancestors,” then select your preferred region from the world map. I was thrilled to find Ohio death records, 1908-1953, allowing me to pinpoint the death date for the young mother mentioned above, and an actual image of her death certificate. New material is being posted regularly, so it is worthwhile to check the site periodically. (You can also volunteer to help, from home.)

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Hope you like my photo of scarlet flax. It is just a reminder that while we are embroiled in genealogy or the demands of daily life, it is important to stop and smell the flowers. (OK, so linum grandiflorum var. rubrum isn’t fragrant -- you get the idea.)

Further musings on family photos ...

The biggest challenge, in this photo-scanning project of mine, is to STAY ON TRACK. But it isn’t wise to remain too narrowly focused, either. Trying to identify people and places can lead to some interesting byways.

For instance, our 1970s cross-country trip took us to a campground in Virginia at a Lake Reynovia. Searching on the Internet, I discovered the area is now seems to be a gated community. No more campground, as far as I can tell.( I wonder if there is still a lake.) Well, it has been nearly 40 years ...

But another offshoot of my photo research had to do with pre-Civil War days in Indiana, and the part some relatives played.

I have a group picture, taken at a summer Bible camp (there were lots of ministers in this line) at Winona Lake, Indiana, in 1911. It includes my Cains and Hamiltons, and some people with the surname Nyce. I had never been quite clear on how they were related, so felt justified in digressing in order to do a bit of sleuthing.

The Nyces were supposedly related to Cyrus Hamilton and family, so when the first research attempts yielded nothing more than that the Rev. Harry Nyce was a Presbyterian minister (big surprise), I turned to Cyrus, and found a fascinating story online, “The Story of Luther Donnell.” No author is listed, but there is an extensive bibliography, and the tale was compelling.

It seems the Hamiltons were deeply involved in the abolitionist movement -- something that was not touched on in later mug book accounts of this well-known farming family. They lived in Decatur County, IN, coming there from Kentucky in the 1820s, according to the Donnell article. I also learned that there was a “free black settlement” near Clarksburg, something else that I had never read about in Decatur County histories.

At one point a family of slaves from Kentucky was attempting to reach that haven when they were taken in and hidden by Luther Donnell. The upshot was that Donnell was indicted for “aiding Negroes to escape” (based on a law later declared void by the Indiana Supreme Court), and my ancestor by marriage, Cyrus Hamilton, paid his $500 bond.

I am still trying to figure out the Nyce connection, but meanwhile I learned something about the Hamiltons, including the fact that two of them married Donnell women.

For the complete "Story of Luther Donnell", Google the phrase, in quotation marks as shown.

Tags: Harry Nyce, Cyrus Hamilton, Luther Donnell, family photographs, genealogy

Pictures are worth ...

Still plugging away at scanning family photos -- once one gets started and develops a routine, it is not too hard. Of course there is the question of which images to single out -- and I have been doing the “pre-selected” shots so far, those which had been placed (albeit somewhat haphazardly) in albums. The bigger challenge will come when I start in on the boxes of photographs stored in the closet.

One series I have completed was taken on our family trip across the US and back via the Canadian highway, in 1970 (yes! 38 years ago!). I did a handful of the best ones and showed them to family members, who were so intrigued I was encouraged to do the whole lot, despite their less-than-professional appearance. Happily, some of the flaws are automatically corrected in the scanner, and cropping and otherwise “enhancing” them can improve matters considerably.

Richard Eastman, in his Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter strongly encourages the copying of precious photos in the TIFF format, which takes up a lot of space but results in a “lossless” copy which never is degraded, no matter how many copies of copies are done. He suggested using an external disk drive for storage, since they are relatively inexpensive and have enormous memory capabilities. I haven’t gone that far -- yet; the standard JPEG format is working fine so far. But I do understand his concern and may eventually re-do some of the most outstanding photos in that form.

It is smart to keep the original scanned image separate from subsequent copies. Then all the fiddling around with a picture -- cropping, color enhancing, attempted flaw erasure -- can be done on a copy. Fortunately, iPhoto on my Mac keeps the original automatically and I can always undo any or all my “repairs” quite easily. Picasa, Google’s photo-management application, does the same thing. ( As a rank amateur, I have not aspired to any of the more advanced photo management programs)

Back to our long-ago trip. We took pictures of each other standing in front of various campsite (and occasional motel) signs, as a sort of record of our itinerary, but -- where is Hanging Rock Campground? Or Lake Mitchell? Luckily, a Google search saves the day. (If you’re like me you do not go back and identify all your photos right after a trip, when the memory is still fresh. There is so much else to DO when you get home.)

While not the same as digging through old documents or browsing archives’ indexes online, this photo preservation project is a significant part of genealogy. Pictures are important to family history!

Family pictures

In the process of meandering about in my family history files while working on ancestral descendants, I have reacquainted myself with some names and connections. A flood of documentation, paper and electronic, has been retrieved, and I find myself ever more intrigued by these people and their lives.

One great-great uncle, Eli Cain, remained in the Indiana county where he, his parents and seven brothers had settled in the 1820s.. It is said they walked to Franklin County, on the Indiana/Ohio border, from Delaware. Of the eight boys, one moved on to Tennessee, and the others scattered to various other parts of Indiana.

I am fortunate to have a portrait of four of these brothers, (including Eli) taken in Connersville, in 1899. A cousin helped me confirm the identification of all four (I knew a couple and he knew the others). They were in their late 80s and early 90s by then. Good genes or virtuous living? Perhaps both.

I have been trying to find descendants of Eli and his brothers for some time, which, while going against the preferred practice of working back in time, is an interesting, wide-ranging project. Cain is not a particularly common name, but so many of the boys were named John or Edward or William! And there are a number of girls named Sarah, Mary and Elizabeth, with the associated nicknames. It makes determining the connections something of a task. Sarah becomes "Sadie" even on her tombstone. Elizabeth can be Lizzie, Betsy or Bess. Laura is called Lulu. And middle names are sometimes just mysterious initials, or become the given name of choice.

This project has given family pictures a new aspect for me. There are some as far back as the 1880s, and while there was identification for most of the people, my recent research has given them much more meaning. Elmer and Ellsworth, my father's twin cousins, looked like scamps as youngsters, ready to slip away the minute the photographer finished. I notice, in two family pictures, another child sits between them – perhaps to hold them in check? (An aunt told me one did jail time as an adult)

I am still trying to devise charts that show the Big Picture, with the help of chart-making programs and my big magnetic dry-erase board. Eventually ...

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If you are as intrigued by cemeteries as I am, you won't want to miss the KQED-TV program Sept. 5, titled "Cemetery Special."