This page from the family scrapbook created by Aunt Janette traces the lineage of my best friend Bonnie's maternal great grandmother Jane Fitzgerald (O'Brien) back to Irish roots. Direct ancestors have been underlined in green and a portrait of Bonnie's great great grandmother Mary Leonard (Fitzgerald) was included.
[Courtesy of Bonnie Poppe]
Bonnie and her cousin Lyn traveled to Ireland this past April to see what more could be discovered about their kin and I expect I'll learn more during my annual visit later this summer.
I love this photo--even the dog looks very serious. It's on another page of the family scrapbook assembled by best friend's Aunt JanetteTrainer.
Taken about 1898 in the Klondike and titled "Fitzgerald Camp, Wright Creek"* it depicts Bonnie's 30-year old great uncle John Henry O'Brien who had left Indiana that year to join the Alaska Gold Rush.** "Uncle Billy Fitz" might be his mother Jane's sibling William L. T. Fitzgerald (1839-1920) or he could be one of her cousins, another William Fitzgerald (1844-1917) because "Chas Fitz" is his son Charles J. Fitzgerald (1878-1957).***
[Courtesy of B. Poppe]
[The Gold and Coal Fields of Alaska, Together With The Principal Steamer Routes and Trails. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Charles D. Walcott, Director. Note: Published January, 1898. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]
It's clear that John didn't strike it rich in the Klondike because in the 1900 Census of Alaska John O'Brien was working on the White Pass & Yukon Railway**** construction as a "plummer."
[Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.:
National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, 1854 rolls.]
*The name of the photographers appears to be M. Bros. which I haven't been able to identify so far. The only Wright Creek I find is in British Columbia.
**There is an enormous amount of information about the Gold Rush online, if you want to know more this is a great place to start.
***I'm so confused. Maybe Bonnie can clarify this? Also, since I have no idea who "Alice luley" could be, I can't identify her uncle and grandfather, the only other men labeled in the photo.
****This narrow-gauge railroad is still in operation. you can visit their website here which includes a link to a 1900 magazine article here.
In today's search for an appropriate image for my "Sunday Drive" I decided to take a look at this family photograph from my best friend's collection. Once again her Aunt Janette has provided a lot of genealogical data about the people pictured and even the place where they were gathered on that long-ago day. A quick glance might lead one to think that they were in an automobile...but no.
[Courtesy of B. Poppe]
[Detail of photo above]
On closer inspection it's clear that the group have posed behind a prop painted to look like a car, apparently outdoors because the trees behind them look convincing. What kind of park would have such a thing?
Janette got the place-name (slightly but understandably) wrong--it was RobisonPark*, an amusement park opened in 1896 by the Fort Wayne Consolidated Railway** seven miles northwest of Fort Wayne on the St. Joseph River.
The impulse to have one's photograph taken sitting in one of those newfangled automobiles wasn't restricted to residents of Indiana either. Here's an example of a family in Scotland:
[William Lees, (Family group sitting in a studio car prop), cabinet card between 1898 and 1914] Portobello, Scotland,
source: Ryerson University Library]
As to the names of the folks in the first photograph, Janette has done such a good job of identifying them in her legible handwriting, I'll leave it to her, except to point out that my friend's mother Mary Elizabeth Trainer is the youngest child in the group.
*A short illustrated history of Robison Park can be viewed here.
**The first electric trolley company in Fort Wayne.
***1896-1919
****To learn more about cars in early photographs, go here.
