Wow guys! This Sunday will be my 1 year anniversary of doing this blog. I really am proud of myself for sticking with it and having fun! To be quite honest with you, those first month blogs are still my favorite ones. I’m trying to find my writing niche and I think those were closer to it then I ever thought they were. Reminiscing about the Beginning is a particular favorite of mine. Back when I was still posting about my Mom’s side of the family! ha. I also can’t forget From Grandma’s Kitchen and the story about the infamous Fudge recipe. To this day when Mom starts talking about her mother’s awesome roll recipe, I can’t help but wonder if she’s tried Pillsbury. Then there was the one that started my favorite feature, my very first Google Earth Adventure! In fact, I need to do another one, just as soon as I figure out where I’m “going”.
I’ll leave you with this random picture. I have no idea who she is, but if you have any clue. Shoot me an email: leeny.moore [@] gmail.com (Remove the brackets and spaces!)
Actually this was probably the same day, but here we go.
I notice my great-grandfather William Lawrence Moore standing in the back on the right. I also see George W Thorward, sitting in the middle. I think the woman sitting next to him is one of Jennie’s sisters but I’m not sure.
What’s a girl got to do to get an invitation to Beach Day?
I recognize Jennie Love and her husband Lewis Thorward, but the others, well your guess is as good as mine! I’m pretty sure one of Jennie’s sisters is sitting next to her. They look like they could be related.
What fun they must have had. I think I have a whole months worth of beach pictures alone I could post about.
It was in Llewellyn’s collection of documents/photos.
What I want to know about this photo:
Obviously, I’d like to know who it is.
Time period would be nice, along with the place it was taken!
Unlike most of my cabinet cards, this one doesn’t have any photographer logo or brand on it. So maybe it wasn’t a cabinet card at all. I will definitely have to put my detective hat on sometime this week and start the process of learning more about the history of photography!
There are a few reasons that I chose to highlight this tombstone. In all my hijinks into my family history, I have stumbled onto learning how to do certain things. One of the first things I realized is that even official records can be wrong. I’ve also learned that spelling doesn’t matter in the early and late 1800s.
Mystery Monday is a weekly series I do on Mondays. It is also a blogging theme used by other GeneaBloggers. Feel free to post about your own mysteries and maybe someone will be able to solve it someday!
Note: I don’t mean to show a bias towards Kodak. It is strictly coincidence that I found this after my Tech Tuesday post. Except I don’t believe in coincidences, so it’s really one of those crazy freaky things that follows me around. Again, I am not being compensated by Kodak for this post.
I had photos on the brain yesterday. I was actually sorting through some of my scanned photos trying to decide if I was going to rescan the last batch at a higher DPI. That’s when I remembered this box in the spare room. It’s there with a suitcase full of sympathy cards that were sent to Llewellyn after William’s death.
So yesterday, my father impressed me with his instant knowledge of the uniform Ralph Leonard was wearing. So impressed, that I asked him to help a girl out and tell us all how he knew exactly what was going on.
1. His first clue was the anchor on the color. That tells him Navy.
2. The second thing he saw was the Marine emblem on that (I was right about that!). He says that most likely Ralph was attached to a Marine unit while he was serving.
3. The third thing he saw was the gold braiding around Ralph’s wrists and hat. This designates officers.
4. Lastly he knew it was WWI era by his gut instinct or the style of the uniform. Is that a scientific or technical answer? Of course not, but he was right and in the end that counts.
Do you guys remember when I started this blog nine months (!) ago, and I said I was imposing a full disclosure policy. Here’s where it comes into play again. My original plan was to make a list of my military ancestors for Veterans Day. I hoped to have a list of people that served. I have a ton of Draft cards but a lot of those guys didn’t serve from what I can tell. So I was hoping to have a nice list of servicemen and women to eventually gather records for. That didn’t exactly happen.
Ralph H Leonard
I got distracted, like I often do. I opened PhotoShop to edit the above picture for this very blog post. I was going to use it to anchor the post. Make it pop. Then I got distracted, again. Yesterday I posted about my Marine family history so I had Marines on the brain. That’s when I noticed the emblem on Ralph’s hat. Could he be a Marine? How cool would that be?
So naturally I went to my first stop for all things military. I emailed my Dad. While I was waiting to see if he had any ideas, I had a thought. I was just at Prospect Hill Cemetery. Maybe he was one of the graves I photographed and I didn’t put two and two together. Since I was on my laptop, I just went to Find a Grave where I had uploaded all my graveyard photos anyway. Bingo! I was thinking that he was in the Marines because of the emblem but his gravestone clearly said WWI USNRF which translates to Navy Reserve Force. Right about the time I figured this out I got a response from my father:
It looks to me to be an early 1900’s naval officer probably ww1 time frame. By the insignia on his cap I would think he would have been attached a Marine outfit.
Oh dear, he’s going to be so proud of himself for this! Now you know why I go to him for all things military! So now I know that Ralph was in the Navy and served in WWI. The only problem is I don’t have a WWI Draft Card for Ralph. I have one for his older brother but not him. So I’m going to have to assume he was already in the service when WWI came around. I do know that Ralph was trained in Aviation by 1930, so maybe he got military aviation training? I don’t know.
This is the part of genealogy I love. Just when you think you’ve found out everything about someone, you find a little nugget that opens it all up again.
