Investigation: Disneyland

Ever since my cousin told me that the location of the photo with her, her mother, and me in it was at Disneyland, I have been wondering where exactly at Disneyland.

I was talking with friends a couple of weeks ago, and I realized that one of them, who grew up in Burbank, always talks about Disneyland, which got me thinking about the photo.  And it suddenly occurred to me that Disneyland, being the big multinational conglomerate that it is, has to have a corporate archive.  And it does!

You can find the Walt Disney Archives site at https://d23.com/walt-disney-archives/.  According to the home page, it was "established in 1970 to collect, preserve and make available for research the historical materials relating to Walt and the company he founded."  And it even has a page called Ask the Walt Disney Archives!  So I did!

On May 27, I sent the photo of me with my mother that I posted for Mother's Day.  (The questions page did not allow me to send more than one image, or I would have included the photo with my cousin and aunt.)  I wrote that my cousin had identified the location as Disneyland and that I had estimated the year to be 1963.  I asked where at Disneyland the photo was taken.  And then I waited.

And waited.

And almost two weeks later, I still have not heard anything.  Not even one of those automatic responses:  "We have received your inquiry and will be happy to answer you, blah blah blah."

Well, foo.  I want to know where it was.

And today's brilliant light-bulb moment was that I should try searching for the image online myself.  (Yes, I should have thought of that earlier.  Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I get there eventually.)

I ran the photo of my aunt, my cousin, and me through Tineye.  And the answer was "TinEye searched over 75.6 billion images but didn't find any matches for your search image."  So much for Tineye.  But I think it looks for the exact image, and I probably have the one and only copy of that photo (well, a scan of it).  On the other hand, it is posted on my blog, which is public and has been available for more than a month, so Tineye should have found it there.  But it didn't.  (I've had that happen before with Tineye.)

Then I tried searching for the photo using Google Lens.  It started off by wanting to focus on the lower left corner of the photo, which is just some of the flowers.  I didn't look at those results.  Instead, I dragged the search square higher and made it larger, so the search image was the upper left corner of the photo, including the yellow flower cart.

Bingo!

Suddenly I had several images that looked very similar to mine, and they are all identified as being at the Flower Market on Main Street in Disneyland.  Two of them are even from 1963, like mine.  And after seeing two photos where the "Flower Market" sign is not in bright sunlight and the words can be clearly read, I recognized that in my own photos.

One photo from 1963 (which was posted on Found some pictures from my grandparents 1963 Disneyland trip!)

Disneyland, People at Flower Market in 1963 (an original slide for sale at eBay)

The Cook family at Disneyland, 1959 (which has the same yellow flower cart as in mine, plus you can read FLOWER MARKET on the sign)

Flower Market - Disneyland 1950s-1970s (#29) (two yellow flower carts in this one, and again you can read FLOWER MARKET on the sign; no exact year, though)

So I answered my own question.  On the other hand, now I know that Disney has an archive.  And if Disney does get back to me, I'll post here what they say.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Celebrate Mother's Day and Show Us Some Photos

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, so it was to be expected that Randy Seaver would have that as the focus for tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post.  (Today's topic revisits the same one from 2018, with updated social media links.)

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music), is:

1.  Sunday, 11 May, is Mother's Day in the USA.  Let's celebrate it by showing some of our photos with our mothers.

2.  Extra credit:  What did you call your mother during her life?  What did your children call your mother?

3.  More extra credit:  Have you written a biography or tribute to your mother?  If so, please share a link if you have one.

4.  Share your photo(s) on your own blog post or in a Facebook, SubStack, or BlueSky post.  Leave a link on this blog post to help us find your mom photos.

1.  I remember that the last time Randy challenged us to share photos of ourselves with our mothers, I could only find a couple.  Since having received the photo bonanza from my sister, however, I have many, many more!  Here's a small selection.

This is the earliest photograph I have found of myself.  The photo was developed in October 1962, and I was born in April, so the oldest I can be is 6 months.  The shadow on the skirt of my mother's dress has to be the head of my father, the person likely taking the photo.

I've estimated I'm about a year old in this photo, so it's probably from 1963.  I was told by my cousin Beth (who is in a different photo with me in the same location) that this is Disneyland.

I like the whimsical nature of this one, which had to have been taken by my father.  It's June 1964, and my mother seems to be pregnant, so the absolute latest the photo could have been taken is June 16, and then only if she gave birth to my sister Stacy later on the same day.  This photo might have been taken in La Puente; I'll ask my sister Laurie if she recognizes the house.

This photo was taken in June 1969, when my mother took all three of us kids to Florida for our cousin Gail's wedding.  From left to right we are my brother, Mark; our mother, Myra; me; and my sister, Stacy.  My brother looks miserable for some reason.  I look happy, though.

This photo was developed in June 1973 and was taken at the trailer park where my family lived in Niceville, Florida.  I believe, from left to right going into the trailer, it is me, Mark, Stacy, and our mother.  I'm pretty sure my father took this photo, but I can't imagine why.

This is me and my mother standing on the porch of my Aunt Dottie's house in Niceville.  I'm about 16, so it's roughly 1978.  We're obviously dressed up to go somewhere (I remember that dress!), but I don't remember this at all, so I don't know what the occasion is or why we were having our photo taken at my aunt's.  I'm going to be asking my brother, my sister, and my stepfather what they recall.  If my aunt were still alive, I'd ask her also.

I find it interesting that the three photos I'm pretty sure my father took are black and white.  That means he probably developed them himself at home.

2.  I called my mother Mommy her entire life.  My stepsons never met my mother, as she died young.

3.  I have written a tribute to my mother, as a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post in 2017.  I have also written about her many times for Mother's Day separately from SNGF posts.

Honoring the Nurse in My Family on National Nurses Day

I know of one registered nurse in my family to celebrate on National Nurses Day:  my grandaunt Florence Meckler.  Specifically, she was a pediatric RN.  She was one of my maternal grandfather's younger sisters.

Florence was born December 22, 1915 (coincidentally, the exact same date as my maternal grandmother's oldest brother) in Brooklyn, New York.  I don't know where she attended nursing school or when she graduated, but it must have been before 1939, because on January 1, 1939 there was a photo of her in the newspaper holding the first two children born in the new year at Beth El Hospital in Brooklyn.  I am lucky enough to have the newspaper clipping because my grandmother saved it and had it in her photo album.

Exactly two years after that brush with fame, Florence married Moshe Amine, on January 1, 1941, in Brooklyn.  Florence and Moshe had two children:  Yedida, who was born one year after my mother, also on Armistice Day (now called Veterans Day); and Beth, six years later.  Some years later Florence and Moshe divorced, and 20 years after that Florence married Max Stewart.

I don't know how long Florence worked as a nurse.  I really should ask my cousins about that, shouldn't I?

I never met Moshe, but I knew Florence and Max.  I visited them several times in Las Vegas, where they lived, when I went to conferences and trade shows there.  I continued to visit Florence after Max passed away.  We would usually go out to one of the big buffets in one of the casinos on the Strip.

Eventually, Florence moved to Scotts Valley, California, at the behest of her older daughter.  And then I visited her there, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  I took her out for lunch and to go shopping.  I drove a cargo van at the time, and I remember she had trouble stepping up high enough to climb in (she was a tiny person), so I started bringing a step stool to make it easier for her.

During all that time, I don't think I knew that Florence had been a registered nurse.  But she definitely fussed over me about health stuff, trying to make sure I was taking care of myself.

And here's a photo of Florence holding me when I was about a year old, proving that we go back a long way.  The teenager next to her is her younger daughter, my cousin Beth, who recognized herself and told me that we were at Disneyland.

Wordless Wednesday