One of the joys of doing this website is being able to solve mysteries I didn't even know existed. Here is an example.
In The Psychogenealogist Pic of the Week (#42) I told you about a neat postcard from 1908 that I found at a local antique store. You can read the full post for the backstory.
The back read:
Dear Bro -
I was at Homers yesterday. They have a girl. She came Sat night. You let Clara and Hannah know. You can telephone to Marion he will see H - Ora is getting along fine. Sit up a few minutes yesterday come up and see us.
Your Sister Ida
With the excellent genealogy detective work of my friend, and probably very distant relative, Joe Nowlin (here is a post about how we met), we were able to find some direct descendants of the people mentioned in the postcard.
This is the Johnson family of Columbus, Ohio. The man on the far left is Richard Johnson, the great grandson of Homer and Ora Jordan, mentioned in the postcard. His two sons, to the right, would be Homer's 2nd great grandsons. His wife, Gale, is the family historian and contact person who made this connection possible.
Gale was excited to find out about this little piece of family history that no one knew existed. She accepted my offer to return this postcard to her family and sent me the photo above.
In her note back to me Gale wrote:
Thank you so much for sending us this postcard from my husband's Jordan family. Homer and Agnes Diora (aka "Ora") Jordan had a child and Homer's sister Ida was letting their brother Isaac know of this birth. This child was a sister to my husband's grandmother, Doris Jordan Johnson. This has created a discussion throughout our family. We are talking with relatives of this Jordan family and trying to discover who this sibling is. It is wonderful to look back several generations and know a bit more about our family.
Here are some of the notes that Joe Nowlin passed along about his research that led to this discovery:
The whole "they have a girl, she came Saturday night" is a bit vague. It is big news that she wants her brother to relay to others. There is no child listed between Doris in 1904 and the next child, Alfred, in 1912 which is a large gap and there certainly could have been another in May of 1908 that died very young. I am looking at cemetery lists but I have not found anything.
Joe also discovered who the Hannah and Clara referenced likely were:
I think I found Clara & Hannah. They were a mother and daughter living very near I S Jordan. The 1910 census in the page prior to the on Isaac is on lists Hannah McKee age 66 and her daughter Clara Blanch Conner. The Ira you mentioned is actually Ora [in my original posting I misread "Ora" as "Ira"] , Homer's wife. Not sure about Marion yet.
And finally, Joe perfectly illustrates how never ending this research can be! He became curious about these neighbors and found:
Poor Clara married Charley Conner on 11/6/1906 and he died on 3/1/1908. I am off on a tangent trying to find out what happened but there is nothing on Newspapers.com
The biggest mystery that still remains is who was "the girl" that came "Saturday night"? The most likely explanation is that this is a child that was born and died before the 1910 census was conducted. Still, evidence of who this might be remains scant.
This postcard has survived a long time! Someone at some point felt it was important enough to save. And someone else at some other time felt it was important enough to sell to an antique store. When I found it I thought it was important enough to have so I bought it. Finally, it seemed important to find descendants of this family and return this little piece of history to them.
Do you have a genealogy or family history story that you would like to share? Please send me an email! In the meantime, sign up for The Psychogenealogist email list and newsletter.