The Smiths- Some New Discoveries

 

The Smiths

First of all, I thought I'd better put up a reference tree for the cousins to check out before I launch into my new discoveries. I was contacted on Ancestry by a cousin. My thanks to my cousins Andy Cracknell and Chuck Dietsche who are descendants of the Estill Smith branch of the family. They supplied the wonderful photos.

Some of the photos they sent I had seen. A few I had bad or cropped copies of. But the photos I have never seen were a revelation. Let's start at the top of the tree. I decided to make use of a little AI to see what I could discover. My Heritage, Ancestry, and Image Colorizer.com will all colorize photos with different results. More on that later.

The picture of Letitia is the same one that hangs on my wall with the family pictures. Although AI is an "intelligent guess" with photos, I have to say this shows her pretty jewelry and brightens her up considerably.

Letitia Ellen Johnson Smith "Ella"- my great, great grandmother

What excited me was the next photo. I had never seen a photo of my great-great grandfather George F Smith.

George F Smith- the railroad man

My Heritage takes a fairly restrained approach. I notice they focused on skin color mostly and didnt' go crazy colorizing everything. 

George F Smith- older

George died in 1915. My guess is this photo is from a period after 1900. I was thrilled to get these photos.

Next is their oldest daughter, Cora Elizabeth, my great grandmother. I know a bit about her because she spent a lot of time with my mother when mom was a child- they lived right next door. I have this photo, but mine was cut down for framing. I love the full version. The details jump right out at you and you really can see a hint of humor in her eyes.

Cora Smith Rogers

We have her brother Estill in the next sets of photos. 

Estill Lowell Smith

I must say that Imagecolorizer.com did a fine job of repairing the scratches and bringing this young photo of Estill to life. Estill, like my great grandfather Ned and my grandfather Harry worked for the City of Fitchburg.

Estill

This slightly older picture wasn't as successful. probably because it's still in the frame.

Here's Estill's wife Bessie Priest. I don't know too much about her, but I must say her daughter Marion looked like her as you will see.

Bessie Priest Smith

I have no pictures of Frederick. Would love to, but they haven't turned up yet.

Finally, we get to the youngest two daughters: Lotta and Clara. I knew Clara as a child- what a character. She lived to be 101 or 102. Neither married. Lotta had a brief local musical career in her young days, but became a hairdresser later and gave up music. Or so the family story goes...

Lotta Mae- a young photo

Lotta was a pretty girl. Talented but maybe troubled as well. She got accolades for her singing in local musicales and quartets. I've been told the whole family was musical.

Lotta Mae

The bonnet and the bouquet of posies is a nice touch. I had a copy of this, but this one is in better condition. And she looks happy here, which is nice.

Clara was the baby. It has been suggested that she was a little spoiled. Perhaps. But I see spirit and humor and intelligence in this photo. And perhaps a strong will. Clara taught kindergartners and first graders all her life. She also spent a good bit of that time looking after Lotta.

Clara Letitia

Here's a slightly later picture of the two girls together. That was them: where Lotta went, Clara was with her.

Lotta and Clara

The colorized version brings out the details of their pretty tops. I don't think I had ever seen this photo either- my framed version was cut down.

This next photo surprised me, because Cora looks very different in the picture. Andy said they were in their choir robes from church.

Cora and Clara

This last photo was the clincher for me. Just too adorable.  From left to right we have my grandfather Harry, my Aunt Dorothy (Deo), and their cousins Marion Smith and Webbie Smith. Dorothy was born about 1903, so my guess is maybe 1905.

Harry Rogers, Dorothy Rogers, Frederick Webster "Webbie" Smith and Marion Smith

Just look at those cute little faces. They must have taken single shots of the children on the same day, because I remember seeing a single photo of Harry in that outfit.

Here is where AI doesn't always get it right. My grandfather Harry had red hair. I mean really red hair. The family called him Uncle Rusty. Neither of these colorizations picked up on that. The photo on the left is Ancestry's version and the one on the right is from ImageColorizer. I think the second one gilds the lily a bit. And you can see how much Marion looked like her mom. 

The four cousins about 1905 or so...

And lastly, if you want, My Heritage will animate your photos. So I took the sweet photo of Lotta and tried it out. They zoom right in on the face and that's what animates. I think the eyes do something weird. Cool or creepy? You decide.

I'm very pleased with this new collection of photos.

Lotta May Smith

Lotta May Smith
No download or reproduction without express permission
Isn't this a sweet picture? This is Lotta May Smith, my great grandmother's younger sister.  Lotta lived her adult life with her sister Clara, a schoolteacher, and neither ever married. My mother once included her and Clara in a short story which gives a pretty accurate picture of the aunts she knew as a child.

"Lotta, as tall and erect as her sister Cora, but already quite gray, looked out at the world through large, dark, anxious eyes. They (Lotta and Clara) seemed to live in a perpetual state of apprehension, nursing imagined slights and disappearing into their room or going off on walks to whisper..."

As a child, all I knew was that Lotta had had a promising musical career cut short and that she had to be institutionalized with some mental illness.  My mom's writing reveals the family story or perhaps my mother's version of it, "She had a magnificent singing voice...She was auditioning for the Metropolitan Opera. When Mama died, Lotta made a vow she'd never sing again - and she never has."

The truth is both sad and perhaps a little different. At the turn of the century she was singing with the Orpheus Quartet and shows up regularly in reviews in the Fitchburg Sentinel. By the 1920 census she was living with her sister and her mother in Worcester, Massachusetts and working as a clerk. By 1930 she was a hairdresser. What turned her from her singing career we'll never know, but by 1920 she was already 30 years old. Had signs of mental illness already begun?  She shows up one more time in the 1940 census living with Clara and doing hair, but by the time I was born in the fifties she was in an nursing home or institution.

Lotta's father George F Smith was from Litchfield, Maine. Her mother, Letitia Ellen Johnson, was from Spencer in Owen County, Indiana. It was researching her mother's line that gave me the first clue to Lotta's real story...or at least part of it. The 1860 census reveals this

1860 Census-Spencer, Owen, Indiana

Elizabeth would be Margaret Elizabeth, Lotta's grandmother. The note on the right gave me pause.
Letitia, Lotta's mother, was only 4 years old. Margaret was only 29. A quick email to a family member revealed that early onset Alzheimers ran in that side of the family.  At only 29 she seems pretty young for Alzheimers, but in those days they wouldn't have know what it was anyway.
The 1880 Census shows that by this time the family couldn't manage.

1880 Census- Indiana State Hospital for the Insane

What a terrible choice her husband would have had to make! I did a little online research on the Indiana State Hospital and found it horrifying. Now I understood what probably happened to Aunt Lotta. Luckily, Lotta's care was more benign and her sister Clara was devoted to her for her entire life.

No one goes into genealogy looking for medical ailments, but this story gives information that might be useful to me or to family members.  It also filled out my picture of Aunt Lotta. It's nice to know a little more about the charming young girl in the photo.