Solving Mysteries

A lifetime love of mysteries, which I inherited from both my parents, has made family research all the more fun for me. Who are these people in the unlabeled pictures? When was the picture taken and where? Is the furniture in the picture a prop or a treasured family sofa or chair?

This woman seems to be wearing a nurse's uniform
from sometime around the Civil War years.
Who in my family was a nurse at that time?

I apply so many strategies and trails of clues as I sort through these photos. Sometimes I'll recognize a similar background or piece of furniture in two photos, which can help me tie the subjects together. Other times it's the set of the eyes or a hairline that helps me identify a long-dead relative. Occasionally a first name has been written on the back of a photo or tintype, which may help me figure out who the person is. If my memory doesn't immediately make the connection, my next step is to search on ancestry.com.

Little Edna

The Find Person option for an already established tree allows me to type in a single name to see if I can find a match. Today that option paid off. I have a somewhat damaged tintype of a young child (could be a boy or a girl) that looks to be from the late 1800s. On the back of the tintype, in barely readable handwriting is the name "Edna," with something else written below, which I can't quite make out. As I type in "Edna," the name Edna Wilson (b. 1896-) comes up. Edna was a younger sister of my maternal grandmother Pearl Wilson McClellan (1894-1918).

I knew nothing about Edna up until today, and I still have very little information on her. According to some hints, she may have died in Texas at some point, which is where the Wilsons were born and raised. According to others, she may have married a man named Sydney Cousins and eventually died in Louisiana. That's the thing with the information one finds on Ancestry. It's a little like asking different aged relatives about someone—each story is different and no more reliable than the last. Still, as the hints and clues pile up, eventually some sort of truth is usually found.

In this Wilson family picture, I think that must be Edna on the far right. My Grandma Pearl is the third one from the right, so the girl with the bow in her hair would be about the right age for Edna. Edna was definitely still alive and living at home in the 1910 census, which would be about the same time that this picture was taken. The two women on the left are most likely Mabel (b. 1982) and Myrtie (b. 1889) or Margaret (b.1890). The man with the hat is probably Grover Cleveland Wilson (1884-1979) and the other man is probably Herbert (1887-1950).

That jawline should be a clue. Could this be my paternal
great-grandmother Mary (Mollie) Ophelia Gray?

As I've mentioned before, my Grandma Pearl died in the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, when my father was four. There must have been some kind of rift between the Wilsons and my grandfather J.Y., because he and my father didn't seem to stay in contact with them after Pearl died. I thought I had almost no pictures from Grandma Pearl's side of the family, but with the discovery of the tintype of my great-aunt Edna, I'm hoping that I have more that just haven't been identified yet. Just more mysteries to solve.

Those eyes are quite striking.
Perhaps they're kin to Edna?