Amalie Schoenthal Wolfe and Etta Wolfe Wise: Photo Analysis Part III

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In this third and final post devoted to photographs of Amalie Schoenthal Wolfe and her daughter Etta, I will look at two more photographs that my cousin Alan sent me and try and identify the others in the photo.

In this photograph, I’ve assumed Amalie is on the left and possibly Etta on the right. Then who are the three young women?

I don’t know. But Amalie had four granddaughters: Flora’s daughters Helen and Marjorie, Lee’s daughter Ruth, and Etta’s daughter Florence. My guess is that this is three of those four.

Here are some photos of Florence. This one is of Etta and her six children; Florence, her only daughter, is seated on our right.

Etta and her children. Courtesy of the family.

Here are another two of the children of Etta and Max Wise:

Do you see Florence in the photo above? Is she the tall girl standing between Amalie and Etta? I don’t think so, but am not sure. And as for the other two girls in the forefront? I have no idea. So maybe they are Helen, Marjorie, and/or Ruth. Or maybe not!

Finally, there is this photograph, which I will refer to as the living room photo:

The Wise Family Courtesy of the family

Seated in the middle rear are Etta, Amalie, and Max. The girl sitting right in front of Etta is her daughter Florence, and the four little boys on the floor and the little boy sitting on the lap of the man next to Max are the five sons of Etta and Max: Irving (Bud), Richard, Max, Jr., Robert, and Warren. From the ages of the children, I would guess that this photograph was taken in the early 1920s since Warren was born in 1920, Robert in 1919. You can compare the children to those in the photo of Etta surrounded by her children, probably taken a year before, and see the similarities.

So who are the other people in the living room photograph? Are they other relatives of Amalie and Etta? Or are they relatives of Max Wise? This photograph of Etta and Max with Max’s brothers and their wives shows what two of his brothers looked like. Alan agreed with me that the Wise brothers are not in the living room photograph with Etta’s children.

I think therefore that these are Etta’s relatives in the living room photo. Maybe the three older men are three of Etta’s four brothers: Maurice, Lee, Ira, and Herbert.  Maurice was living in Middletown, Ohio in 1920, as were Etta and Max, so it’s likely he is in the photograph.In 1920 Lee was in Pittsburgh, and Herbert in Detroit. Ira was living in Illinois in 1920 and died in 1924.

As for the two women sitting to Etta’s right, perhaps one is a sister-in-law, maybe both are. Perhaps one is Flora’s daughter Helen or her daughter Marjorie. And maybe the younger man perched on a table on our far left is Flora’s son Leroy. Or maybe her son Donald.

At this point it’s far too much speculation, but perhaps a cousin will find me who knows the answers. I am open to suggestions!

And please, everyone, label your photographs and spare some future family member from doing all this impossible guesswork.

17 thoughts on “Amalie Schoenthal Wolfe and Etta Wolfe Wise: Photo Analysis Part III”

  2. It was very important to label photographs. But now, as we live in the digital era, we must learn to tag our images, or else we will be worse off than our ancestors when it comes to identifying persons.

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  3. If that’s Florence between Amalie and Etta in the top image, I’d have to say that she looks like she’s been struggling with serious illness, because she certainly doesn’t have the robust look of the girl in the other pictures.

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    • I agree—that’s why I doubt it’s Florence. Perhaps she’s Flora’s daughter, who lost her mother at a very young age. It’s all just guesses at this point. Thanks, Eilene!

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  4. I have thoroughly loved your Photograph Forensics series! It’s one of my hobbies. But, yes, agreed. Label those photos! Mom inherited a huge bag of photos from her mother, most of them from the 20s, most of them unlabeled, and no one to tell us who they were.

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  6. I have so many of MY OWN photos that are not labeled as I thought I would always know who they were. Of course at the time I never thought about anyone in the future caring. And now that so many years have passed, even I have difficulty identifying my own daughters as babies.

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    • I completely relate to that. I did spend today tagging people on my Google Photos, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg since most of my pre-2010 photos have not been scanned and saved to my Google photos.

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