Branching Out Yields 1930 Photo Prize

 

Change can be good for us.  Recently, I’ve been working on a particularly difficult problem in my well-developed Woodward tree from the late 1700s and early 1800s in Vermont.  With lots of hours invested and little progress, I was getting frustrated and decided to take a break and look at another branch of my tree.

So, in late January, I put the Woodward knot away for a while and began looking again at the under-developed Clark branch, full of Irish immigrants who came to New York in the mid-1800s.  Just as I started, the email from Ancestry arrived saying my DNA results were ready – about 10 days earlier than predicted. 

One of my DNA matches turned out to be a second cousin I didn’t know about and we’ve exchanged information and photos.  She is the granddaughter of my grandfather’s little brother, of whom I knew almost nothing except that his name was John Clark (how’s that for a common name in New York City?).  The best prize of the lot is a 1930 wedding photo of John Clark and Helen Carr. 

Not only is this the only photo I have of John Clark (on the right) but his older brother Thomas, my grandfather, is the best man in the photo (in uniform on the left)!  John and Helen were married on May 18, 1930 at the Church of St. John the Evangelist at 351 East 55^th Street, Manhattan. 

One of the reasons this branch has been difficult is that these two boys, Thomas and his younger brother John, were orphaned, their father dying in 1887, and then their mother in 1898 of pneumonia.  Thomas would have been 15 and John about 9 when their mother died.  There are many blank years with no information on where they were or how they survived.  But now I know they look well and celebrated John’s marriage in 1930.  There is something truly inspiring and motivating about finding a beautiful old photo!  Change can be good.