Photo # 8 Friends on a Camel

Friends on a Camel, a photo by midgefrazel on Flickr.

See the tiny photo number on the ground?

If someone emailed you and said that they had a unsent postcard photo of your grandparents riding camels, wouldn't you freak out? Well, that what Sue probably thought when I contacted her after finding her grandparent's gravestones and family photos online! Really, how many people have this type of photo?

In 1960, my maternal grandmother, a widow since 1955, took a 32 day cruise to the Mediterranean, with friends Douglas and Louise Young. Douglas and Louise were best  friends with my grandparents and I remember them well. Although this photo is not of my family, there is an important research story to be told here.

I have looked before for Douglas and Louise Young in Google searches and on Ancestry.com and not found much. The city directories for Providence, RI and the census years of 1920 and 1930 told me that I had the right people and their names. I put my notes in a file folder in my section I call "Other People" meaning they are not family, not extended family and not clients.

They appear in a family tree of an Ancestry.com member named Mike. I left him a message through the Ancestry contact system. While I waited, I spent time with his tree and enjoyed the portrait photos of Mr. & Mrs. Young. When I learned that they are buried at the large cemetery called Swan Point in Providence, I went to Find-a-Grave and looked.[Lewis Douglas Young] [Louise May Gibbs]

Sue had put up their life story, photos and gravestones. She took photos of the next two gravestone generations back. I was sure that I had the right people. After all, I went to their fancy 50th wedding anniversary party and I attended something at their home in Providence.

I emailed Sue and got an almost immediate response despite that she was in Florida on vacation.  I started sending her copies of her grandmother with mine in scans of some Kodachrome slides. It is great fun and very rewarding to give people a look at photos they have never seen. Her grandfather probably took those slides as my grandmother told me he always had a camera.

This morning, I found the other envelope of photos. I dated them and my mother wrote on the envelope. Grandma wanted me to go with her on this trip but my mother (whose nose was out of joint because my grandmother did not invite her too) wouldn't let me go. But, we did take grandmother to NY and visit with her before the ship left. It was my grandmother's last big vacation. She was 67. Yes, she also rode a camel but I have no photos of her on one. Drat!

I mailed the photo to Sue this morning. Giving people back their family is the greatest genealogy adventure of them all.

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