WHO ARE THEY?

My sister unexpectedly received a box full of picture from our Uncle Don Fleming. He had a twinkle in his eye and handed her the box. "Go for it", he said. Well, we did. Here is the oldest picture we found in the box and we are guessing that it is a tintype, circa mid-1800s.

My Uncle Don was given this box of photos by the widow of his uncle, Kenneth Fleming. Most of the pictures in the box were taken by photo studios in Monmouth, Illinois and Lee's Summit, Missouri.

My sister Lisa thinks that the people in this photo are father and son by the way their arms are linked together in the pose. The son appears to be wearing a military uniform, but we could not get a real good close-up view of his buttons on the jacket to confirm. The father has pale (perhaps blue) eyes and the son has one eyelid drooping over the eye.

If you have any idea who these people are, please e-mail back! Thanks!

Karen Fleming-Gray

Picture stories

Photos can be a great trigger for memories. Go through the photo albums with the seniors in your family, even if you already know the names/dates/places of the pictures.

I found this one as a teenager among my mother's mother's photos. It was easy to see that the tallest girl in the photo was Grandma and easy to figure that the other two were her younger sisters Johanna and Alvina. Nothing really to talk about.

But on seeing it Grandma mentioned how much Alvina, the youngest, hated those dresses...because as her big sisters handed theirs down, she had to wear the same dress over and over again for years. Cute story, a little touch of color to go with the photo.

Don't forget the field on your field trip

When you do research in a place where your ancestors lived, try to get out of the courthouse and walk the same land they walked.

A land record will include the legal description of the property. It's not always easy, but you can figure out what's on the land today by using a plat map (new or old) to pinpoint the property and then comparing that to a road map.

The Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales Database was hugely helpful the first time I tried to do this. You can search for property by your ancestor's name and get a legal description and purchase date, as well as number of acres and price.

The Illinois database also has a useful explanation of what all those weird fractions in the legal description mean. (The explanation is at the bottom of the page so you'll need to scroll down.)

If you can find the land on a modern plat map, you'll have some help with locating roads. If you've only got an old plat map, look for landmarks that aren't likely to have changed over time -- rivers, hills, railroad lines, maybe churches -- and compare them to a modern street map.

James Kendall bought a piece of Illinois land in 1835, and Warren County didn't have a plat map going back that far. I compared the description to an 1870s plat map. There was a railroad line on its edge, which also showed up on a modern street map. A small lake was still there, too.

There was a farm on what I hoped was the property. The owner was cutting wood in a stand of trees. Feeling kind of stupid, I pulled the car over, walked up to him and said, "Hi, I think my great-great-great-grandfather used to live here. Would you mind if I took a picture of your field?"

As luck would have it, he knew the names of some shirttail relatives of the Kendalls . He kindly let me wander around and take pictures (including the one above), and even pointed out where the original stagecoach line had run through the property.

The land had a lot more trees and a lot fewer fences when James Kendall lived there, but seeing the place helped me think of James and his family as real people, not just names in a book.

Tips for interviewing Aunt Mabel

Interview older members of the family every chance you get. Lots -- most -- of the color of your family's story comes from how they felt about things they experienced.

Try to audio-record the interview somehow; you can take notes as Aunt Mabel talks, but it's slow. It also discourages Aunt Mabel if she's telling her favorite story about how Elvis autographed her poodle skirt and you're staring at your notebook the whole time.

To help Aunt Mabel relax, start with some easy-to-answer questions about facts: Where were you born? What's your birthday? What are your parents' names and where did they come from?

Then you can move into the story-inducing questions: How did your family celebrate birthdays when you were a kid? What games did you play during recess at school? When did you first vote and who did you vote for? Why?

Encourage Aunt Mabel by making eye contact, leaning forward, nodding and reacting appropriately to what she says. The more interested you are, the more willing she is to talk.

Clues that point to personalities

(First in a sporadic series, probably)
You can verify birth dates, land ownership, etc. -- but how do you find out what your ancestors were really like? Did they have a sense of humor? Were they good parents? What did they like to do in their free time? Did they have any free time?

Lydia Bickett Kendall, my great-great-great-grandmother, was a little girl when her family sailed to America from Ireland in the 1790s. She grew up, moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio and Illinois, got married, had kids, was widowed early, died at age 84. But I want to know what she was like.

Martha Ann Kendall Jones,the 1889 family historian, describes her as "a cheerful, happy-hearted Godly woman, kind to all, and tender-hearted to her dear children..." which is lovely, but dear Martha has only nice things to say about everybody in the family, so I'd like a little more evidence.

Lydia was 45 when her husband died, leaving her with four children under the age of 10. When her sons were old enough they bought farms next to each other and she lived with them the rest of her life. Her oldest son William was 43 when he married. Was marrying late a family tradition? Or was Lydia one of those controlling matriarchs who never let her kids grow up and ruled the family with an iron hand?

I visited Monmouth, Illinois, where Lydia is buried, and found her tombstone. (If you have ancestors from Warren County, Illinois, lucky you! They have the friendliest, most helpful genealogy folks there.) The stones are worn in the old section of the Sugar Tree Grove Cemetery, but Lydia's is larger than the rest of the family stones, and is the only one in the old section with a plant on it (sedum -- no idea who put it there or how long it's been there.)

So why did she get the biggest stone? Did she order it ahead of time and her browbeaten children carried out her grandiose orders to the last? Or was it a real tribute to someone they valued and loved?

The stone reads "Lydia Kendall, Died Feb. 27, 1874, Aged 84 Yrs, 6 Mo & 27 Ds." Predictable. But at the bottom is a long, mostly unreadable poem. Can't make out the complete contents but it's definitely a sentimental tribute to Mother.

We'll never know for sure, but I'm betting she really was a pretty nice person with a family who really loved her.

Where are the horse thieves?

One of our family genealogy treasures is a document called "Brief Sketch of the Kendalls and Gibsons" written in 1889 by a Martha Ann Kendall Jones. One of my great-grandmothers was a Kendall and Martha's story covers the family history from 1700 forward.

It not only has names/dates/places but many stories, too, which is wonderful. I just have one little complaint about Martha: If you accept her version, you'd think everyone in the family was walking around with wings and a halo.

Samples of Martha's profiles: "...each were men of strong wills and dauntless courage..", "she was truly one of the most devoted, wise and Godly women of the times in which she lived..." "she was a cheerful happy-hearted Godly woman, kind to all, and tender-hearted to her dear children..."

While it's gratifying to know that my ancesters were such models of virtue, I gotta wonder. Dad told me once that his father, who was half Kendall, told him (with a chuckle) that he "suspected there were a few horse thieves in there somewhere, too."

Do people ever record the negative stuff in family histories? Or do they ignore the bad? Or flat-out lie about it?

Martha actually knew these people and I didn't, so I guess I gotta take her word for it. But how many saints can one family hold?