Sometimes I think my favorite photo is the one I haven’t found yet. How exciting would it be to find a picture of Enoch Galusha Howard, one of the ancestors I wrote about in Week One, in his lighthouse keeper’s uniform? I don’t know much about my great grandfather Andrew Marshall Walt – it would be wonderful to find a photo of him with his parents. Yesterday I checked out of the library a digital scanner that will allow me to scan all the slides I have from years ago and save them to my computer. Perhaps my new favorite photo will be among the pictures in that collection.
But for now, my favorite photo isn’t special because of the photo itself necessarily – although it is a wonderful, old picture of an ancestor. It’s special because of the way it came to me and the bonds of family connections it reminds me of.
The subject of the photo is my great, great grandmother, Sarah Flewelling Howard Hawley. An imprint at the bottom of the cardboard frame around the picture indicates it was taken at “Deery Art Hall Port Huron.” I did a quick Google search and found that Deery Art Hall in Port Huron, Michigan was a studio in existence from 1899-1901.[i] So my tentative conclusion is that Sarah was around 32 years old when the picture was taken.
I had been researching Sarah a long time before I was given her picture. I knew that she was born in New Brunswick, Canada in 1858 to Abel Flewelling and Ruth Elliott Flewelling, the first of their nine children (as far as I can tell). The Flewellings moved their family to Port Huron, Michigan when Sarah was around seven years old and it appears that Sarah was still residing there when she married George Howard on October 16, 1877. Thereafter, she and George lived in Alpena, Michigan. Sarah had four children with George – Frank Fayette, Elbe, Clinton Dewitt, and my great grandmother, Etta Agnes.
However, shortly after Etta Agnes was born in 1885, Sarah left George.[ii] The 1900 Census seems to indicate that Sarah apparently divorced George and married Charles Hawley. At the time of that census Sarah and Charles resided in Ogemaw County, Michigan with five children born to them along with Sarah’s children Dewitt and Agnes.
Sarah endured her share of troubles in life. A three-month-old child died in 1900. Her husband Charles left her and their children sometime between 1902 and 1910, no doubt causing her a great deal of economic insecurity.[iii] She died in 1936 during an extreme heat wave. Her obituary, appearing in the July 23, 1936 Ogemaw County Herald, said “Everyone who knew her will miss her kindly face in their midst.”[iv]
But what really makes Sarah’s photo a favorite of mine is how I got it. Two summers ago I spent a few weeks in my hometown of Rose City, Michigan to do some family history research and was fortunate enough to get to meet one of my dad’s first cousins, Patty. She came over to the house where my grandparents had lived (where I was staying) and brought with her two large photo albums. As we paged through one of the albums, Patty told me about the people in the pictures. Some were from her dad’s (and my) side of the family, the Walts, and some were from her mother’s side. When we got to the picture of Sarah, neither one of us knew who she was. Patty took the picture out of the album and turned it over. On the back was written “Grandmother Hawley.”[v] I was momentarily speechless. There she was, Sarah Flewelling Howard Hawley – my great, great grandmother.
Patty saw how much it meant to me to see the photo and promptly said, “Here, take it.” At first I demurred – it was part of Patty’s family album and taking a picture of the photograph would be sufficient for me. But she handed it to me, insisting I take it. My heart was warmed, not only by seeing a picture of the woman I had done so much research on but also by the kindness of a cousin I had just met.
The photo of Sarah became one of my favorites not only because it revealed the face of an ancestor whose life I had been tracing. It became one of my favorites also because it reminds me of making family connections, of meeting a cousin and experiencing her generosity. I think of Patty each time I look at the photo.
And now I have a request of all of you reading this post. If you have a favorite photo, please tell me about it in a comment below. If you can upload the picture in your comment, great! But if not, just a brief description of the photo and why it means so much to you would be super. I am looking forward to seeing or reading about your favorites!
[i] https://clements.umich.edu/files/tinder_directory.pdf
[ii] In 1910 Etta Agnes wrote a letter to the Alcona County Probate Office requesting information on her father George’s estate. She wrote, “You see, as I am the younger of the four children I do not remember my father, for I suppose you know my mother left him, and I was only about 6 months old or there about.”
[iii] The Ogemaw County land records show the sheriff sold property belonging to Charles (presumably where the family lived) at a foreclosure sale and also levied against the property to satisfy a judgment against Charles. Sarah purchased the property back at the foreclosure sale.
[iv] Perhaps the expression on Sarah’s face in this photo is not the one she wore on a regular basis.
[v] Sarah was Patty’s father’s grandmother. We surmised that either Patty’s mother or her father had written “Grandmother Hawley” on the back of the picture.
tracingthepast 