Maria D'Ingeo Gatto and her godchildren

I was recently contacted by a new cousin of mine, whose grandmother, Rosa D'Ingeo, was the sister of my great-grandmother, Maria D'Ingeo. She was kind enough to send me this picture, of Maria with her two godchildren, Anna (L) and Rose (R) DeChirico, Rose's daughters.

Anna DeChirico, Maria D'Ingeo Gatto, Rose DeChirico

I am completely enamored of the details on Grandma Gatto's purse, shoes, and glamorous shirt!

I would estimate that this picture was taken in the early 1930s, as Rose DeChirico was born c. 1922 and Anna c. 1923, and I think they both look to be around 10 or a few years older. (But I've been very wrong before when playing the "how old is that person?" game with old photos!)

Labeling Photographs: Memory and Mourning

Have you ever wondered why some of your inherited family photographs are impeccably labelled, and others are unfortunate blank canvases?

My maternal grandfather recently passed away, and I inherited a handful of photographs. Not the real old kind, just a few pictures from my parents' wedding through approximately my 8th grade graduation. Almost all were unlabeled, and the ones my grandmother had labeled were vague or incomplete. "Gail's wedding" or "July 16, 1997."

Luckily, I was able to identify the people and places in almost all of them, and could give at least an educated guess as to approximate dates. So when I got home from my mom's house the other night, I set right to labeling the pictures.

I found myself being more specific than usual, with places in particular. I realized that the impending sale of my grandparents' home, the home where my mother grew up and where my cousins and I spent so much of our childhood, was driving me. Scribbling the street address, over and over, on the backs of 4x6 prints, somehow made me feel like I was doing my part to keep the memory of Grandma and Grandpa's house alive. (I was there only days earlier. The race to "keep memories alive" can be premature or even irrational.)

But this influenced my labeling throughout the collection. I added street addresses to pictures taken in my current house, in my parents' house, anywhere I recognized. I was aiming for consistency, yes, but I was also imagining a future where we've moved out of the home we love and have only pictures to remember it by. A future where I've passed away and my children struggle to remember the address of the apartment in NYC where we spent the first years of our marriage. Or where my kids - who will only ever know the apartment my in-laws downsized to - can't picture them living in the big house in the suburbs where my husband spent his happy childhood. Will addresses on the back of photographs change any of that? Not by much. They can't bring back a grandfather, unsell a house, or give my son any real memories of the apartment where he spent the first 10 weeks of his life. But they can make me feel like I tried.

I wonder what my kids, my descendants, the strangers who find my albums in a thrift store will think when they see how well-labelled some - but not all - of my pictures are. I can't imagine that they will even begin to follow my thought processes.

Have you ever though about what motivated the people creating the records you use?

Money Saving Tip: share your family history for free!

Genealogy is not a cheap hobby; I'm sure that's not news to anyone here. Even the most basic records can cost $15-$20 apiece, visits to repositories usually require both travel and time off work, and an Ancestry.com subscription could very easily break the bank on a tight budget.

And of course, doing the research is only half the battle. Many family historians want to share what they've found, an endeavor that adds another level of expenses. There are charts to buy, books to have printed, photographs to make copies of.

So today I'd like to share a tip that I've used frequently, to preserve and share various aspects of my family history at little to no cost:

Sign up for e-mails from photo printing sites.

The "Promotions" tab in my Gmail inbox is full of things I never read, and deals that just aren't that good. The GAP might sometimes offer 20% off, but you still have to pay the other 80%. They just never give out free, no-strings-attached shirts. (I would be totally on board if they did!)

However, I read at least the title of every single e-mail I get from Shutterfly and CVS Photo, because they offer freebies all the time.

I've gotten two offers for a free 8x8 photo book from Shutterfly in the past 6 months or so, and every once in a while, CVS Photo sends me an e-mail saying "We miss you!" and offering a free 8x10 photo print or collage to entice me to use their service again. Last fall, they sent an e-mail titled "We never do this!" that offered a free photo book, and while it's true that I've never seen them do that before, now that I know it's a possibility, I'm keeping an extra sharp eye out!

The beautiful thing about CVS Photo is that when they say free, they really mean FREE. Not "free, but you still have to pay taxes on the regular price." Not "free, except for shipping and handling." Just FREE, as long as you choose to pick it up at your local CVS. (If you want it mailed to you, shipping charges will still apply.)

I haven't always used this for strictly genealogical purposes, but I have used it to preserve and share photos of important events in our lives, memorialize deceased loved ones, and gather pictures of our recent (very genealogically oriented) trip to Ireland. And really, isn't that all genealogy, anyway?

Check out my photo book of our Ireland trip, below!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly photo books offer a wide range of artful designs and embellishments to choose from.

This photo book, while quite nice in its own way, is not exactly a perfect specimen. These "free book" codes tend to last for 3 days or so, and I started putting this book together approximately 2.5 days after receiving the code in an e-mail. There are a couple of ways, though, to really use these codes to your advantage despite the short time frame.

1. If you have no particular time frame, go start working on your book right now. Open an account (you'll start getting e-mails; make sure you opt in if there's a choice), and upload your images. You can make a pure photo album, like mine; or make it more text-heavy, to tell a story; or upload images of documents to include more of the nitty-gritty of your research. Take your time, experiment with backgrounds, arrangements, and effects. Make yourself a really nice book. (On Shutterfly, limit it to 20 pages if you want it for free.) And then stop. Wait. Do not submit an order. You're in no rush. It could take a few months, but you should eventually get a promo code for a free book. That's when you submit your order, and pay nothing but shipping and handling, for a lovely, high-quality book, that showcases an aspect of your family or family history.

2. If you've gotten a "free book" promo code, and want to make use of it while it's still valid, but have no project planned, think ahead. What family-history or gift-giving events are coming up? Maybe there will be a family reunion this summer, or maybe you'd like to share a story you've discovered with your family at the holidays. Put together that book now. So what if it's April? Cross one Christmas present off of your list early! Whether you're putting your research into a brief illustrated narrative to catch the attention of relatives, or you're compiling all of your family's holiday traditions into a nicely bound volume to preserve them for the future, do it now - while it's free! When you've received your free photo book, set it aside to be given at a gift at the appropriate time in the future, and get excited that you've managed to come up with a present that simultaneously shares your family history, saves you money, and gives you one fewer thing to do in the throes of the holiday shopping season!

While I've only ever used this strategy with Shutterfly and CVS Photo, I'm about to see if the principle is more universal, by signing up for accounts with Vistaprint and Snapfish, too!

What would you do with a free photo book?

Carmine "Charlie" Lanzillotto's WWI Service Record

I've recently reviewed the WWI Service Records of three of my four great-grandfathers, John Joseph O'Hara, Joseph Eugene Mulcahy, and Domenico Gatto. All three served during the war, but none of them was sent overseas. Only one of my great-grandfathers, Carmine "Charlie" Lanzillotto, actually served in Europe.

WWI Service Record of Carmine Lanzillotta, NYS Archives

He was born 16 July 1894, in what's recorded here as "Bitelo," Italy. (It was actually Bitetto, outside of Bari, in Italy). When he was inducted, he was living at 281 E. 155th St. in northern Manhattan. This was the same address where he had been living when he registered for the draft in 1917, as well as where he was living when he naturalized on 20 October 1919, which means that he came back to the same building after the war.

Carmine Lanzillotto fought in the Battle of the Argonne Forest, officially known as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive; it's both the only engagement listed here, and the only battle my grandmother had ever heard him speak of. He was inducted on 25 June 1918 and was overseas by 3 August 1918. The battle lasted from 26 September 1918 until 11 November 1918, the date of the Armistice that ended the war. Charlie, though, remained overseas until the following September, and was discharged on 6 October 1919.

I'm not sure of all of the abbreviations used in the section "Organizations served in," but "MP" shows up a lot, which accords with the image below, showing Charlie Lanzillotto in his uniform and wearing an "MP" band on his arm. 

Carmine Lanzillotto

Photography, Past, Present, and Future

Were the past 50 years a photographic blip?

I have 1 photograph of my great-grandfather as a child. I've seen maybe a dozen pictures of my grandmother as a child. There are several photo albums full of hundreds of pictures of my dad as a child. There are probably thousands of photographs of me as a child.

I've seen dozens of photographs of my great-grandfather as an adult. Hundreds of photographs of my grandmother as an adult. Hundreds of photographs of my dad as an adult. A handful of photographs of me as an adult.

When I say "photographs," I'm talking about physical, hard copy photographs. The kind of thing that will last through the fast-moving, planned obsolescence of modern technology. My great-grandfather's life saw the gradual transition from occasional, complicated, special-event, professional photography to inexpensive, omnipresent, personal photography, and the attendant increase in pictures. My life saw the transition from inexpensive, omnipresent, personal film photography to inexpensive, more-than-omnipresent personal digital photography, and the attendant decrease in physical photographs.

It's not like there aren't any photographs of Joseph Mulcahy as a child. There's this one. And it's not like there aren't any pictures of me as an adult.  There are 7 framed photographs of me in my apartment. 6 are from my wedding day. (The 7th is from a friend's wedding.) Plus, we have a few photo albums. At the end of 2011, I made a point of having prints made of good, representative pictures from the year, which might have been a dozen pictures or so. I haven't yet done the same for 2012 or 2013. I did have prints made of our honeymoon to St. Lucia, and made up a photo book of pictures from our recent trip to Ireland.

In other words, if you look past my unusual conscientiousness in 2011, the physical photographs of me and my husband as adults represent almost exclusively special occasions. Kind of like the extant photographs from c. 1900, right?

I firmly believe that in 100 years, the digital photographs that currently overload our hard drives and are posted to the internet ad nauseum will not have survived. Many photographs on paper won't have, either, but they've got a better chance. Our descendants will find themselves looking at a handful of special-occasion photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries; an unmanageable glut of unlabeled photographs from the mid and late 20th century; and a handful of special-occasion photographs from the 21st century and beyond.

A Visit to Tawnykinaffe, Co. Mayo

When we were in Ireland recently, we met up with some of my Gillan cousins, who took us out to the small town of Tawnykinaffe, Co. Mayo, where my great-great-grandmother Mary Gillan was born. Although the property is no longer in the family, my cousins had grown up there and so were fantastic tour guides. There are two houses right next to each other, the original one-room cottage and the larger house, built c. 1940. After the family moved into the newer home, the older building was used as a barn. Both are now abandoned.

The new house

The original house

After I got home, one of my Gillan cousins sent me this 1931 picture showing Michael Gillan (born c. 1910) in front of the same house we'd visited.

Michael Gillan, Tawnykinaffe, 1931

I'm not sure whether the appearance that the door is in a different place is just a question of angles and perspective, an indication that the entrance was moved at some point, or evidence that the picture was actually taken from the opposite side of the house (as I can verify that there are both a front and a rear door; I walked through both).

This little corner of Tawnykinaffe, with only a few houses, most of them empty, seemed quiet and isolated. It was a little surreal to hear stories of how bustling, active, and full of life the neighborhood had been as recently as the mid-twentieth century. It was also challenging to mentally eliminate the encroaching trees to try to picture the landscape as it would have been before the Irish government planted them en masse, at some point in the last 50 years. Though they look full grown, they're actually a very recent feature. It's easy, when visiting a town, to look around and identify new buildings and modern technology and realize that the scenery has changed in the last 50 or 100 years. Without my personal tour guides, though, it never would have occurred to me that natural features like trees - particularly in such numbers - might also not have been a long-standing feature of the environment.

I managed to peer through the trees for a glimpse of the view that predated them.

After visiting the family homestead, we went out to lunch in Pontoon. This was cool for me, because Tawnykinaffe is so small that Google Maps can't always find it. To get a general idea of the area I was looking for, I used to search for nearby Pontoon, instead. Pontoon is easy to identify because it falls right between two lakes that are very close together, separated by only a bridge. This is a feature that stands out on a map, and is easily identifiable as you drive across that bridge in your car!


View Larger Map

Ben and I on the Pontoon Bridge

We had a fantastic time and a lovely lunch and I felt so lucky to be able to meet so many of my cousins and have a personal tour of the place my ancestors had lived.

Our last Gillan family stop was a trip to the cemetery, but I will save that post for another day.

The Martins Gillan

When we were recently in Ireland, we visited with several of my Gillan cousins, who showed me the family's old homestead in Tawnykinaffe, Co. Mayo. They were kind enough to give me a copy of a photograph of my 3x great-grandfather Martin Gillan:

Martin Gillan and Martin Gillan, c. 1912
Castlebar, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Standing next to Martin Gillan (seated) is his grandson, Martin Gillan, son of the elder Martin's son Michael. The younger Martin was born c. 1900, and the best estimate of the date of the picture is around 1912, based on the belief that he looks to be about 12 here. I'm told that the photo was taken at the studio of a professional photographer in Castlebar.

This makes two photographs I have of Martin Gillan, which is two more than I have of any of my other 3x great-grandparents. He lived nearly another 20 years after this picture was taken, and the other photo, which was sent to me by another Gillan cousin a couple of years ago, was clearly taken much closer to the end of his life.

As far as I'm aware, there are no extant photographs of Martin's wife Honor Grimes Gillan. I don't know exactly when she died, but she was alive when the 1911 Census was enumerated, so she lived well into the age of photography, and I continue to hold out hope that a picture of her will show up eventually.

MyMemories Review and Giveaway

The good people at MyMemories recently provided me with two free copies of the MyMemories Digital Scrapbooking Suite - one to review, and one to give away. I had read plenty of rave reviews of MyMemories before, but I've never been much of a scrapbooker. (At least, I thought I'd never been much of a scrapbooker. A few months ago, while looking for some old Art History notes to lend my sister, I found 3 separate scrapbooks dating to 2004. It appears that around the time I graduated high school, I was actually quite the scrapbooker.)

This offer came at the perfect time, though, when I'd begun thinking about creating a more personalized blog header, and wanted to create a banner for my Zazzle store, Wear You Came From. (That one is still in the works.)

I started out trying to create a banner from scratch, using my own creativity. My own creativity wasn't up to the task, and I found the the album templates provided by MyMemories were better for a beginner. The result, which you can see above, was exactly what I was looking for.

This weekend, in honor of the 5th Anniversary of my first date with Ben, I decided to open up MyMemories again and scrapbook some of the pictures from a trip we took to St. Lucia last year for our first wedding anniversary. This time, not being such a rank beginner, I decided to get a little more creative. I used one of the templates available, but removed the embellishments that didn't fit the mood of our trip, and added my own photos from St. Lucia as custom background papers.

Quite frankly, my favorite aspects of these pages are the backgrounds, because St. Lucia itself looked a lot better than Ben and I did. In several of these pages, we have just finished doing things like climbing large hills, and we look it. But even when we were sweaty and haggard and had flyaway hair, the beaches, jungles, oceans, flowers, and pineapples of St. Lucia were gorgeous. (Seriously, did you know how pineapples grow? That one you see there was growing right in front of our cabin, out of a bush right on the ground!)

One of my favorite things about MyMemories is the versatility. You can pop your photos directly into the spots provided and call it a day, or you can move things around and personalize the pages with additional embellishments, photographs, and text. You can showcase historic family photos of your ancestors, or you can create visually interesting layouts for the pictures you took with your iPhone or digital camera last year, or last week.

Now, here comes the part you're interested in, the part where you get a chance to win a copy of the software yourself!

How do you enter to win? It's easy!

First, visit mymemories.com and take a look around. Choose the album template you like most, or would be most likely to use. (I see a family-tree themed template, and they have a whole category called "heritage," which I'm sure would interest my readers!) Then, come back here and leave a comment on this post, telling me which one it is. Make sure to include your e-mail address in the comment if you'd like to be eligible to win.

A winner will be chosen at random from those who comment in the comments section of this post. E-mails do not count. The contest will be open for 1 week. No entries will be accepted after 11:59 PM EST on Tuesday, March 5, 2013.


[Disclosure: I received a free copy of the MyMemories Digital Scrapbooking software to review from MyMemories.com. MyMemories.com is also providing a free copy to give away.]

Update: Graduation Day

Over a year ago, I published a post titled (Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Graduation Day, which featured a graduation day photograph of my grandfather, William J. O'Hara, and my musings about which graduation day it had been. Family opinion was divided as to whether he looked like he could be 13 (grade school graduation, from St. Savior's School), 18 (high school graduation, from Regis High School), 22 (college graduation, from Fordham University), or 26 (grad school graduation, from NYU). Obviously, that's a really big range, and the middle range, Regis or Fordham, seemed to be the most likely candidates.

Take a look at the fellow in the cap and gown and let me know how old you think he is. (Answer below.)

William J. O'Hara (L) and Henry Gorra

A few weeks ago, as I was preparing to publish a small booklet about my grandfather through Lulu, I found myself at my parents' house, browsing his old yearbooks. I hadn't meant to take them out - the thought of using his school pictures as illustrations hadn't occurred to me - but I went into the bookcase looking for something else, and walked away with yearbooks in hand instead.

I went through the Regis yearbook first, and this picture wasn't even in the back of my mind - until I saw what appeared to be a graduation day photograph, rows of boys seated upon a stage, all wearing jackets and ties, but not in caps and gowns. If I was right about that being graduation, then Regis would be ruled out, because the students didn't graduate in caps and gowns. The caption, which I don't recall exactly at the moment, was just explicit enough to make it clear that this was the graduating class (Class of 1948), but not quite specific enough to state whether or not they were actually graduating that day.

Next, I started going through the Fordham yearbook, now with this graduation picture very much on my mind. I got pretty far into the book without coming across anything that looked like a graduation picture, but then I saw something better. There was a shot of some other people standing outside of a building that looked like it very well might be the building behind my grandfather in our mystery picture, and it was identified as Reidy Hall. I went right to Google, and searched on the name of the building, which led me to Fordham University Library's digital collection, where a few further searches, and a few new images, left me with no doubt that Pop had been on the Fordham University campus when he was photographed, in his cap and gown, with his childhood friend Henry Gorra.

Blessing of Reidy Hall. Father at entrance, blessing plaque
October 10, 1947
With permission of Fordham University Archives and Special Collections

It's clear that this building has the same siding, same doors, same plaque.

Reidy Hall, according to the Fordham University website, was "a war barracks structure . . . named Reidy Hall in memory of Daniel Reidy, Class of 1935, who died in the assault on the Anzio beachhead in southern Italy."* I had tried to decipher what I could see of the plaque in the original picture of my grandfather, but it didn't tell me much. In this new picture, from Fordham, you can see that the entire plaque reads

Sgt DANIEL C. REIDY
GRADUATED
FROM SCHOOL of BUSINESS '35
KILLED IN ACTION IN ITALY, MAY 6 1944

Had I been able to read the entire plaque in the original photograph, of course, it would have shortened my search significantly.


So how old was he? If Pop was graduating from Fordham, then the photograph dates to June 1952, making him 21.5 years old. I'm eating a bit a crow, since I was on the side of "he looks too young to be graduating from college!" when we initially tried to figure out how to date the photograph last year.
 

*Howe, Bob, ed. "The College of Business Administration: 90 Years of History." Inside Fordham Online. N.p., 04 Oct 2010. Web. 4 Jan 2013. .

Mulvaney Family: A Summary

I realized not long ago that I might be facilitating certain cousin connections more so than others. I have a picture of the entire Mulcahy family at a wedding, and, when posting about it, I listed the names of all the Mulcahys and their spouses, including maiden names. No wonder so many of my Mulcahy cousins have found my blog by googling their grandparents' names! So here's a post on the Mulvaneys!

Julia (Toner) and Patrick Mulvaney married in 1893 and had 8 children. Raymond Mulvaney died as a toddler. William Mulvaney and Harold Mulvaney died, unmarried, as young men in the 1930s. James Mulvaney married Florence Goggin. Mae, or Mary R., Mulvaney married John Daniels. Grace Mulvaney married Stephen Kessell. Thomas Mulvaney married Elizabeth Gilies. And my great-grandmother, Veronica Mulvaney, married Joseph E. Mulcahy.

Julia Toner Mulvaney (polk dots) with her children James Mulvaney,
Mary R. (Mulvaney) Daniels, Veronica (Mulvaney) Mulcahy,
Tom Mulvaney, and Grace (Mulvaney) Kessell. 

Julia Toner Mulvaney with her children's spouses, Steve Kessell,
Florence (Goggin) Mulvaney, Elizabeth (Gilies) Mulvaney,
John Daniels, and Joseph Mulcahy.

The pictures our descendants would love to have

One of the things about searching for evidence of the major life events of people who lived a hundred years ago is that you start to view all of the major life event you experience through the eyes of people who live a hundred years from now. I would be pretty darn excited to see a slideshow of dozens of pictures from my great-great-grandparents wedding, so I imagine this is the kind of thing my great-great-grandchildren would love - once they went to their local museum to use some old-fashioned machine called a computer that it could be viewed on.

Kathleen & Ben: ROCK STAR video slideshow from Small Moments Studios on Vimeo.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Graduation Day

As we head into full-blown graduation season, I thought this would be a nice photograph to share.

This is a photo of my grandfather, William J. O'Hara, on his graduation day. I don't know the identity of the other people in the photograph, though the guy to his right looks familiar - I'm sure I've seen pictures of him before, somewhere. (Update: The guy posing with Pop has been identified as his close childhood friend Henry Gorra.) I don't know what he's graduating from - just from looking at him, it seems plausible that he could be 13, graduating from grade school - which, if I'm not mistaken, was St. Saviour's - or that he could be 18, graduating from Regis High School. My guess is the latter; I think those other boys look a bit old for middle school. I've had one relative suggest that it was actually college graduation - she thinks Pop looks even too old for high school, but I'm not sure I agree.

I can't tell what building they're in front of. The piece of a sign that's visible in the upper right-hand corner reads

Sy

GRA

FROM SCHOOL of

KILLED IN ACTION IN ITA

Pop was born in 1930, so a grade school graduation would have taken place around 1943/4, and a high school graduation around 1948/9. At first, I thought that his sign might help date the picture, but it seems more likely that it's a plaque commemorating an alumnus who was killed overseas, who could have been a graduate of either school, killed at any point during WWII. 

106th Carnival of Genealogy: Swimsuit Edition

These two handsome gentlemen are Harry Kunze, on the left, and Martin Quinn (Uncle Marty), on the right. They were my great-grandmother Molly Quinn's brother (Marty) and brother-in-law (Harry). Harry was married to Molly's younger sister Helen Quinn. Marty married Elizabeth "Bobbie" Byrnes. My sources (aka my great-uncle, Molly's son) tell me that this picture "was probably taken on Rockaway Beach or some other local beach" - local being local to the NYC area. He estimated it was taken around 1925, which would make Harry Kunze about 26, and Marty about 23. Based on the information they gave in the 1930 census, Harry and Helen would have been married for about a year.

 Of course, my favorite part of this picture is the swimsuits themselves! How cool!

Wedding Photos

This post goes out primarily to my cousins - distant and not-so-distant - who may read this blog. Ben and I have decided that we'd like to include our* family history obsession in our wedding celebration, and so we're collecting the wedding pictures of our direct antecedents to incorporate into our decor. We have most pictures of our parents, grandparents, and some great-grandparents, but we'd like to collect as many as possible.

Some pictures we're looking for, if they exist - (some of these predate the widespread availability of photography, but it can't hurt to ask) :

Marilyn Mulcahy & William O'Hara

Veronica Mulvaney & Joseph Mulcahy

Mary Madigan & Michael Mulcahy

Margaret Sullivan & Matthew Madigan

Johanna Roche & Matthew Madigan (Johanna's not a direct antecedent, but I'll take what I can get)

Margaret Ryan & James Mulcahy

Julia Toner & Patrick Mulvaney

Bridget Rothwell & James Mulvaney

Mary Cullen & Richard Toner

Mary Quinn & John O'Hara

Mary King & John O'Hara

Bridget Hopkins & Michael King

Margaret C---- & Nicholas King

Bridget Kearney & Patrick O'Hara

Mary Gillen & Hugh Quinn

Mary Nora Grimes & Martin Gillen 

If you happen to have photos - preferably wedding photos, but other photos of the couples named would be appreciated, too - please contact me at kathleen.scarlett.ohara AT gmail DOT com.

*we're getting married. I can start saying "we" are obsessed with genealogy now, right?

Baby Pictures

My cousin John just sent me this picture of my great-grandfather, Joseph Mulcahy, and his younger brother Michael.

Joseph is on the left, slightly older and with the adorable curls (so that is where my sister Anna gets her curly hair!) - and is that a riding crop he's holding?! Joseph was born 3 September 1896, and Michael was born 11 March 1899, so I'm guessing this picture was taken in late 1899, maybe right around when Joseph turned 3.

Joseph and Michael were the 4th and 5th in a family that, at the time, included 5 children. I'm not sure where their older siblings are in this photo - in 1899, Margaret would have been about 9, James 7, and Matthew 6. The picture includes only the babies of the family.

What's most interesting to me is that Papa's face really seems never to have changed. Even at the age of 3, you can see the very strong resemblance to his pictures as an adult. (Examples here and here.)

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Grandpa Lanzillotto, soldier

My mom recently called me and said she'd found this image of Grandpa Lanzillotto in his Army uniform on her computer. Did I know where it came from? I did not, I'd never seen it before. But I wanted it, so she e-mailed me a copy. It appears to be a pencil drawing, as best I can tell, but since all we have is a digital file, this picture is really a mystery. No clue where the original is, where it came from, who the artist was, or why it was created.

Lanzillotto relatives, does anyone know anything about this picture? Let me know in the comments, or e-mail me at kathleen.scarlett.ohara AT gmail.com.

Illustrating James Mulvaney's Life

When my cousin Maureen saw that I'd begun posting the documents she'd sent me from her grandfather's life, she sent along a few pictures of him as a young man.

This first picture, Maureen tells me, is possibly of James in the Army Fire Corps. She thinks he may be on the left, in the middle of the group of three. I agree that that's certainly the person in this photograph who looks most like James in the pictures that follow.

This is a photograph of James Mulvaney from his time in the Army. If you look closely, you can see that the buttons on his uniform bear patriotic American Eagle insignia.

This last photograph is of James Mulvaney as a young firefighter for the NYFD.

*******

Now to see what you think, I'm going to repost a mystery picture that we've thought might be of James as a young boy.

Maureen found this among her aunt's things, so we believe, though we don't know, that the subjects are Mulvaneys, most likely James, since, after all, it was in the possession of the James Mulvaney family. James was the oldest of the Mulvaney siblings, so it makes sense that he may have had to pose with each new sibling, too. If the boy is James, it could even be possible that the baby is Nana (Veronica Mulvaney Mulcahy Hopkins), who was the youngest of his siblings. The swarming children at the margin of this photograph lend credence to that theory, as well: James is the oldest, posing with Veronica the youngest (or maybe Harold, second youngest), while the middle children - Mae, Grace, Tom, Willie, Raymond - run around and play. And I think the boy in this picture looks like the James Mulvaney in the pictures above. What do you think? Of course, even if they do look alike, most of the other candidates for the identification of the older boy in the last picture are relatives of James; they'd look like him anyway! I'm interested to know, though, whether you see the resemblence, too. What do you think?

(Not quite) Wordless Wednesday: Christmas fun

This is a goofy picture of, I believe, some Quinn relatives. But I couldn't tell you who. It's probably from the late '20s or early '30s. I've requested identification from my more knowledgeable relatives-who-lived-through-this-holiday, and will update if I hear from them.

Update: I heard from Uncle Jack, who ID's the people in the picture as follows:

First row: John J. O'Hara [partially obscured] (his father/my great-grandfather); Harry Kunze (husband of Helen Quinn Kunze); Charles Kunze (Harry's brother); Bobbie --- Quinn (wife of Martin Quinn); Lillian Kunze --- (Harry's sister)

Second row: "old Uncle Mark" aka Mark Gillen (brother of "Nanny" aka Mary Gillen Quinn, who was my great-great-grandmother); Mark is holding Lillian's daughter; "Aunt Annie" aka Annie Gillen (Nanny's sister); Helen Quinn Kunze

Third row: "little Harry Kunze" (Helen and Harry's son); Terry Quinn

The family that ties all of these people together are the Quinns. Mary Gillen (sister of Mark and Annie, among others) married Hugh Quinn. Their children were Agnes Quinn (m. Bill Maines), Mary Quinn (m. John O'Hara), Helen Quinn (m. Harry Kunze), Martin Quinn (m. Bobbie) and Terrence Quinn (m. Alice, I believe). Some of these Quinns are pictured above, as are members of Mary Gillen Quinn's natal family and Harry Kunze's family.

(Not even close to) Wordless Wednesdays: Molly and Agnes

I love love love this picture of my great-grandmother, Mary (Molly) Quinn O'Hara, and her sister, Agnes Quinn Maines. My copies are 3rd or 4th generation - my grandfather's cousin made copies of her pictures and gave them to him; I photocopied his copies several years ago; I scanned my copies last week. The quality of the images here might reflect that, but I love them anyway. Molly's on the left (from the viewer's perspective), and Agnes is on the right. Agnes was the oldest sister, born c. 1895, and Molly was next oldest, born 22 March 1897.

I love this picture for so many reasons. Molly and Agnes remind me of Laura and I. I can't date this picture exactly, but they're not very old at all; possibly younger than we are now. I love that they're on the roof, where all their important pictures were taken. I love their hats. I love their shoes. I love that they appear to be dressed for two completely different climates. Are they even in the same time zone? And most of all, I love how happy they look, and how they clasp arms like (to use an anachronism) BFFs.

Who Wants to Help?

I'm surprised-but-thrilled by the positive response I've gotten from the Gatto/Lanzillotto side of the family since I started posting Gatto and Lanzillotto records in the past few weeks. Maybe if I'd used Facebook as a promotional tool from the beginning, genealogy would have looked cool to the O'Haras and Mulcahys, too. Instead most-but-not-all of my relatives on the Irish side of the family likely wrote me off as a nerd and a nutjob rolled into one. (Like, ahem, your very own cousin-daughter-niece, my sister Laura.)

And since you all seem so interested, and since I'm completely overwhelmed with work right now and don't have time to do much genealogy myself this week, I thought I'd see if anyone would be interested in my passing a task along to you, dear family.

Does anyone have any old pictures* of the Gatto or Lanzillotto families? If you've got any already scanned and in your computer, especially, there's hopefully nothing stopping you from sending them my way right as soon as you finish reading this post! (kathleen.scarlett.ohara [at] gmail.com) If not, but you've got them laying around the house, tucked away in photo albums, or in frames in the kitchen, let me know about them anyway! If you feel like spending some time scanning them to send to me, I certainly won't say no, but maybe we can make arrangements for me to make some copies or scan them myself next time I'm in NY.

*"Old," of course, is a concept of degrees, and if you know me at all, you know that I think the older, the better!

Pictures of my mom and aunts and Uncle Dom growing up? Cool. (Wait, did I say old pictures? They're not old! These pictures would be more like "new pictures," of course!)

Pictures of Grandma and Grandpa growing up? Even cooler.

Pictures of my great-grandparents? Awesome.

Pictures of my great-grandparents as kids? Super-awesome!

Pictures of Dominick D'Ingeo or any of my other great-great-grandparents? Utterly amazing!

But I want 'em all. I'll take anything you've got.

(One place where Mulcahy-Mulvaney genealogical interest does shine is in pictures, and luckily the few relatives who don't think I'm out of my mind or as boring as gravel - namely John and Maureen - have done a wonderful job of supplying me with a number of photographs of various ancestors, which are available, for your viewing pleasure, right here.)