Tag Archives: Photography

Nusbaum Album: Is this John Nusbaum? Is that Bernard Seligman?

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After retaining Ava Cohn’s services to help me with the album of photos (“the Nusbaum album”) I’d obtained from an antique dealer in Santa Fe and selecting, with Ava’s advice, where to begin, I waited anxiously to see what Ava could tell me about the album and the first four photos we’d decided to start with, the ones on the very first page:

First page in the Nusbaum album

I had been staring at these over and over while waiting to hear back from Ava. Could the two on top be my three-times great-grandparents Jeanette Dreyfuss and John Nusbaum? Could the two on the bottom be my great-great-grandparents Bernard Seligman and Frances Nusbaum? I was hoping so. Wouldn’t that be a logical assumption to make?

But alas, I quickly learned that hopes and assumptions are not a reliable method for identifying photographs.

Ava started her analysis by providing some background on the album itself. She wrote, “The album was manufactured and sold by Henry Altemus Company of Philadelphia. Altemus and Company first published photographic albums in 1862 and remained in business until 1936….The album is one of Altemus’ larger albums, holding four cartes de visite (CDV) photographs per page.  The photographs are CDVs measuring 2 3/8” x 4.”1

One thing that Ava explained is that cartes de visite, as their name suggests, were used as calling cards. When someone visited, they would leave their photograph as a memento of that visit. That meant that, unlike a modern photograph album where most of the photographs are likely to be of family members and close friends, this album could include photographs of anyone who stopped in to visit the Nusbaums and the Seligmans.

Ava shared this poem that illustrates how CDVs were used:

Ashford, Brothers & Co, Album Filler Poem, c. 1865

Ava’s report continued with some observations about the photographs and some of the issues involved in analyzing them, including the fact that most of the photographs in the album show only heads or heads and shoulders of their subjects. Because Ava did not have the ability to see other details of what they were wearing, it would be more challenging to provide exact dating of the photographs.

Nevertheless, Ava was able to reach several conclusions about the dates when the photographs on the first page were taken. She concluded that the three from Philadelphia were taken in the Civil War era, but not between August, 1864, and August, 1866. As she explained, “Tax stamps were issued by Union states and were required to be placed on the backs of photographs from August, 1864 to August, 1866 to raise money for the war effort.”2 Since these photographs did not have tax stamps on them, they had to have been taken either before August, 1864, or after August, 1866.

With that time period in mind, Ava then focused on the specific photographers who took these first four photographs. Three of the photographs on the first page of the album were taken by Robert N. Keely; his address, as indicated on the back of these three photographs, was “N.W. cor. Fifth & Coates Sts., Philadelphia.” Ava found Keely listed in Philadelphia directories at that address or at nearby addresses throughout the 1850s and 1860s and into the 1870s.

Knowing that these three photographs were taken during that era, Ava then focused on the three individual photographs on that first page that were taken by Keely. First, she looked at this one:

Based on her estimate of his age (50 years old) and the possible dating of the photograph between 1863 and 1864, Ava concluded that the man in the photograph was likely born around 1813-1814. John Nusbaum, my three-times great-grandfather was born on November 26, 1814, according to the family bible. Ava and I speculated that the man in the photograph could be John Nusbaum, given those dates and given the placement of the photograph on the first page.

I was excited by this analysis, but also realized that nothing could be certain. Without another photograph of John, we had no truly definitive way of being sure this was in fact John Nusbaum. That was an important first lesson I learned from Ava’s work on the album.

Another photo taken by Keely that appears on the first page of the album is this one:

Philadelphia c 1863, born about 25 years, could be Bernard or a Nusbaum son

I had hoped this was Bernard Seligman. But Ava was not convinced. She dated this photograph in that same 1863-1864 time frame and found that the man was 20-25 years old, meaning the man was born roughly between 1838 and 1844; Bernard was born in 1837 so within some reasonable margin of error of that estimate. But Bernard and Frances didn’t marry until 1865. Would they have had their photographs taken before they were married?

Possibly, but there was another obstacle. When I shared the photographs I do have of Bernard as a young man and as an older man as well as the blurry still from a video taken of his supposed portrait, I could see similarities, but Ava was certain that the man in the album was not Bernard.

 

Bernard Seligman

So who was he? Maybe one of John and Jeanette’s sons? Adolphus was born in 1842, Simon in 1843, and Julius in 1848. It could be any one of them, but I have no photographs of any of them. So who knows… It would make sense that John and Jeanette would have put one of their sons on the first page, but I can’t be certain.

What about the two women on that first page? Were they Jeanette Dreyfuss Nusbaum and Frances Nusbaum Seligman? That will be discussed in the next post.

  1. Ava Cohn, Analysis of Nusbaum Album #1, December 16, 2023 ↩
  2. See note 1, supra. ↩

The Nusbaum Album: An Introduction

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Some of you may recall that last fall I received a call from an antique dealer in Santa Fe who had in her shop a photograph album with the names John Nusbaum and Frances Nusbaum engraved on the front and rear covers, respectively. I immediately knew that this album had belonged to my three-times great-grandfather John Nusbaum and his daughter Frances, my great-great-grandmother. Frances had married my great-great-grandfather Bernard Seligman and moved from Philadelphia to Sante Fe, where they raised their children, as I told in my family history novel, Santa Fe Love Song.

I agreed to purchase the album and when it arrived, I marveled at the collection of almost two hundred photographs of people I hoped were my relatives—or at least I hoped that some of them would be. But except for a handful of those photographs, there were no labels or names to identify the people in them. Almost all, however, had a photographers’ stamp that indicated where they were taken.

The largest group of photographs (43) were taken in Philadelphia, where John Nusbaum had settled after immigrating from Schopfloch, Germany, in about 1840. He had initially been a peddler traveling throughout Pennsylvania, but eventually settled in Philadelphia and established a dry goods store there. He married Jeanette Dreyfuss, another German immigrant, and had six children, my great-grandmother Frances being the third child and oldest daughter. Thus, I assumed many of the Philadelphia photographs were of John and his family as well as of other family members and friends. But who was who? I had no idea.

Not surprisingly, the next largest group of photographs were taken in Germany, including some taken in Mainz and some in Bingen, the two larger cities closest to Gau-Algesheim where Bernard Seligman and his siblings were born and raised. There were also photographs taken in other German cities, such as Stuttgart, Berlin, and Wiesbaden.

There were eight photographs taken in Santa Fe, where Frances Nusbaum had moved with her husband Bernard and their three older children in about 1870. Their youngest child Arthur Seligman was born in Santa Fe, but my great-grandmother Eva Seligman was born in 1866 in Philadelphia.

Three photographs were taken in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and several were taken in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, two locations where John and Jeanette’s siblings lived in Pennsylvania, so I assumed that those photographs were likely of those Nusbaum/Dreyfuss cousins. The remaining photographs were taken in other places such as New York City; Montgomery, Alabama; Wheeling, West Virginia; Peoria, Illinois; and St. Louis, Missouri.

Each page in the album has four slots for photographs. On the first four pages of the album, there are two photos, back-to-back, in each slot so that you cannot see the reverse of the photos without pulling them out of the slots. Then starting on the fifth page in the album, there are only four photos on each page, and the reverse of those photos shows through on the back of the slot on the back of the page.

What it took me a long time to realize is that all the photos squeezed into the back of those on the first four pages are photographs from Germany. I think that these photographs from Germany may have been added once all the other slots were filled. They likely belonged to Bernard Seligman and were added after he married Frances. I will get to these photographs in a later post, but my reason for mentioning this here is to indicate that I think that aside from those German photos, the others were probably placed by John, Jeanette, or Frances Nusbaum.

The photographs appear to be somewhat grouped together by the location where the photographs were taken and by photographer. The photographs seem to follow roughly this geographical order: Pennsylvania, including many from Philadelphia, but also Harrisburg and Lewistown; then two pages from Peoria, Illinois; then three pages of Santa Fe photographs; then some from New York City and other places; and then photographs from Germany (plus the ones on the reverse of the first few pages). There are also some that appear in random places within the album, but overall this is how the album is arranged.

Since I only had names on a handful of photographs and since I had no idea when the photographs were taken, I decided to retain the expert services of Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, the Photo Genealogist. Long time readers of my blog know that I have had great success hiring Ava in the past to help me identify people in old photographs.

With the financial support of my brother and my cousins Marcia and Terry, I asked Ava to help me with this new project. I also agreed to sell the album after Ava and I were done with it to my cousin Jhette for the price I paid to the antique dealer; that way I had more money to hire Ava. Although I was sad to think that I would not be able to keep the album, I knew that Jhette, another descendant of Bernard Seligman and Frances Nusbaum, would take good care of it.

Because of the large number of photographs and my limited resources, I had to limit the scope of Ava’s work. I asked her only to date the photographs and to estimate the ages of the people in them. I was not asking her to do any identification of the people. I was hoping that with those two bits of dating information, I’d be able to deduce who the people were in the photographs—or at least narrow down the possibilities—by studying my family tree.

I also had to limit her work to about 20-25 of the almost two hundred photographs in the album. I decided to focus on those taken in Philadelphia, Santa Fe, Mainz, and Bingen because I knew that those would most likely be of my direct ancestors. As noted above, I figured that the Harrisburg, Peoria, and Lewistown photographs were of Nusbaum/Dreyfuss cousins. I had no idea who in the family (if anyone) lived in Berlin, Stuttgart, or Wiesbaden, Germany, or for that matter in St. Louis, Wheeling, or Montgomery. I knew of one branch that lived in New York, but not direct ancestors.

But because there were so many photographs taken in Philadelphia, I had to find some way to narrow down Ava’s work so that she could have the best chance of identifying the people in the photographs I chose. Based on her suggestions, we started with the photographs on the first page, figuring that those would most likely be the closest relatives if not the owners of the album; three of those were taken by the same photographer in Philadelphia. The fourth and the very first photograph in the album was taken in Harrisburg. There were two men and two women. In my wildest dreams, I was hoping that they were of John and Jeanette and Frances and Bernard.

Here are those first four photographs:

In my next two posts I will share what I learned from Ava about these four photographs and how I decided to choose the remaining 15-20 photographs for her to analyze. This will be a multipart series of posts devoted to the Nusbaum album.

 

A Dating Correction to One of Yesterday’s Photos: Thank you, Sherlock Cohn!

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I am deeply grateful to Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, the Photo Genealogist, for pointing out a dating error in one of the photographs I posted yesterday. The photo had been labeled in Robin’s collection as Cecilie and Thekla, and I assumed that it was Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum with her infant daughter Cecilie Gruenbaum. Since Cecilie was born in 1895, I labeled the photo with the date 1895.

When was this photograph taken?

But Ava, whose expertise in dating photographs is astounding, noticed that something was off in that date because the clothing worn by the mother in the photo would not have been in fashion in the 1890s. She emailed me and said she thought it was more likely that the photograph was taken in the 1870s.

I went back and looked at the photograph and the information I had on Thekla’s family, and I hypothesized that although the photograph was labeled Thekla and Cecilie, it was of Thekla as an infant with her mother, who was also named Cecilie. That would date the photograph as 1872, not 1895. Ava said that that date made a lot more sense, and when I emailed Robin to ask her for her thoughts, she agreed that it was probably not Thekla as an adult with her daughter, but Thekla as a baby with her mother.

It once again proves that if you want accurate dating and insights into old photographs, don’t rely on the hunches of amateurs. Hire a professional. Ava does amazing work, and I am so grateful that she caught this mistake.

The Legacy of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum: Family Photos

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I mentioned in my last blog post that I have recently connected with another cousin, Robin Kravets, the great-granddaughter of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum. Robin is my fifth cousin, once removed. We are both descendants of Abraham Blumenfeld and Geitel Katz, Robin through their son Moses and me through their daughter Breine.

Robin has generously shared with me a collection of photographs of her family, and I am delighted to be able to share them with you. All the photos in this post are courtesy of my cousin Robin. I am providing a summary of what I posted two years ago about Robin’s direct ancestors to provide context to the photos and to add some additional insights Robin shared with me. The blog posts from 2021 contain more details and my sources.

Salomon Blumenfeld, Robin’s great-great-grandfather, first married Caecilie Erlanger, but she died when she was only 24 years old, leaving behind two very young children: Thekla (Robin’s great-grandmother), not yet two, and Felix, just seven months old. Two years after his first wife Caecilie died, Salomon married Emma Bendheim and had a third child, Moritz, in 1877. And then sometime within the next five or six years, Salomon left Germany for Spain with Emma and Moritz, leaving his first two children, Thekla and Felix, behind. As best I can tell, Thekla and Felix, still both young children, must have been raised by their mother’s family, the Erlangers, in Marburg.

I had wondered whether Salomon or his son from his second marriage, Moritz, had remained in touch with Thekla and Felix. Robin provided this photograph of Moritz with his half-niece Cecilie, Thekla’s daughter, and another unidentified woman, so there is some evidence that at least Moritz had some contact with his half-sister Thekla and her family.

Moritz Blumenfeld and Cecilie Gruenbaum (with unknown woman on the left)
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

This is the oldest photograph in Robin’s collection. It shows Thekla as an infant with her mother, Caecilie Erlanger Blumenfeld and must have been taken in about 1872 when Thekla was born. Thank you to Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, The Photogenealogist, for pointing out the correct dating of this photograph.

Caecilie Erlanger Blumenfeld with Thekla Blumenfeld, c. 1872 Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Here are two beautiful photographs of Thekla as a young woman.

Thekla Blumenfeld, courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla Blumenfeld, courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla married Max Gruenbaum in 1894. Here is a photograph of them taken in 1895.

Thekla Blumenfeld and Max Gruenbaum 1895
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla and Max had four children: Cecilie (1895), Curt (1897), Franz (1899), and Rosemarie, Robin’s grandmother (1912).

Cecilie, Curt, and Franz Gruenbaum c. 1908 Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Cecilie, Franz, Rosemarie and Curt Gruenbaum, 1918  Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla’s brother Felix married Thekla Wertheim in 1902, and they had two sons, Edgar (1903) and Gerhard (1906). Robin had just a few photos of Felix; he appears to be in uniform during World War I in these first two. The caption on the first translates as “to commemorate the first nailing of the Zaitenstock.” I am not sure what that means, but Wikipedia explains (as translated by Google) that zaitenstocke were part of the pipe systems used to carry water into the cities.

Felix Blumenfeld, 1915 Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

detail from photo above

Felix Blumenfeld, 1916
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

detail from photo above

As I wrote in my earlier posts, both Felix and his sister Thekla lost their spouses at relatively young ages. Thekla’s husband Max Gruenbaum died in 1917, and Felix’s wife Thekla died in 1923.

But even more tragically, both Felix and Thekla were among the six million who were killed in the Holocaust, Felix by suicide in 1942, as detailed here, when he was in despair and had no hope in surviving, and Thekla at Treblinka in 1943.

Felix Blumenfeld
Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla had refused to leave Germany, and her daughter Cecilie would not leave her mother behind. Robin wrote that “[Cecilie] was very smart and saw the writing on the wall but her mother would not leave.  I remember my family talking about them having tickets on a boat somewhere. But the boat was cancelled.”1 Fortunately, Cecilie’s children were safely in England.

But Cecilie and her husband Walter Herzog were sent to the concentration camp in Riga in 1941. Walter did not survive, but against all odds, Cecilie did even after being sent to Stutthof, a camp where the conditions were truly horrible, as I wrote about here. When I asked Robin whether she had any information as to how Cecilie had survived, she wrote that “since she was trained as a nurse during WWI, she used her skills to help people in the camps. I have always believed it gave her a purpose to survive. The story I heard as a child was that when the Allies liberated the camp, she knew she had to get west. She collected a group of people and helped them make their way west. As a nurse, she knew that they needed to be very careful about overeating after being in the camps and made sure they did not die from bloating.”2 As was not uncommon with Holocaust survivors, Cecilie never wanted to talk about her experiences.

Cecilie Gruenbaum Herzog Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

The other children of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum and Felix Blumenfeld had all managed to escape Germany before it was too late, as I wrote about here. Robin’s grandmother Rosemarie, the youngest of Thekla’s children, had married while still in Germany. In fact, as Robin explained, she had married her husband Ernest Heymann in absentia as Ernest was in England at the time, having gone there on business and then realizing it was not safe to return. I’d never heard of being married in absentia, but apparently Rosemarie’s nephew stood in as a surrogate groom.3

Rosemarie was able to get out of Germany and join Ernest in London where their first child, Robin’s mother, was born. After the war started, Ernest was one of the many Jewish refugees who was sent to an internment camp as a “enemy alien.” He was interned from June 21, 1940, until October 17, 1940.

Ernst Heymann, he National Archives; Kew, London, England; HO 396 WW2 Internees (Aliens) Index Cards 1939-1947; Reference Number: Ho 396/178
Piece Number Description: 178: German Internees Released in Uk 1939-1942: Hertzke-Hoj
Ancestry.com. UK, World War II Alien Internees, 1939-1945

After he was released, he and Rosemarie and their daughter immigrated to the US and settled in New York. They had another child in New York after the war.

Rosemarie’s sister Cecilie made it to the US in 1946 and went to live with Rosemarie and her family in New York. The two sisters lived together for the rest of their lives and remained close to their brothers Curt and Franz (later known as Frank), who visited them often from Massachusetts.  Cecilie lived to 95, dying in 1990, and Rosemarie to 91, dying in 2004.3

The story of Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum is tragic: motherless as toddler, left behind by her father, widowed at a young age, and then killed by the Nazis. The fact that Thekla’s two daughters Cecilie and Rosemarie lived together and survived into their 90s is quite a tribute to the strength their mother must have had and that they both had.

Thekla with her daughter Rosemarie Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum  Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

Thekla Blumenfeld Gruenbaum  Courtesy of Robin H Kravets

 

 

 

  1. Email from Robin H. Kravets, September 10, 2023. ↩
  2. Ibid. ↩
  3. Emails from Robin H. Kravets, September 10, 2023, and October 27, 2023. ↩ ↩

An Exciting New Project in the Works!

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Before I move on to the next child of Moses Blumenfeld I, I have two other matters to write about. In my next post I will share some wonderful photographs that my cousin Robin shared with me. Robin, my fifth cousin, once removed, is descended from Abraham Blumenfeld and Geitel Katz through their son Moses I. More details to follow in the next post.

But today’s post is about some other amazing photographs. A couple of months ago I received an email out of the blue from an antiques dealer in Santa Fe named Peggy Gonzalez. Peggy had found me through my blog while looking for a descendant of John Nusbaum, my three times great-grandfather and my father’s namesake. Over thirty years ago at an estate sale, she had acquired a photograph album engraved with the name John Nusbaum on the front. She wanted to know whether I would be interested in buying the album.

At first I was skeptical. There are so many scams out there today. Anyone could have found my blog and made this up. But Peggy sounded honest, and she sent me these scans of the front and back of the album as well as a few representative photos. The back is engraved with “To F. Nusbaum.” My great-great-grandmother was John Nusbaum’s daughter Frances Nusbaum Seligman, and she had lived much of her adult life in Santa Fe with her husband Bernard, my great-great-grandfather. Peggy’s story seemed to be authentic.

 

I was extremely excited—as you might imagine. I’ve never seen a photograph of John Nusbaum or Frances, and here was a whole album of photos. Almost 200 photos. Thanks to the generosity of some of my Seligman/Nusbaum/Cohen relatives, I arranged to purchase the album. I also got extraordinary help from Mike Lord, our guide in Santa Fe from 2014 and a close friend of my cousin Pete. He acted as the middleman between Peggy and me, retrieving the album and giving Peggy my check and then sending me the album.

The album is now safely in my house, back in the hands of one of John Nusbaum’s descendants. I have retained the services of Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, the Photogenealogist, and am now waiting in her queue for her to have time to devote to this project. I’ve scanned the front and back of all the photos. They are all studio photographs—cabinet photos, I think they are called. Small, but very clear. And they all have the names and addresses of the photographers on the reverse side. But only three have any identification of the people in the photograph.

There are photographs that were taken in several cities in Germany as well as all over the US: Philadelphia, New York, Santa Fe, Peoria, Lewistown (PA), and St. Louis. I am hoping that if Ava can provide dates for when they were taken and perhaps the ages of the people, I can then figure out who these people are.

I will wait to share the photos until after I have had the benefits of Ava’s help, but I wanted to share now my excitement about this. Stay tuned for more!

 

July 2021: Scenes of the Outer Cape

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I will be taking a break for the first two weeks in August, so I will leave you with some of the highlights of July in Wellfleet. See you soon!

Low tide at Indian Neck Beach:

A hike over Uncle Tim’s Bridge to Cannon Hill

My garden:

My cats:

After the storm:

Long Nook Beach in Truro, the ocean beach we frequented when I was a child:

That’s it for now. See you in August when I will return with stories about a whole new branch of the family tree!

Of DNA Testing and The Magic of Photographs: Who is That Woman?

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As many of you know, I have not had much success using DNA as a genealogy research tool. Because I have thousands of matches on each of the major DNA testing sites (Ancestry, 23andme, FamilyTreeDNA, and MyHeritage), finding a true match—not one just based on endogamy—is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Over time I have found some “real” matches, but I usually only know they’re real because I’ve already found those cousins through traditional genealogical research. Finding that the DNA confirms what I already knew is nice, but not really helpful in terms of advancing my research. Even when I look at the matches that cousin shares with me, I am not making progress because our shared matches also number in the hundreds if not thousands.

Nevertheless, I periodically check my matches on each of the sites to see if any truly close matches have appeared. A couple of weeks ago I checked with 23andme and discovered a new third cousin match, Alyce, who also shared a family surname that appears on my tree—Goldfarb. Since the Goldfarbs are related to my Brotman line, I was quite excited. My Brotman line is one of my biggest brickwalls. I cannot get beyond the names of my great-great-grandparents.

Some background: my maternal grandmother’s parents were Joseph Brotman and Bessie Brod. But sometimes Joseph’s surname is listed as Brod, sometimes Bessie’s is listed as Brotman. Family lore is that Bessie, Joseph’s second wife, was his first cousin. Various US records revealed that Joseph’s parents were Abraham Brotman and maybe Yette Sadie Burstein; Bessie’s parents were Joseph Brod and Gittel Schwartz. But I have no records from Poland where they once lived to verify those names, nor can I get any further back to determine if Joseph and Bessie were in fact first cousins.

Then years later I discovered the Goldfarb cousins after seeing the names Joe and Julius Goldfarb and Taube Hecht in my grandfather’s address book and my aunt’s baby book.

After much digging, I learned that my great-grandmother Bessie Brod had a sister Sarah Brod (or Brotman) who married Sam Goldfarb. Joe and Julius Goldfarb were two of their sons, my grandmother’s first cousins. And Taube Hecht was my grandmother’s half-sister Taube Brotman, daughter of Joseph Brotman and his first wife. Taube’s daughter Ida had married Julius Goldfarb.

Through more research I was able to locate cousins descended from the Goldfarb line and from the Hecht line—Sue, a granddaughter of Julius Goldfarb and Ida Hecht, and Jan, a descendant of Taube Brotman Hecht line through her son Harry. They tested, but the results didn’t help me advance my research. I still couldn’t determine if my great-grandparents were in fact first cousins, and I still hadn’t found anything to expand the reach of my Brotman/Brod family tree.

Then a few weeks ago I found Alyce, a granddaughter of Joe Goldfarb and his wife Betty Amer and thus a pure Goldfarb (non-Hecht) cousin. She connected me with a few other Goldfarb cousins—descendants of Joe or one of his siblings. That’s a lot more DNA to work with, and I am hoping that I can get someone who’s more expert at parsing these things to help me use the DNA of these new cousins to advance my research. So far all I can do is stare at chromosome browsers and see overlaps, but I have no idea how to parse out the Goldfarb (Brod) DNA from the Hecht (Brotman) DNA to get any answers.

All of this I will return to at some point when I have more to say about what the DNA reveals. For now I want to talk about the photographs that Alyce shared with me of my Goldfarb relatives. Alyce sent me over twenty photographs. She was able to identify the people in many of them, but unfortunately a number are unlabeled. Also the quality of some of the photos is quite poor. I won’t post them all, but I will post a few today and more in a later post.

First, in Alyce’s collection was this photograph she labeled “I think this is Grandpa’s mother Sarah Brothman. I could be wrong.” (Brothman was yet another variation on how Joseph, Bessie, and Sarah spelled their surname.)

“Sarah Brothman” Courtesy of Alyce Shapiro Kunstadt

I almost fell off my chair. I had that exact same photograph, but in our collection the photograph was said to be of my great-grandmother Bessie Brod Brotman.

My great-grandmother Bessie Brotman (or so I was told)

I wasn’t sure who had the right label for the photograph, but just the fact that Alyce and I had in our possession copies of the same photograph seemed to confirm what the DNA and all my research had already told me—we were cousins!

Alyce had other photographs of her great-grandmother Sarah, and when I saw those I thought that in fact that first photograph was of Sarah, not Bessie. Here are her other photographs of Sarah, all courtesy of Alyce, and then another photograph I had of my great-grandmother Bessie.

Sarah Brod/Brotman Goldfarb and her son Leo Goldfarb. Courtesy of Alyce Shapiro Kunstadt

Bessie Brotman

Bessie Brotman

It seems to me that Bessie had a rounder and softer edged face than the woman seated in front of the grocery store, so I think that woman was indeed Sarah, Bessie’s sister.

So somehow my family ended up with a photograph of Bessie’s sister Sarah. And we never would have known if I hadn’t found Alyce and she hadn’t shared her copy of the photograph.

I slowly flipped through the rest of Alyce’s photos, noting the faces of my grandmother’s Goldfarb first cousins Joe and Leo and their wives and children, hoping I could identify some of the unknowns in Alyce’s collection, when I came to this photograph. This time my jaw dropped.

Rose Goldfarb, Joe Goldfarb, Gussie Brotman

Alyce labeled this photograph, “Grandpa Joe. I think that could be Aunt Rose [the youngest child of Sarah Brod and Sam Goldfarb] on the left. Not sure who’s on the right.”

But I knew who was on the right. I had no doubt. That woman was my grandmother, Gussie Brotman Goldschlager, posing with two of her first cousins, Joe and Rose Goldfarb. I was blown away. How could Alyce, who until just a few days earlier was unknown to me, have a photograph of my grandmother—a photograph I’d never seen before?

I sent the photograph to my brother for confirmation, and he agreed. I ran the photograph through Google’s face identification software, and Google agreed. Here are some other photographs of my grandmother.

Gussie Brotman

Goldschlagers 1935

Jeff and Gussie c. 1946

I think you also will agree.  Alyce, my third cousin, had a photograph of her grandfather Joe and my grandmother Gussie together. Wow.

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.

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

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Looking back at my prior post, let’s assume for purposes of this post that I have correctly identified Amalie Schoenthal Wolfe and her daughter Etta Wolfe Wise in the two photographs below.

Etta Wolfe Wise to far right, upper. Courtesy of the family

Courtesy of the Family

Then who are the other people in these two photographs? Are they other relatives of mine, relatives of Amalie and Etta?

Starting with the first photograph, which I will refer to as the porch photo, I am assuming that the older woman standing on the porch is Amalie and Etta is to her left. Who is the woman on the other side of Amalie, and who are those five adorable little children in front of them?

Looking at the second photograph, which I will refer to as the formal photograph, I identified the older woman as Amalie and the woman standing in the rear next to her as Etta. So who is the other woman? Is she the same woman as the woman standing on the porch with Amalie and Etta in the other photo?

When I compare those two women, I believe they are the same woman, and my guess is that she is Etta’s only sister and Amalie’s only other daughter, Flora Wolfe Goldman.

The hair and how it is parted and the mouth seem so similar that I think they are the same person. What do you think?

I think the formal photograph was taken some years before the porch photograph, and that the two children in the formal photograph are mostly likely two of Flora’s children. Flora had four children: Leroy (1901), Helen (1903), Donald (1905), and Marjorie (1908). I am guessing that the little boy in the photo is Leroy and the little girl is Helen. My guess is that the photo was taken between 1904 and 1905 and perhaps Flora was pregnant with Donald when it was taken.

So that brings me to the next question: Who are those five little children in the porch photograph?

Assuming that is Flora in the porch photograph, it had to have been taken before September 30, 1910, when Flora died. She died from puerperal fever—a fever caused by a uterine infection after childbirth.1 Since Flora does not look obviously pregnant in the porch photograph and since it looks like the weather must have been relatively warm or at least not wintry, I am going to assume that the photograph was taken no later than the fall of 1909, but after 1905 or so when the formal photograph was taken.

At the time Flora died, her mother Amalie had six grandchildren. Flora’s four, Leroy, Helen, Donald, and Marjorie, and Amalie’s two grandchildren through her son Lee: Lloyd, born in 1902, and Ruth, born in 1905.

I would guess that the children in the photograph range in age from about fifteen months old to four years old. If the photograph was taken in 1906 or so, Flora’s children would have been five, three, and one (Marjorie would not yet have been born).  Lee’s two children would have been four and one in 1906.  Since there are only five children in the photo, maybe they are Flora’s older three (Leroy, Helen, and Donald) and Lee’s two (Lloyd and Ruth). And although they all look like girls, I know that little boys often wore dresses back in those days.

So I have no idea. Maybe they’re cousins from another branch of the family or neighbors. Without more photographs and information, I am grasping at straws!

But I do feel pretty comfortable identifying Etta, Flora, and Amalie.

I have a few more Etta/Amalie photographs to analyze. Maybe they will shed more light.

 

 

 

  1. There was no death certificate for a baby born in 1910 to Flora Wolfe Goldman so I assume the baby was stillborn or perhaps was miscarried. If Flora had an early miscarriage that led to a uterine infection, I suppose the photograph might have been taken in the spring of 1910. ↩

Amalie Schoenthal Wolfe and Her Daughter Etta Wolfe Wise: Some Photo Analysis

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I have already written about Amalie Schoenthal Wolfe, the sister of my great-grandfather Isidore Schoenthal. Amalie was born in Sielen, Germany, in 1847, and came to the US as a young woman in 1867. In 1872 she married Elias Wolfe, and together they had six children, including her daughter Etta Wolfe Wise, who was born in Pittsburgh in 1883.

A few weeks ago I heard from Alan, one of Etta’s descendants, and he shared with me numerous photographs of the family, including two that were labeled in part “Etta’s mother.” I was excited to see photographs of Amalie.

Alan said this one was labeled as Etta’s mother Amalie on the right:

And that this one labeled Etta’s mother Amalie as the woman on the left:

I can see that the two older women in these two photos are the same person—do you agree? The shape of their chins and their cheekbones are the most obvious similarities.

This is Amalie’s daughter Etta Wolfe Wise, my grandmother Eva Schoenthal’s first cousin. It might have been taken on her wedding day, June 2, 1910:

Etta Wolfe Wise, c. 1910. Courtesy of the family

And this is her husband, Max Wise, perhaps taken around the same time:

Max Wise Courtesy of the family

Knowing what Etta looked like made it easy to identify her in other photos, such as this one. That looks like Etta standing in the rear to our right.

Etta Wolfe Wise to far right, upper. Courtesy of the family

I think that the older woman standing next to Etta is the same woman as the older woman in the first two photos above and so presumably Amalie.

And I think Amalie is also the woman sitting between Etta and Max Wise in the next photo, Max sitting highest on the chair fourth from the left, then Amalie to his right, and then Etta to Amalie’s right.

The Wise Family Courtesy of the family

Here are closeups of the four faces of the older woman cropped from those photographs:

What do you think? Are these all the same woman?

That left me puzzled about the people in the other photos of Amalie. For example, in this one, is that Etta standing next to her? At first glance I thought so, but then I wasn’t sure.  Etta has such distinctive deep-set eyes, and the eyes of the woman in this photo looked different.

Here are some closeups of Etta from the known photos and from this one:

The more I look, the more I think it is Etta. And is this Etta in the more recent photo showing Amalie on the far left?

I think so, although the glasses and her squint make is hard to be sure. She certainly looks like the woman in the last of the cropped photos above.

So…what do you think? Is that Amalie in all those photos? Have I correctly identified Etta in the photos?

If so, then I need to figure out who the other people are in those photographs. To be continued…