Learning More about My Cousin Billie

I've written previously about the photo bonanza that my sister sent to me after her niece had scanned thousands of photographs that were left in the house after our father passed away.  I've made many discoveries and unearthed several childhood memories by going through the photos, and I still have a long way to go to identify all of them.

Now that bonanza has to compete with another one.

About a year and a half ago, I was contacted out of the blue by a woman named Wendi Shaw, who looks for family items for sale in auctions and the like.  She called herself an heirloom hunter, which she does as a hobby.  She goes through the items, puts them in binders, does some research, tries to find family members, and offers to send the items back to them.

She told me she was trying to reach the Brainin family, because she had acquired several of Billie Brainin's items.

I recognized the name right away.  Billie was the daughter of David Brainin, a younger brother of my great-grandmother Sarah Brainin.

Wendi included four photos of the pile of letters.  Three photographs were visible in the collection.

So I shouted out loud, jumped up and down, did the genealogy happy dance, and told her I would love to have the items.

I discovered that she had found me through my blog (this one!), where I had written about Billie a couple of times.

I sent her my address and looked forward to receiving this new family history bonanza.  I even posted the photo of Billie that she had sent me.

And I waited.

After several months, I sent another message, asking if something had happened.  Which it had:  Real life had interfered.

But Wendi was glad I had written again, because she apparently had lost my contact information.  And said she would be sending me the items soon, with one catch:  She wanted me to confirm when I received everything (I already did that) and to let her know when I blogged about this discovery.  And hey, that's what I'm doing now!

It was clear when I started looking at all the items that Wendi had already done some sorting and that they were not in the order in which they had been in the storage unit; she had told me that she had gone through them and put them into plastic sleeves.  So I did not feel compelled to keep them in the order in which I had received them, something that should be considered from an archival perspective.  Since the original order was already lost, I have chosen to put everything in chronological order as much as possible.  So far I have found six items with no dates on them.  Two of those (a music program and a piece of a newspaper) I have determined the dates by searching for text that appears.  That leaves me only four undated items:  two cards and two letters.  Maybe I'll be able to figure out where they fit by context.

The earliest item is a funeral bill from 1924.  The most recent so far is a letter from 1964.

I've only begun to go through the items and actually read them.  Some of what I have found already in this amazing gift:

I learned that Billie, the only name I had ever heard for my cousin, was not actually her given name at birth!  A couple of the letters were addressed to Mildred Brainin, and when I looked for that name in the New York City birth index on Ancestry, I found her.  Totally news to me!  I had not searched for her birth previously because Billie was born late enough that I know New York City won't send me a copy of her birth certificate, even though she died more than 30 years ago.  They're just not a friendly jurisdiction to work with.

Among the letters were four from my cousin Sam Brainin (whom I knew personally) to Billie, his sister, while he was in the Navy.  I have been in contact with Sam's children for several years, so I wrote to one of them to ask if she would like to have the letters.

I'm looking forward to reading all of the letters and learning more about Billie.  I don't know yet how personal any of the information is, so I can't tell how much I might feel comfortable posting.  But it's going to be a fascinating adventure, I'm sure.

Lost Lady

A photograph of this beautiful lady was left behind at the Oakland FamilySearch Library in March 2015.  I've tried to find her home for almost two years by talking to people in the area, but no one so far has claimed her.  I even tried looking for her through Tineye to see if she appeared on a blog or family history page, or perhaps was a celebrity.  I'm hoping that by posting her image someone in her family will see her and let me know where she belongs.

If you recognize this woman, please contact me at janicemsj@gmail.com to let me know who she is and to whom I can return her.

Two Sites Trying to Return Orphaned Heirloom Photographs

From the "Early Faces
of Queensland" site

Many people doing genealogy research are familiar with Megan Smolenyak's efforts to return orphaned heirlooms.  A lot of people also do research on their own when they find items.  I've been fortunate to find owners of some items myself. Recently I learned about two Web sites that are posting orphaned items for the purpose of reuniting them with former owners or descendants.

Did you ever lose a roll of film while on vacation?  The Rescued Film Project is an online collection of images developed from film from between the 1930's and the late 1990's.  The images, both static and video, come from undeveloped film found at locations around the world.  The site's owners develop the film and post the images.  They say they can process film from all time periods and formats, including degraded film and film that is no longer manufactured.  (If you have some old film of your own, this might be useful.)  The site includes an e-mail address to send a message if someone is recognized in an image.  You can contribute found film to the project, which will process it and archive the images for free.  Reading the phrasing on the site, I suspect reconnecting someone with his processed film isn't entirely free, but it could easily be worth the cost, depending on what the photos are.  If you have some time, browsing the site is interesting, because the collection is so eclectic and unconnected.

The other site is much more specific in its focus.  The Early Faces of Queensland [Australia] Facebook page and Web site host scans of photographs that came from the Marsden Photography Studio in Brisbane.  (Brisbane is the capital of Queensland.)  The studio operated from about 1880 to the early 1910's.  The teenage son of the woman who owns the photos decided to scan and post them online as a method of trying to reunite them with living family members.  A Brisbane Times article about his project doesn't state how many photos there are, but he figures it will take him years to scan and upload all the photos.  He intends to charge only enough to cover the postage to send an identified photo to someone.  I like the tag line on the Facebook page:  Helping Historical Photos Find Their Families.

An Orphan Heirloom Needs to Finds Its Way Home

A U.S. Navy photographer who went to Beirut in 1982 during the Lebanese civil war found a photograph album in the rubble of the city and brought it home with him.  He is now trying to find family members to give the album to.  Clues include the name "Didi" and the year 1975 written on the cover page, and a postcard in Arabic sent from Spain and addressed to Lydia Gatehouse in London, England.

The Daily Star of Lebanon published a story about the album on December 6.  Anyone who can help identify and/or locate the album's owners should contact the Daily Star.

More Orphan Heirlooms Have Gone Home

A friend of mine bought a box of papers at an estate sale and found two copies of a boy's birth registration (one from the city, one from the hospital in which he was born) and a bar mitzvah photo of the same boy.  She is Jewish also and felt obligated to return the items to the family if possible, so she called and asked if I could help.  The research involved relatively recent records -- this person was born in 1947 -- so I wasn't sure what I would be able to find.  Luckily not everything has been locked up due to politicians' oversimplistic and misguided attempts to curb identify theft, and I was able to verify that he had indeed been born in California, as the birth registrations said.  A little more searching and I discovered a photo of him online.  Someone had posted a positive Yelp-type review of him for his job in San Francisco.  It was the same person as the bar mitzvah boy in the photo; the resemblance was unmistakable.  I called the company, and he still works there.  I've mailed the birth records and photo to him.

I'm not entirely sure why I feel so sad when photographs and documents have been left behind in estate sales and the like.  In part it's because to me they represent the stories of people's lives, and once they are set adrift they no longer have the same context.  But if absolutely no one in the family wants the items, perhaps they could be donated to a genealogical or historical society.  There they can be appreciated and remembered as artifacts of lives that have been lived.  They can be catalogued and available to people researching those families.  They don't become generic nameless people with no histories.

A Passport Goes Home

My sister, who works in a university library, contacted me several months ago about an original 1921 U.S. passport that had been in her office for several years.  It had come with some donated materials.  She didn't know what to do with the passport, but she thought it was cool and knew it shouldn't just be thrown away, so she asked me for suggestions.  I told her I would try to find a descendant to whom the passport could be returned as a family heirloom.

The passport was for a married couple.  They had gone to China because the husband had a job teaching.  They had filed for an extension, and the extension included their baby daughter who had been born abroad.  I found the family in the 1930 U.S. census and discovered the couple had had three daughters.  Of course, I had trouble finding the daughters because they had married and changed their names!  I did discover the family had moved to California and found death dates for both parents and one of the daughters, but then got stuck.

I looked for family trees online and found three that looked credible.  I contacted the owners of the trees and all three got back to me, which was a pleasant surprise.  What also surprised me is that the first two to respond were not related at all to the families whose trees they had posted.  Is it common for people to post family trees of people they're not connected to?

On Thanksgiving Day I received a message from the owner of the third tree, who actually is related to the family.  Amazingly enough, the young daughter shown on the passport is still alive, now 88 years old!  Apparently, this passport may be the only surviving documentation from the time showing that she was born in China.  I'm going to mail the passport to her next week.

It feels so good to be able to send a piece of a someone's history back to her!  I don't know how it ended up with papers donated to a university, but I hope it stays in the family now.