Sunday, February 19, 2023

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 8 - I Can Identify

It’s another week of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. The prompt this week is “I Can Identify”.

Several years ago my cousin’s daughter sent me scans of some photos from her grandmother’s (my aunt) collection, along with some notes she had made.The collection had been handed down from Tecla Kolk, her father’s cousin. Many of the photos are unidentified.This is a photo from the collection. 

The baby is unidentified, but Tecla said it was a ‘boy cousin’. My cousin’s notes indicated that the photo is on black cardstock and appears to be of the same vintage as a photo of Tecla taken 1898-1899. Tecla had five male cousins, including my grandfather William and his brother, Harry.

  • Harry - born Sep 1895
  • Arthur - born Apr 1898
  • William - born Nov 1898
  • Paul - born Feb 1902
  • Albert - born Jun 1904

If this photo was really taken 1898-1899, it cannot be either Paul or Albert as they were not yet born. This baby appears to be about a year old, and certainly no older than 2. Harry would have been 3-4 years old at the time, so he this cannot be Harry. That leaves only Arthur or William as possibilities.

I have no photos of Arthur, but I do have a photo of my grandfather. This is a photo of William with his older brother Harry, taken when William was 8 months old. 

If I compare the photos, I can say that the face shape, particularly the jaw line, is very similar. The nose on both babies is also almost identical. The eyes are not the same, but with a baby that age, it is hard to say. It could be sleepy eyes in the unidentified baby. I do see both my sister and my grandson in the unidentified baby.

I can’t say that I have 100% identified the baby in the first photo, but I believe it is my grandfather, William Kolk. I can say that the baby is definitely a Kolk.

5 comments:

  1. Looking at the faces, I think you're correct that the photo is a Kolk! Enjoyed your post.

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  2. Notice that in the second photo, both of the boys have side parts in their hair. Usually, girls had center parts, and boys had side parts. I don't know whether both girls and boys wore bracelets, but I would consider the possibility that the child in the first photo is actually a girl.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is an interesting point, however, the information that was passed along with the photo is that this is a photo of a male cousin. Also, Tecla, the woman who passed the photo on, had no female cousins born before 1902, so if she was correct about the photo being from 1897-1898, this could not be them.

      One possibility is that this is not a KOLK cousin. It's possible that this was a cousin on her mother's side. I've not done any research on her mother's side of the family, so I don't know if she had female cousins on that side. It is worth looking into.

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  3. I have a photo that a 2nd or 3rd cousin sent me too. There was nothing written on it but she thought the woman in the photo resembled me. Neither of us has been able to identify the person yet but the only person we have in common is my great grandfather's sister.

    ReplyDelete

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