My Inner-Child Helps my Aunt Solve a Family History Issue

[from my "other" blog 4 June 2012]

There he is, that little guy! It's great to be the oldest grandchild at least on my Dad's side of the family. Christmas 1958 was apparently a major extravaganza that way.

I scanned this one at fairly high resolution mainly so I could see all my haul of toys (I remember the horse and the jack-in-the-box). Then I sent it to my Aunt with a couple of other photos not knowing it would solve a frustrating family history problem for her.

The photo was taken in the house she lived in when she was a teen. She recently prepared a wonderful book on my grandmother's life and regretted in there that she had no picture of the living room in that house. Well, here it is! Disregarding the young cowpoke and the debris of Christmas frenzy, she was able to identify all sorts of features in that room from the wood return air vent on the floor to the drapes she had to clean and suffer finger pricks from the hooks on top. She also said the gift wrap disarray actually helps hide how threadbare the carpet was.

I had thrown this picture in just for fun with another picture of my Great-Grandparents and a couple of people I couldn't identify for sure. My Aunt named them as well as the location of the photo (in close-by Bountiful!). 

The moral of this story is simply that Family History is best when it is not a solo project. Which is sort of the whole point of family anyway.