Facebooking Orphan Photos

Orphan Photo
Two Couples in A Car

I've been thinking a lot about orphan photos. Photographs have been my passion for quite sometime. My first 35mm camera was a wedding gift from my father in-law. Since then, I have been in love with photography ever since.  Though I am far from a professional photographer, I am what you might consider an amateur one.  It's not surprising therefore, that the amateur genealogist in me has combined my passion for the camera and family history into a fascination with vintage photos.

This month, thanks to my twitter friend Melissa Mannon, I've reexamined my Orphan photos. Photos of unidentified people. I've even submitted a couple to her on-line contest for orphan photos. The discussion around photos looking for a home, on my earlier blog post A Photo Worth a Thousand Words and on facebook, has inspired my cousin Ellen to scan a bunch of recently uncovered photos. Ellen (whom I haven't met in person yet), is my third and fourth cousin (yes, we are double cousin, long story). She recently came across what I consider a stored treasure. An album full of sepia prints from the twenties and thirties, maybe even earlier. This album belonged to her grandparents. Many of the photos are from Weddings. Elegant brides, accompanied by their loved ones. The wedding photos deserve a discussion of their own. I chose therefore, to feature in this blog—the above photo—a photo from Ellen's collection.

This remarkable print is actually a post card. I've found many photos made into postcard in my collection as well. Real photo postcards began to appear around 1903 with the inventions of Kodak's Folding Pocket camera, a popular camera which allowed people to print their photo on postcard size print.  It made it easy to send your photo to family and friends around the world. Even if you did not own a camera, you could easily afford to walk into a photo studio at the market or a tourist attraction and have your photo taken and turned into a postcard. Real photo postcard cost about a penny each around the turn of the century and another penny for the stamp.

As you can see, this postcard is in bad shape, cracked, folder and stained. Yet, it has been preserved. Ellen, sent me this orphan photo hoping that I can help identifying the couples. If you've been following my blog, you will immediately recognize the man in the far back. Will Crane, whom I wrote about in my last post "In Every Thing I Do", is wearing a top hat and bow tie, trying not to smile. Next to him, at a significant distance is his wife Luba. Who the couple sitting in front is still a mystery and is part of the reason I posted the photo on this blog. I'm hopeful one of my readers will come to our rescue and recognize this lovely couple.

The power of the internet is amazing. Ellen began posting photos from her treasure trove onto facebook over the weekend. I sent out this photo in an e-mail to the elder members of the Crane family and was able to draw several conclusions from the photo almost immediately. The post card has a white border. This dates the photo to no earlier than 1915, which is when the practice of leaving a white border to save ink began. My cousins, positively identified Will and Luba Crane in the back seat. We believe the photo was most likely taken sometime around 1918 after Will returned from WWI, consistent with the white border. Will looks very young and about the same as he did in his WWI photos. The fake back drop, the clothes, the car they did not own all point to a studio photo. One of the cousins suggested it has the feel of a photo taken in Atlantic City, on the board walk. She should know, she grew up there. Will and Luba actually visited Atlantic City on their honeymoon. From my research I know that Will and Luba married on October 23rd, 1920 in New York City and headed to Atlantic City to visit a maternal uncle, Harry Yarmovsky. Uncle Harry was a very successful contractor, building affordable housing for returning WWI veterans in Atlantic City at the time. When he discovered Will was a plumber, and his brothers were handymen, he recruited all of them to move to join him in Atlantic City—good, reliable help was in short demand and Atlantic City was in a boom. Will and Luba's honeymoon trip changed the destiny of three of the Crane families, all of whom relocated and settled in Atlantic City. This photo may well be from that milestone trip. It's certainly the kind of thing one would do while on a honeymoon—go down to the boardwalk, wander into a photography studio with friends (or cousins), get dressed up and have your photo mounted onto a postcard—a great, inexpensive souvenir to send home.

This is the kind of detective work, us genealogist do everyday. We piece together the clues. Who is the young man with the rounded face, split chin and glasses pretending to drive the car? Who is the woman next to him—the only one of the gang who could not contain her smile? If you have any clues or suggestions, please share! In the meantime, enjoy this little window into the past.

I hope you will get inspired to dig up your vintage photos and share them. Don't skip your orphan photos. Post them on facebook or your family tree. Ask your relatives for help. You will be surprised how much you may learn! If you find a special orphan photo, you might want to enter it in Melissa's orphan photo contest. Post it on ArchivesInfo and share the story. Maybe you'll win one of Melissa's great books!

My Mitochondria

Have you ever thought about your mitochondrion. Our bodies are home to millions of mitochondria. These microscopic organelles provide each cell of our body with energy. Before tenth grade cell biology, I doubt I was aware of these mitochondria. As far as cellular organelles go—known as the power house of the cell—they are a pretty cool. Top of the food chain you might say. Yesterday, wanting to take advantage of the warm winter day, I decided to go out for a bike ride. As I was pedaling heavily, I was pondering my mitochondria. I was neither wondering how hard my mitochondria were working to supply the energy necessary for my pedaling, nor was I concern with the affects of record breaking temperatures on mitochondrial work load. I was contemplating their DNA, my DNA.

If you've been following my blog, by now, you know at least one important fact about me. I'm obsessed with the past. Turns out my mitochondria are going to take me much deeper into my past that I have ever thought possible.

I've spent the better part of the last three years, researching my past, studying my family history. I've succeeded in tracing my linage seven or eight generations back. If we count each generation to be 25 years, then I've traced my family history about two hundred years into the early 1800s. I can name my fourth great-mother and make an educated guess as to where she lived. Being from an Eastern European Jewish background, it's difficult to go much further than that. Tracking Jews prior to the early 1800 is particularly difficult because traditionally, Jews did not use surnames. Instead they used a patronymic system of naming, a first name followed by "son of" and the name of the father. As part of the emancipation process, recognizing Jews as citizens of Europe, the Austrian Emperor passed a law which compelled Jews to take a last name. Those of us interested in genealogy are eternally grateful to this decree which lead the way for most European Jews to choose a name. This made it much easier to trace and study Jewish families. Earlier generations and family histories frequently remain a mystery.

This is where the mitochondrion comes in. Scientist have discovered that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down practically unchanged from a mother to her children. Unlike nuclear DNA, which is composed of maternal and paternal DNA, the mitochondrion genetic code is directly inherited from the mother with very rare mutations. In the past few years, genealogist have been able to utilized advances in genetic decoding to map mitochondria DNA in families. mtDNA testing, traces one's maternal line. This means that my mtDNA, is identical to my mothers, my grandmothers, my great-grandmothers etc. These are the women, I inherited my mtDNA from:

Me

→

Barbara Ann Lavi (Bogdanow)
your mother

→

Ethel Girly Bogdanow (Bloomfield)
her mother

→

Minnie Bloomfield (Crane)
her mother

→Faygah Kranowitz (Yarmovsky)

her mother

→

Chaya Minucha Yarmovsky (maiden name unknown)
her mother

Amazing! If you think of Eve as the mother of all mothers, than we can look at Sarah, wife of Abraham, as the mother of all Jews. Let's think of her as an actual person and not a mythological figure for the sake of this discussion. This Sarah, who lived more than 3000 years ago, is hypothetically my 12,000th great-grandmother. Her mtDNA is practically identical to mine and every other Jewish woman on this planet. Luckily, there have been some mutations over the years, so not all us Jewish women carry the exact same DNA. mtDNA is not the maternal equivalent of a paternity test, but it can detect family lines which separated hundreds of years ago with a fairly high level of accuracy. This means that while  maternal cousins have identical mtDNA, studying our family mtDNA will tell us something about our foremothers who lived 400 years ago or earlier. Ancestors that so far have been a complete mystery.

My great-grandmother Minnie Kranowitz has already become somewhat of a celebrity. In her Memoir, Stored Treasures, I recorded vast amounts of information about our family history, which her journals provided and my research supplemented. One story she told my uncle did not make the book.  Before he passed away, my uncle Larry, shared with me, that Minnie believed our family arrived in Belitsa, now part of Belarus around four hundred years ago, during the time of the Jewish expulsion from Spain (1492 CE). This tid-bit, did not make my book, because I could not corroborate it. After consulting with experts on the subject, I know that this kind of story passed down for generations, tends to be true. Here is the cool thing: my mitochondrial genetic code may contain the clue I need to confirm this story. It not only can trace general migration patterns, but the larger of the databases such as www.familytreedna.com is connecting families genetically.

So this is what I decided during my bike ride. It's time to take jump into DNA testing. I've invited my male cousins—sons of sons—to test their y-DNA. I ordered my kit mtDNA kit from www.familytreedna.com, the premier genetic genealogy company. Soon we will know which of the Kranowitz/Yarmovsky lines indeed came from Spain. And you, my blog followers will be the first to hear the results!

Have you tested your family's DNA? What have you learned? Have you been hesitant to get tested? I would love to hear more about your process! Share your comments with us!

For results of the DNA test see: Is My Mitochondria Doing Anything for Me? (Part I)