Celebrating 115 Years with our Updated Bookmark!

Ancestor photographs courtesy of our members.
Graphics and design by Lois Elling.


Copyright © 2013 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library.

Pick Up the New CGS Bookmark at California Family History Expo!

Ever since we unveiled our new look in February, members of the society have been working hard to incorporate the new "brand" into our various web homes, publications and other written matter.

The wonderfully talented Lois Elling has created a new bookmark for the society and we are giving them away today and tomorrow at the California Family History Expo.

Next week I'll be sure to blog the stories of the faces on the family tree.


Copyright © 2010 by Kathryn M. Doyle, California Genealogical Society and Library

Chronicling Events in a Horseless Carriage

One of the photographs from the CGS 110th anniversary bookmark, was this one taken on the wedding day of Clare and Alta McAllister THOMSON, parents of Thomas Thomson, who is the husband of Shirley Pugh Thomson, CGS board member and recording secretary.


The young bride and groom (she only 18, he age 19) were photographed 4 June 1916, in Sullivan County, Indiana. In the back seat are their best friends and witnesses, Paul and Lena Sharpe. The Buick was owned by the groom’s father, as was the camera, and it was dad who took the picture.

The blog description prompted this response from CGS News Editor, Jane Hufft: "The copy you have with the photographs is so informative and interesting. The picture sparked a connection for me: I have a photo of my grandparents c. 1916 that could be a twin to Shirley's; everyone is dressed up, looking out of an open car, event unknown, and it NEVER occurred to me that it possibly is a wedding photo -- and we don't have any others for them. Perhaps that was a photographic style then. Thank you so much for the clue."

I checked with Maureen A. Taylor, the Photo Detective, who has written about old automotive photographs, most recently in an article entitled "Motor Trends" in the July 2007 issue of Family Tree Magazine.

She agrees that there may be other photographs that appear at first glance to be just folks in old cars, but which in fact are chronicling weddings or other significant events.

Maureen notes: "You see a lot more people in front of cars once they are more enclosed. Men drove, women generally didn't. How interesting that the woman is behind the wheel!"

The cover of Katherine Scott Sturdevant's book, Bringing Your Family History to Life Through Social History, depicts a family dressed in their Sunday best in a circa 1910 automobile.

The photograph, identified as "William H. McKernan, Brooklyn" was supplied to the publisher as a research experiment. Ms. Sturdevant analyzes the photograph on page 89 and presents a case study which includes dating the vehicle and city directory and census research on the family. She makes a strong case that it is the family of William H. McKiernan and notes that the children in the photograph match the "genders and ages of the census children... if the oldest child, Mary, was elsewhere when the photograph was taken. She would have been about twenty."

Knowing what we know now from Shirley's and Jane's photographs, I wonder if the family was off to attend Mary's wedding?

Written for the 45th Carnival of Genealogy, Cars as stars!

More bookmark photographs

Lois Elling, creator of the CGS 110th anniversary bookmark, contributed two of her own family photographs to the project.








The first is Lois' grandmother, Caroline (or Karoline) PERRSON, who came to America from Sweden with her cousin Ida in 1902, at the age of 20. She worked as a domestic in the Boston area, where she met and married William A. ROBINSON, Jr., who was working as a chauffeur. After the death of their first child at just 11 months, the couple moved to Southern California to live near one of Caroline's sisters. They settled in Los Angeles and in 1912 had a son, Herman, and a daughter, Alice, in 1915. William made a living as a machinist and auto mechanic.


Lois' second photograph is her father, Herman ROBINSON and sister, Alice, taken at a studio in Los Angeles in 1918. One of William Robinson's hobbies was photography, which is how Lois came to have a good-sized collection of photographs of the young family.

Lavinia Grace Schwarz contributed this photograph of her Granddad, Andrew Bruce Cresap, who ran away from home, lied about his age and joined up as a medic.

Finally, the front bookmark photograph is from the California Genealogical Society and Library manuscript collection. The photograph, part of the HUTCHISSON family collection, is an image of the three children of Harry Hutchisson and Anna Bertha Merrick, taken about 1903. They are (from left to right) Wallace, Hester and Elmer (first name Lawrence, but he never used it) Hutchisson.

Many thanks to all of the contributors and special kudos to Lois Elling.

110th anniversary bookmark

The 110th Anniversary Celebration on Saturday was a resounding success. Steve Danko has posted a detailed report on the day at his blog: Maureen Taylor, Photo Detective. I was struck by Maureen's incredible talent and passion for her subject, which we learned is a fusion of her expertise in history, photography and genealogy. I came away with a new appreciation for the value of photographs -- not just as a supplement to our family history but also as a research tool. We all have to become "photo detectives" to make sure we have gleaned all of the clues lying in wait in our own family photographs.

All 140 attendees went home with a special souvenir of the day. CGS President, Jane Lindsey, planned early on to create a bookmark to commemorate the anniversary but it was CGS News Production Editor, Lois Elling, who thought to merge the idea with the theme. She combined her design skills and love of ancestral photographs to create a keepsake that perfectly complemented Maureen's presentations.

Several CGS members submitted photographs for the bookmark. I promised that I would include a personal "thank you" to each and give a bit of background and biographical information about the CGS ancestors featured. I'll start with the two photos that I submitted.

The first is a photograph of my uncle and mother taken in 1938 in Sendai, Japan. My uncle, Iwao OKAMOTO, was graduating from high school and had been instructed by his mother to stop by the local studio to sit for a graduation photograph. He took along one of his younger sisters, Miyako, age 8. My grandmother was surprised to find that all of his portraits included his sibling! Iwao was unconcerned. He told his mother that if she didn't want to include his little sister she could be cut off. I'm so grateful that she wasn't.


The second is from my husband's extended NICKLES family. It is of two siblings, Pauline and George Nikolaides, taken about 1928 in the village of Tsintzina, near Sparta, Greece. The brother and sister spent their childhood years in two villages - summers spent in the mountains in Tsintzina, where it is cooler, and the winters in Zoupena; migrating back and forth, up and down the mountain each spring and fall, as has been the custom for hundreds of years. They came to the U.S. with their father and siblings in 1937; their mother remained in Greece throughout her life. Pauline Nickles Poulos died in 1986. George P. Nickles died November 22, 2007. May their memories be eternal.

This is one of only three photographs taken on the wedding day of Clare and Alta McAllister THOMSON, parents of Thomas Thomson who is the husband of Shirley Pugh Thomson, CGS board member and recording secretary. The young bride and groom (she only 18, he age 19) were photographed 4 June 1916, in Sullivan County, Indiana. In the back seat are their best friends and witnesses, Paul and Lena Sharpe. The car was the groom’s father’s Buick.

Two photographs were contributed by CGS member Lisa B. Lee. David Moses LEE was born in 1847 in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, the son of William Barnard Lee and Eleanor Jane Smith, and descendant of William Lee, a black Loyalist who fought in the Revolutionary War on behalf of the British Crown. In his early 20s, he moved to Buffalo, New York with his mother and worked first as a blacksmith and then as a male nurse, a position he held for over 50 years. For much of his adult life, he worked in Dr. Pierce's Hospital, an institution on Buffalo's Main Street. Lee died in 1936 in Buffalo at the age of 89.



Lisa's second contribution was the photograph of the MILLER Family. William Miller was born in Pennsylvania about 1811 and escaped slavery to Ontario and settled in the Wellington County area around 1835. He and his wife, Mary Ann Clement (a Canadian native) had at least 11 children. Those pictured in the photo are William Miller's grandson John Sylvester Miller, John's wife, Amanda Cromwell (whose grandfather was a black Loyalist in Nova Scotia) and their children, Joseph, Jane, William and Cecil.

I have a few more details to gather for the remaining photographs so stay tuned.