A Time In Mom's Life Found In A Photo Album

      

     I've sat down several times to write this blog, but a feeling of sadness washes over me and I abandon the attempt.  It began when I was looking through a photo album I inherited from my late mother.  Actually, it was more like I stumbled upon it on a closet shelf while cleaning out the family home after my father had also passed.  The album was from the 1940's and as I leafed through it, I noticed the pages were beginning to deteriorate.  That couldn't be good for the pictures it held, so I began removing them, careful to keep them in order.

     I should note up front my mother had a more difficult life than most, and my feelings for her are colored by the empathy I feel.  At age seven she witnessed her mother fatally injured while filling the kitchen stove from a can of kerosine.  It exploded in her hands, blowing out a window and burning her terribly.  It's a miracle none of the children waiting for their breakfast were injured.  Their father remarried shortly after, to a younger woman who didn't want his seven children around.  They were sent to live with their grandmother, rarely to see their father who started another family. When my mother was thirteen her favorite sister died after a botched operation, even as Mom donated blood in an attempt to save her.  It seemed fate had finally smiled on her in 1945 when she married Dan, the man of her dreams, only to have that dream devolve into a nightmare when he was killed during the Korean War five years later.  Five years after Dan's death she married my father.  Without going into detail, it was not a happy marriage. 

     As I removed the photos from the album, I noticed writing on the backs of some of them.  One caught my eye; it was a picture of Mom with her brother Ken in full uniform.  On the back was written in part, "113 South 5th St. where our apartment was... on our way to Greenfield Lake".  Where was Greenfield Lake I wondered?  I knew my mother had married Dan, a career Marine, in Wilmington, North Carolina so I started there.  A Google Maps search for Greenfield Lake, NC brought it up, just outside Wilmington!  Another photo was exactly the same as the first one, only instead of Ken, it was Dan standing next to my mother, and this one was dated, 1945.  

Mom and her brother Ken Lash

Mom and Dan Carroll

     What were the odds the house was still there I wondered?  Now I was reasonably sure the city was Wilmington, I returned to Google Maps, where I did a search on the street address from the back of the photo--

     It was the house!  There was no mistaking the brickwork out front.  That spot on the side walk to the right of the steps is the exact spot where my mother had stood seventy-eight years ago.  Could it really be that long?  That's when I teared up a little and left this blog for another day.

     Returning today to hopefully finish the project, I found another photo taken the same day as the others.  It's of Mom and Dan in the bow of a small boat floating on, you guessed it, Greenfield Lake.  I'd bet it was snapped by my Uncle Ken also sitting in the boat.

Sgt. Dan and Mom, the skirt was red!

     I'm not sure why these photos have the effect on me that they do.  The people in them are young, happy, and in love.  The war in Europe is over, they all made it through, life is good and the future is bright.  Maybe it's because I know what lies in store for them, it's like a movie one has seen a dozen times but somehow you desperately want the ending to be different this time.  This time I want that can of kerosene to not explode; I want Mom's sister to have a competent surgeon; this time I want Dan to come home from Korea. What I really want is my dear mother to be happy.

When A Marriage Certificate Contradicts It Own Self

      

     I've spent some time lately researching those less popular subjects in my tree, the ones who never married or had children, so their line comes to an end with not a lot to trace.  You never know though, and that is why I'm sitting here -- that and the sub-freezing temps outside.  This morning I've been looking at my great-great-aunt Lida C. Powers who I had only bare bones information about.  I think I wanted to learn more about her because it annoys me to no end how other family trees insist on using the name Lydia, found in exactly one single census, instead of her correct name of Lida, as recorded in the other censuses.  I know Lida was her name because she was the sister of my grandfather's mother and he spoke of her often.  I even met the lady once myself; only once because she was elderly by then and resided near New York City while I rusticated upstate in the boondocks near Rochester.

     I knew Lida had married later than most, as many Irish ladies did, that she was a nurse and instructor, and her husband, Uncle Leland, was a well to do funeral director.  Getting started, I pulled up Ancestry and commenced a search for her.  One item that came up was a marriage certificate from New Brunswick, Canada.  That could fit, I knew Leland was born in Canada though he wasn't currently living there.  Of course, Ancestry wouldn't allow me look at the certificate when I tried since I don't have a world subscription, so I set about finding another way to view it, which I usually can with a little searching.  Family Search looked promising, but these particular records hadn't been indexed and while I was plodding through them the images stopped loading.  I found another site, The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, and tried that one successfully!  It also had free images.

     I easily found the certificate which gave the correct birthplace and parent's names for Lida, so I was confident it was her.  The problem was with the certificate itself.  

     It clearly says the marriage took place the 27th of September in 1928, but look closely down in the right hand corner, it apears to say it was registered the 29th of September in 1938, or does it?

     It certainly looks like it says 1938, but what's the deal with that weird little tail on the 3?  I decided the anwer could be found in the 1930 census, and there was Aunt Lida, living at the nursing college where she was the principal, listed as single.  Her future husband was in the same town, living and working as a supervisor at an "insane hospital", he was listed as widowed.  It looked as though they couldn't have married in 1928, and the 1938 date was the right one.  But then I looked at her age on the certificate and it was what it would have been in 1928, not ten years later.  Now I was really confused.  Checking the 1940 census, I saw that Lida and Leland were living in Kings County, New York and said they had been living at the same place in 1935, so they must have been married BEFORE 1938. This called for some serious thought.

     Try as I may, I could not reconcile the facts as given.  I recalled reading that there was a time when female teachers were required to remain single or lose their jobs, but was that still the case in the late 1920's?  From what I could find on the internet, it was.  By 1930 Lida was more than a teacher, she had moved into a principal's position.  Could it be she wasn't ready to end her career and kept her marriage secret for a time?  That would certainly explain why she chose to marry in Canada rather than New York where she had sisters and a father still living.  I did one last search at Ancestry, this one for Leland and I found my answer, at least a partial one in a Massachusetts passenger list--

Leland Macdonald
Departure Place	Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
Arrival Date	27 Sep 1936
Arrival Place	Boston, Massachusetts, USA

     Not just Leland was among the passengers, Lida C. MacDonald was with him on that trip.  In 1936.  I'm not sure I'll ever know with certainty what motivated Lida and Leland to hide their union for at least two years, but I'm ready to add the marriage to my tree, in 1928.

What Sort of House Did You Say That Was?

     Everyone wants to believe their ancestors were upstanding people who worked hard and made sacrifices, paving the way for succeeding generations. Of course, a few black sheep are always appreciated, they add spice to the story.  But an entire family of them is something else.

     My great-great-grandfather, James O'Hora, who emigrated from Ricketstown in County Carlow, Ireland was by all accounts, a man to be proud of. The local newspaper that covered the small hamlet of Littleville, New York where his farm was located, had not a bad word to say about James nor his wife Maria McGarr in all the decades they lived there.  Coincidentally, James' older brother John had married Maria's sister Catherine McGarr in Ireland.  After the birth of their first child, John and Catherine set sail for New York, immediately settling in the Auburn, New York area where they had relatives. 

     James and Maria married in Auburn after arriving in America several years apart, and they too lived in the Auburn area for a time before purchasing their farm in Littleville. That is where all similarities between the two families end. 

     John passed away around 1872 I'm guessing, he doesn't appear with his wife Catherine and their children in New York's1875 census, and that year of 1872 is the first one in which his widow appears on the rolls of the overseer of the poor in Auburn. Things seemed a little off with this family when I found the marriage record of their oldest daughter, Mary, in 1861, only fifteen years after her baptism in Ireland. That was incredibly young for an Irish woman to marry. Her first child came along in 1863, perhaps she miscarried one in 1861? Her sister Anne waited a few years, marrying at age eighteen, but still quite young. Her firstborn came two years later. Something seemed fishy here.

     Then there were the boys. Daniel, Michael, John, Peter and Richard, all of whom were, shall we say, well known in Auburn. Particularly in police circles, and all had lengthy rap sheets.  The following article published in July of 1880 says it all-- "Michael O'Hora, one of the famous O'Hora gang was brought in last night by officer Crosby for public intoxication on Perrine Street".  And that was one of their more innocuous violations. Everything from theft, assault, general mayhem, they did it. Their sister Elizabeth married William Ferris at the more appropriate age of twenty-two and raised a large family in Auburn.  Elizabeth managed to keep herself out of the news unlike her siblings.  That leaves Catherine, who was a year older that Elizabeth.

     Catherine lived with her widowed mother, earning her living as a laundress. For a long time, I viewed her as the dutiful daughter caring for her poor, aging, widowed mother; see, that's me still wanting to believe the best of my relatives. Then while doing some newspaper searches recently, instead of typing in "Catherine O'Hora" I used the search term "Kate O'Hora", and the floodgates opened.

     In 1891-- Kate O'Hora Willis last week pleaded guilty to the charge of stealing $5 from Mrs. Mary Eager of Delevan Street.  Wait one minute...Willis? After a search of the NYS marriage index, I found Catherine did indeed marry Thomas Willis in 1887, at age 30, there in Auburn.  Also, in 1891 I found Kate Willis arrested for intoxication and disorderly conduct with Mark LaDuce, a Salvation Army man no less.

     In 1894 we see Kate O'Hora charged with threatening violence and using profane language to one Ellen Ryan who was attempting, in vain, to drag her intoxicated husband William from the O'Hora residence. In that case, Kate's mother Catherine was charged with keeping a disorderly house.

     In 1901 this headline appeared, "From Jail To Hospital"; Kate O'Hora completed a sentence of 30 days for intoxication and was sent in a carriage to the city hospital on the order of the jail physician.  (Notice she no longer used the surname Willis. They were living on Delevan Street along with Catherine's mother in one city directory, but I have a feeling Mr. Willis made his exit after a few years of life with the "O'Hora Gang".)

     Auburn's 1902 city directory shows Mrs. Kate Willis living in a room over Falconi's Saloon on Clark Street, a rough and tumble sort of place with no shortage of stabbings, slashings, and even a shooting, as I found after doing a newspaper search for the establishment.  In other words, about the last place on earth someone like Kate should call home. 

     The coup de grace came in 1914,

 ...five of the defendants represented a raid made on an alleged disorderly house in Genesee Street a few nights ago. The entire five were arraigned this morning. Sarah Simmons who was charged with maintaining the house was given a flat sentence of 61 days in the Onondaga County Penitentiary. The other four defendants were charged with being inmates. Catherine O'Hora was given the option of paying $5 or spending 30 days in jail... The striking feature of the case was that all of the defendants were well past middle life. When judgment was passed on them, some of the elderly defendants broke down and sobbed... 

      At that time Kate was age 57.

     The term disorderly occurs quite often in these articles. What exactly did that really mean back then I wondered?  The Cornell Law School has the following definition on its website-

     A mostly outdated charge against someone creating a nuisance in the area. The most common use of a disorderly house charge was for using a house as a brothel. Other actions that could give rise to a disorderly house charge include dealing alcohol or hosting gambling in a house.

     I was beginning to have serious doubts about Catherine, aka Kate. Especially after reading that last article referring to her as the inmate of a disorderly house.  I think we all know another word for the inmate of a disorderly house.  At least it seems she pulled herself together in her later years, judging from her obituary--

Auburn Citizen Thursday Aug 25, 1927

     The death of Mrs. Katherine Willis occurred yesterday afternoon shortly after 2 o'clock after a brief illness. While she had been complaining slightly for some time past of a weakened heart, no alarm was felt until she contracted a severe cold which proved fatal yesterday. She had been a resident of this city nearly all of her life and was well known and liked by those who knew her...

    Kate was 70 years of age at her death.  Her obituary said her only survivors were nieces and nephews; she had outlived all eight of her brothers and sisters. Perhaps that last arrest in 1914 was when Kate hit rock bottom and took stock of her life.  Her mother had passed in 1903 and her only surviving sister in 191l, leaving her without any close female relative.  I wish I had a photograph of Catherine, I'm so curious about her.  I plan to keep looking for more information to hopefully get a clearer picture of her life, particularly her final years for which no census or directory records seem to exist.

My Oldestest Brick Wall Is Still Gathering Moss

 

    To put it mildly, I've had the devil's own time tracing my McGarr ancestors, the family of my great-great-grandmother Maria on my father's side.  Maria was born somewhere in Ireland and at some point, came to America.  That was all I knew when I began.  Maria's granddaughter, my grandmother, had given me the names of Maria's children, her husband, James O'Hara, (in fact it was O'Hora), and the obituary of one of her sons that gave Maria's maiden name as McGraw instead of McGarr.  No wonder I struggled so in the beginning.  This was before the days of Ancestry and online censuses, forcing me to travel to a nearby town to view those records; there I made my first breakthrough.  In the censuses I found James and Maria along with all the children's names as Grandma had told me, but the surname was O'Hora, not O'Hara.  All the census records had that spelling though, as did the newspapers I later found on microfilm from the NYS library, so apparently Grandma had preferred the O'Hara spelling which she herself had used before her marriage.  Can't say I blame her.

     It took a bit longer to straighten out Maria's maiden name.  Finally a fellow researcher set me straight on that one and gave me a county, Kildare.  Now I would surely find the townland of  my McGarr clan!  How foolish I was.  It would be years before Irish church records came online and I was finally able to track the family down, but even that didn't prove easy.  The McGarr family lived in one of those parishes whose boundry crossed county lines.  I should have been looking for church records in the county of Wicklow, not in their home county of Kildare, and in the parish of Baltinglass to which their townland, Ballyraggan, (as I found in baptism records), belonged.  Then there was the fact the simple surname McGarr confused a surprising number of people.  In records it was variously spelled, McGah, Megar, Mager, McGare, etc... in only one instance did a church baptism record use the spelling "McGarr" and those search engines did not pick up the other versions.  But at last, find them I did; Maria's parents, along with siblings I never knew she had.  

   Using US records, I had earlier found two sisters of Maria who like her, made their first home in America in Auburn, New York.  Now, Irish baptim records revealed two more sisters and two brothers, the boys being the last children born in this family.  Richard McGarr arrived in 1839, and his brother John in 1842.  Then they vanished.  Unlike the two new sisters, I've never found a single reference to either one of the boys after their baptisms, and therein lies my brick wall.

     This complete lack of records concerning the pair makes me tend to believe they did not survive childhood.  They would have been quite young when the potato blight hit Ireland, John only three and Richard six.  Even though Kildare wasn't as badly affected as the western counties, hunger was not unknow and fever was rife in their area.  It may have had some bearing that their mother Anne was known in her community as a healer, a tradition passed down in the family from mother to daughter.  As late as 1899, her daughter Bridget Kinsella in New York was advertising her services in her hometown newspaper.  Its conceivable individuals stricken with fever or other illnesses sought Anne's help in Ballyraggan, thereby spreading disease to her sons.

     Another clue is the lease their father Daniel held for many years.  In most cases, it would have gone to his eldest son, or at least to one of the sons upon his death, but it did not.  Valuation Office records show that after Daniel died in 1875 it passed to Thomas Hughes, the husband of Daniel's youngest daughter Sarah.

     I have my doubts I will ever discover the fate of Maria's two younger brothers.  There are few early records available for Catholics, other than church records which in the 1800's didn't usually include death or burial information.  Civil registration didn't start until 1864, obituaries for their class were unheard of, and tombstones almost unheard of.  Did they contract one of the numerous diseases that plagued childhood, suffer from a deadly birth defect, meet with an accident?  Did they leave Ireland for England or the United States?  It seems if they came to America they would have settled near their sisters, at least initially, but no amount of searching has turned either of them up there or on the continent.  I'm not ready to give up however, you never know what might be discovered in a new database.  It took me well over a decade to find the county, (Queens), and parish, (Rathdowney), of great-great-grandfather James White; not until the advent of DNA, since the parish records for his era no longer exist.  But if the data is out there, I will find it.

You Know It's Bad When The Bishop Closes Your Church, or Rebellion In Auburn

     Auburn, a community in upstate New York, was home to an appreciable Irish population in the 19th century. The first had arrived by 1810, while my McGarr ancestors came over in the early 1830's and during the famine years.  As their numbers steadily increased the need for a Catholic Church was becoming apparent. To answer that need Father O'Dononghue, the city's resident priest, purchased the abandoned Methodist church on Chapel Street to serve as his congregation's home. Dedicated in 1830 as The Church of the Holy Family, it would serve the Catholic community of Auburn for the next thirty-one years until a new building, the one still in use today, was erected in 1861 under the auspices of Father Michael Creedon. January of 1868 saw the appointment of Reverend Bernard McQuaid, a member of the conservative wing of the American church, to serve as Bishop of the newly formed Diocese of Rochester, of which Auburn, formerly of the Diocese of Buffalo, was now a part. 

     Maybe it was due to a rebellious streak, or because they were used to operating without central church authority looking over their shoulders for so long, but the honeymoon, as they say, did not last. On the morning of Sunday, February 21, 1869, a large number of parishioners assembled at the church to protest Bishop McQuaid's decision to remove their beloved pastor, the Reverend Thomas O'Flaherty. In their displeasure, they took Father O'Flaherty's replacement, Father Kavanagh, by the arm and escorted him from the church building, refusing to allow him to say Mass. Needless to say, bishops generally do not brook interference with, let alone criticism of their actions. Bishop McQuaide was no exception, and his reaction was swift.

Bishop McQuaid

     The following day, warrants were issued, and five leaders of the protest were arrested on charges of disturbing religious worship. Among the group was William McGarr, a tailor from County Wicklow who had arrived in New York in 1850 with his oldest son William Lannes McGarr. Of course, one of my relatives was involved. The unusual middle name of Lannes bestowed by William upon his son was in honor of French General Jean Lannes, who aided the Irish during the 1798 rising. So there was indeed a rebellious tendency there.

     At their trial the following week Attorney Wright, for the defense, maintained his clients, "were simply performing their duty under the law, which declares the right of majorities to govern and express their preferences". "The right of the majority to govern", how precious, this man was clearly not a Catholic. The jury members were probably not either, they voted for an acquittal within five minutes and the prisoners were discharged.

     The congregation was still not backing down, however. The following Sunday they again refused to allow Father Kavanagh to say Mass, infuriating the bishop who summarily locked the church doors and suspended Father O'Flaherty. Father O'Flaherty wasn't helping matters with his inflamitory statements to the local press denigrating the bishop, appealing his suspension to Rome, and later suing the bishop for libel. Though he failed to pursue his suit.

     The doors of Holy Family remained closed until April the 11th when the bishop himself took to the pulpit, giving the congregation a good dressing down for their scandalous behavior and singling out fourteen of them by name, saying they would be refused the sacraments unless they publicly begged pardon for their actions. I would be willing to wager William McGarr was among the fourteen though the article failed to mention their names or whether they complied. I would think William did as the bishop asked since two of his children were married at Holy Family three years later. Bishop McQuaid then went on to attack Father O'Flaherty, accusing him among other things, of appropriating to himself $600 in church funds. At some point, he took the extreme step of excommunicating the priest.

     The story was not quite finished though. On New Year's Day of 1893, the New York Times announced, "Father O'Flaherty Restored". After twenty-four years, Mgr. Satolli, (papal delegate), had seen fit to remove the bishop's sentence of excommunication, thereby restoring Father O'Flaherty to the priesthood. When asked, Bishop McQuaide refused comment.

The Sad Story of Charles Garner; Or, Don't Forget to Check Those Extra Census Schedules

     Today I was looking at my family tree profile for Private Charles M. Garner, my third-great-uncle.  His story is a tragic one.  Charles was born in the spring of 1836 in rural Cayuga County, New York, to Jeremiah Garner and Clarinda Wood.  He led a simple life; he acquired a farm and in 1860 married the widow Mary Conley Gibbs.  Two years later their first child, Harriet Amelia, was born.  A typical, quiet life that was about to be shattered by national events.

     The war began on the 12th of April 1861, when Confederates in South Carolina fired on Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor.  While most Americans believed the conflict would be short, the opposite proved true, and as hostilities dragged on Congress passed a conscription act in March of 1863.  As required, Charles registered for the draft in June of that year.  Within a month he received a notice like the one below.

Civil War draft notice

     

     Charles began preparations for his departure, spending time with his mother, (his father had abandoned her by then), and friends, putting his farm in order, and no doubt worrying how the wife he was leaving behind would manage without him.  He wasn't aware then, nor was Mary, that he was also leaving behind an unborn son.  Albert was born on May 14, 1864 indicating Charles probably reported for duty in August of 1863.

     Now assigned to Company I of the 97th NY Infantry, Charles arrived in Washington D. C. near the fall of 1863, in time for some minor battles followed by the setting up of winter camp.  In May of 1864 his regiment, now under the command of General Grant, moved south to Virginia to participate in the Richmond-Petersburg campaign.  Around this time Charles received word of the birth of his son.  Part of Grant's strategy called for the destruction of a section of the Weldon Railroad in order to isolate Petersburg.  Charles' company I was to be part of the assault.  The battle commenced on August 18th with heavy Union losses, but by the end of the day they held a precarious grip on the railroad.  The following day saw another attack by the Confederates, halted only by the last-minute arrival of Union reinforcements.  When the smoke had cleared, the Confederate supply line had been taken, but so had Charles.  

  

     Now began a dreadful wait for Mary, who knew only that her husband had been reported missing in action.  How or when she learned he was a prisoner of war is not something I've been able to find, but from the Smithsonian's web site I discovered soldiers on both sides were allowed to exchange mail.  Prisoner's letters were collected and opened at designated sites, censored, then sent on their way to anxious friends and relatives.  It's possible Mary heard the disturbing news of her husband's capture from Charles himself.

     Prisoner exchanges, done routinely early in the war, had ground to a halt in mid-1863 over the south's refusal to treat black and white soldiers equally.  After his capture Charles was initially confined at Richmond, then in early October he, along with five thousand other soldiers, was transferred to Salisbury prison.  At the end of October another five thousand prisoners arrived.  Those huge transfers along with the Union blockade, which was causing shortages of food and medicine all over the south, in addition to the rising numbers of untraded prisoners, overwhelmed Salisbury and conditions there were rapidly deteriorating.  Prison hospital records show Charles was admitted in mid November of 1864 for treatment of diarrhea, released two weeks later, then readmitted on December 22nd.  He died there two days later, Christmas Eve, from diarrhea.  The NY Town Clerk's Registers, available on Ancestry, attribute his death to exposure and starvation.  In all likelihood it was a combination of all three factors.

     As I looked over the hints on Charles' page, I saw one for New York's 1865 census.  That couldn't be, he was long deceased by then.  Pulling it up I saw it was indeed Charles, along with Mary and their family, his occupation-- Army.  Investigating further, I read the instructions given to census takers that year which stated they should include the names of those who had died since the first of June, the official date of the census.  Charles had been gone six long months, did Mary not know that?  Checking Schedule III of the census, Inquires Relating to Officers and Enlisted Men, I found Charles listed as a prisoner who died at Salisbury but with a caveat, that is difficult to read...

    

Looks to me like it says, Reported Dead Family Cannot Ascertain anything about?

     I take the above to mean the family had received no information about the manner or time of Charles' death.  Was he enumerated because Mary was still hoping for a miracle?  It seems she was.  As I looked at Schedule VII at the end of the census, Deaths of Officers and Enlisted Men, I saw Charles' name was not there, his family had not given up on him.

    Mary finally had to accept the hard truth of Charles' death, and she did marry again about four years later.  Her new husband, Mortimer Hilliker, was a Michigan farmer in which place Mary and her children took up their residence.  Hopefully she found a bit of happiness, but I would not be surprised to find that on quiet evenings when the endless farm chores were done and the stars twinkled overhead, Mary's thoughts sometimes drifted back to her young, lost husband.

     

     

To Colorize Or Not To Colorize; In Which I Compare The Ancestry And MyHeritage Technology So You Don't Have To

     When MyHeritage announced the release of its colorization technology, there was a hue, (no pun intended), and cry from traditionalists who likened it to drawing a mustache on a cherished photograph of great-grandma. I intensely dislike colorized movies, so I saw their point, it wasn't something I was terribly interested in pursuing but then again, adding color to photos is not all that new.  One can see civil war era examples that were hand tinted by the photographer in the early 1860's.  So I cautiously stuck my toe in and have since tempered my opinion somewhat. I uploaded a few of my photos to the MyHeritage site, only a few because that's all they allowed without a subscription. Then I noticed Ancestry had also jumped on the color bandwagon. Since I do have a subscription there, I decided to first try colorizing the ones I had already done at MyHeritage, just to see how they compared.

     The image of my great-great-grandmother Anna Ryan from Tipperary on the left is the original, the one in the middle was done at MyH. and the one on the far right is from Ancestry. I think Ancestry's technology did a better job in this instance.  There is too much red in the MyH. version.  In the case below however, MyH. definitely wins out. Pictured is John White, brother of James, my great-great-grandfather from Queens County Ireland. John's original on the left looks quite washed out with the face and hair blending together. The middle image is from Ancestry and MyH. is on the right. In my opinion the use of more saturated color worked well here, giving more definition to the forehead, and left facial areas.



     Neither website has very sophisticated technology, but I have to admit I enjoyed seeing the effects on my black and white pictures. Black and white is actually a misnomer, those old photos are grayscale, which doesn't lend itself to picking out minute details.  Below is a photo of my second cousin Inez Worden and her baby sister Gladys taken in 1914 and colorized at Ancestry.  When I saw it the first time I was amazed at how much I had missed!  The lake in the background really pops when colorized and the details in Inez's dress stand out much more.  I hadn't even realized that was a lake behind them.

     The same goes for the MyH. picture below of  my grandmother, (far right), and her siblings with their father taken about 1919, shortly before his death.  The background is really enhanced by color.

     The image of Terrence Sheehan above was done at Ancestry and is what I mean by the technology being unsophisticated. I know the color is completely wrong because US Army uniforms during World War 1 were not blue, they were khaki.  A professional colorizing a photo like this would never have chosen blue for the uniform.  On the other hand, it is free with a subscription.

     After trying the process, I have to say there are some circumstances where I find colorization somewhat jarring, like the weird blue uniform, but others where it is useful.  I'm still attached to the originals that reflect the historical period in which they were taken, and I would never discard them.  In only one instance have I replaced the profile image of an ancestor on Ancestry with the "improved" version, and only then because MyHeritage's "enhance" tool repaired the blurred photo.  Having said that, I also enjoyed finding details that were hiding there all along, but I had missed and would have continued to miss had I not given colorizing a try.