A New Family Photo!

      I've noticed something about Ancestry, they don't always find obvious hints.  This time it was the photograph of a family member on Find A Grave that the site failed to alert me to.  The name and dates match my tree exactly, and I already had an earlier version of that Find A Grave page in my tree from before the picture was added.  It's not the first time this has happened either.  A few months ago, while viewing the tree of a DNA match, I found a photo of one of my Travers relatives had been posted there with nary a peep from Ancestry.  I enjoy doing my own research, but pictures are the holy grail of genealogy, Ancestry needs to do better.

     Nevertheless, I'm excited to find the image of Arthur Worden, his wife Edna Warner, and their daughter Inez.  They aren't direct ancestors, but I'm related to both of them by blood.  Arthur was my 2nd great-granduncle, and Edna my 1st cousin 3 times removed.  I have a photo of Inez, found on eBay of all places, so I compared that one to Ancestry's.

Inez and her baby sister Gladys

Inez and parents from Find A Grave photo

     The strong resemblance between the older child in the first photo and the one beneath it is indisputable.  I'm always a little leery of online pictures with no provenance, but I'm confident this is a true image of the Worden family. Edna's hair looks a bit odd here, so I copied the picture into my paint program then used the little eyedropper tool to match her hair color from the unfaded, left side of her head and went over it.  The results are below, I think it's a big improvement.

     It's such a thrill to stumble upon images of long-gone relatives.  I wish Arthur's face was in better shape, but it imparts a good idea of what he looked like.  I wonder did he look like his father Paul or his mother Eva Benedict?  Eva was Paul's second wife and much younger than him.  After three children their marriage fell apart; 1892 found Arthur living in the "orphan asylum" while a neighbor adopted his younger sister, changing her surname to McClouth.  His younger brother lived with Paul.  I would love to know the details of how this all came to pass, but so far, I've been unable to even find a record of a divorce.  

     Eva remarried and gave birth to another daughter, but her three eldest children never lived with her again.  The 1910 census shows Eva, aged 54, living with her new husband William Brown, their daughter Ruby Brown aged 19, and a one-year-old child named Arthur Brown, listed as Eva's son.  I've always believed this baby was in fact Ruby's, not Eva's, but had no proof.  However, in addition to the photo, there on the F.A.G. site was Ruby's obituary; among her survivors was her "son" Arthur of Detroit.

     I don't know who posted the photograph to Find A Grave, but I plan to message that person through the site, and also recheck the Find A Grave pages in my trees.  Hopefully, more photos await discovery...