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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Never stop looking for genealogy sources


I got a surprise Facebook message from a distant relative informing me of another huge collection of photographs taken by my Great-grandmother. But I need to backup a little. My Great-grandmother, Margaret Godfrey Jarvis Overson was the daughter of Charles Jarvis, a professional photographer. Charles Jarvis was born in London, England in 1855. His daughter, Margaret, my Great-grandmother, was born in St. George, Utah in 1878. I knew her quite well as she came to our home every holiday for dinner. She was a genealogist and a professional photographer. I have hundreds of her photographs. She was one of the very few pioneer women professional photographers in the West or anywhere else for that matter.

One of my repeated and persistent questions was what happened to all of her early photographs and what happened to the negatives? I got a lot of the photos and negatives but nothing like all that she took. Because of my blogging and being on Facebook, I found out that the photos are sitting in the St. Johns, Arizona Family History Center. I am hoping that I can get the opportunity to make scans of all of the photos. What a find!!!

Here is the moral of this story. You need to be looking and you need to remember that source documents might turn up in very unlikely places.

3 comments:

  1. Social Media at its finest helping you and others reach out and find this great historical collection.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know of Glass plates, negatives and and prints used in the published geneology book.

    ReplyDelete