GETTING A CONSENSUS

Genealogy is not a real scientific endeavor for the average person, much as we would like it to be. If money and superior brains were no object, then this average person, whom we will now call "Me", might be able to come up with more definitive answers. But since they are an object for me, having neither money nor superior brain, I'm going to ask you to throw your two cents in on this little problem and tell me what you think.

Below are some photographs. I can identify 3 of them easily, because they are of my grandma Jessie. Now here she is, along with a few facts about her.


My mother, Virginia, is the little tyke in the chair. I'd guess this was taken on the farm in Caldwell, Kansas in the spring 1912, as my mother was born in June of 1911. Grandma, Jessie Davis Ryland, was married in 1905. Bob (really Nevalyn Eugene) was born in 1906 and Florence in 1909. Grandma would go on to have 4 other children, divorce her husband in 1929, move the family to California in 1931 and die in 1947.

The picture above is undated. The hat tells me it was during the "flapper" era. For purposes of this blog, only her face was necessary, but the full picture shows her in a very frothy but hangy dress. Without dating the picture more closely, I don't know if it was taken before or after her divorce, but my inclination is to think that this was her trying to be fetching once she became available again.

Family stories my mother told were that she had a boyfriend just before she came to California. He wanted her to move to Missouri, where he lived, and she packed up the kids and started the drive, but when she hit the Missouri sultry heat she turned around and drove instead to California where her oldest son was in Hollywood hoping to get his break in pictures. He told her that jobs were plentiful and she would have no problem finding work, which turned out not to be true at all because of the depression.

In California she married again. None of her children ever told any of us cousins that she had been married a second time. I learned this long after my mother died, and I asked my dad who "Mrs. Fred Abel" was, this person whose named appeared as a witness on their marriage certificate. He said it was Grandma Jessie, and that it was a short marriage. He thought Jessie probably figured Fred would provide some help in her getting set up in California. Whether this was the Missouri fellow or someone else will never be known.

Grandma Jessie worked hard to support her children; at various times she worked at an ice cream store, a roadside vegetable market, as a practical nurse and later in life as a companion to a very crabby and disagreeable old woman. However, in what spare time she had, she went dancing, and after all the children were raised she and her beau danced at all the ballrooms around Southern California. She had plans to be married, but at age 62, before the marriage could take place, she died of a sudden heart attack.

Now here is where I need your help. There exists a picture in our family that merely says on the back "Grandma" It is thought by my cousin who has the original that this is a picture of our grandmother when she was young -- that is, Grandma Jessie. I am not convinced that it is. Take a look at it. What do you think?

If it is our grandma Jessie, taken at a much earlier date, you need to know that Jessie was born in 1885. If the person in this picture is 15, are those the kinds of clothes that were worn in 1900? Are the features of this young girl consistent with the features of grandma Jessie in the three pictures above. I don't know, but I wonder.

Here's who I think it may be. Below is Louise Hall Ryland, who was my mother's grandma. She was born in November 1863 and married in November of 1879. She was very young when she married - not yet 16. The picture below is the only picture we have of Lousie Ryland, and it is on a memorial card made at the time of her death from cancer in 1919.

I am much more comfortable thinking the young girl is Louise Hall and I base my theory strictly on facial features. And so while this poll isn't scientific, and the results at any rate wouldn't solve anything, I want you to weigh in and tell me, do you think this young girl is Jessie or Louise? And if so, why? Thanks for your help.