Picturing the Past- Another Resource for Genealogists Part I

As you can see, this is the town square of Spencer, Owen County, Indiana sometime in the late 30's or early 40's. (according to the database) I was noodling around again in Ancestry on the "newly added records" section which you find at the bottom of your home page. I found Historical Postcards. Of course I started entering names of places where I had large groups of ancestors right away. This is the best result I found. Spencer is the little town my great great grandmother, Letitia Ellen Johnson, came from.

You get some feeling for Spencer. The classic town square, the storefronts that must date from the 1800's, the memorial (probably a war memorial) in the square. It could be any little town in Texas just as easily. I've been to those little places. I turned it over to see what else I could learn.

What clues were here? Well Lyle and Charles are writing to "Eddie" or Edna in the fall of 1945. The war is over and they are visiting for some reason. The writing style is casual. These are youngish people.  Edna Madison (we think) lives in York, Pennsylvania. So I turned this little mystery over to my friend David Webb. He is a real postcard sleuth. We spent a couple of days going back and forth over this. Was the name really Madison? Could we find her? Were these guys friends? Relatives? Did they have a tie to Spencer? Alas it was, as David put it, a "dry hole". He pointed out that after WWII, the cards are harder to search. More mobility and in this case too few clues.

These folks aren't related to me in any way I know of, I just thought it would be an interesting puzzle to solve. David has a very specific method for researching old postcards and has had a fair bit of success. More about David, his search methods and his website in the next post. Stay tuned.

They Shall Not Grow Old

This is a post I had meant to make back in November or December, but the research involved overtook me. November was the 100th anniversary. You may have heard about Peter Jackson's new film They Shall Not Grow Old. It's a wonderful film, long overdue, paying tribute to the soldiers of World War I. The best part of  it is the fascinating technology involved in what Jackson did. He took old footage, colorized and cleaned it up and then sync'ed voices and dialogue with the film. The results are simply amazing. HERE is a sample. If you are interested in HOW he accomplished this, there is another bit on YouTube HERE. It's still out there in theaters and I urge you to try to see it.

What also interested me was the genealogical possibilities. Apparently that occurred to other folks as well.  Lisa Louise Cooke recently discussed the documentary portion at the end on the Genealogy Gems podcast.  After I saw the film I wondered just how many men in my tree HAD served in WWI. Now I have covered the service of my grandmother's brother, "Harry" Tapply,  in a previous post. But it took me almost three months to compile a complete list. Some are American, some are from the British side of my tree. Many times, if the name was too common, I couldn't verify the service; there may be some omissions. Some of the older British soldiers served in the domestic "service corps" and some of the Americans in the Coast Guard. However, this is the list I came up with.

Right around 70 men in my tree served. Some gave their lives. I decided NOT to distinguish that here. Service is service. When I think about the men in Jackson's film telling their stories (he used old recordings from the British War Archives) I wonder what my relatives would tell us. I'll bet the stories would be fascinating.