#52Ancestors - FAMILY PHOTO - Who's Who?

Family Photo

I haven't done a very good job of organizing my ancestral photos.  My computer has a folder called "Family Pictures and Info" where I dump everything I find.  Of course, I always mean to go back to sort and label.  But that hasn't happened yet.  That's how I ended up with this series of photos with the following tags:

Levi Byram Hammon family

Hammon Family 1940s

Hammon Sisters

Sadly, I don't even know where I got these pictures from though I am assuming I took them from either Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.com.  I am fairly confident that they are the same family and I vaguely remember that at one point my mother told me who these people were.  There is one thing I do know - the man in the middle photo with the hat (in the middle of the top row) is my grandfather.  But, of course, I don't know how I know that.  

After some review on FamilySearch, here's what I found out:

Top Photo

Front Rose: Martha Jane Belnap, Levi Byram Hammon, Polly

Middle Row: D Glenn (my grandfather), Jane, Lettie, Frank

Back Row: Amasa, Rhoda, Robena, Ethel

I am grateful to the contributor  who added this information.  I found several copies of this picture but there was only ONE person who added the names.

Middle Photo

This photo was labeled Frank Hammon's Brothers & Sisters - August 1937 by a contributor on FamilySearch.  Now I'll just need some amazing facial recognition skills to figure the rest out.

I haven't yet found out which sister is which in the last photo.  Time to turn to Ancestry - wish me luck.  So PLEASE when you upload a photo, identify as much as you can of people, place and time.  If you do, I promise to keep a record of that!

#52Ancestors - LIBRARY - Surname Books

LIBRARY

I've only had a few opportunities to research in a genealogical library.  There were a couple of rushed visits to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and a longer, more focused, visit to the Allen County Public Library (ACPL) in Fort Wayne, IN.  It's definitely something I would love to do again.

But genealogy books have always been in my home, both as a child and as an adult.  So I am happy to use them in the libraries I visited.  I was especially excited to find the book that my father had worked on with his distant cousin, Mayo Bundy.

These kinds of books are invaluable when trying to dig deeper into family lore and relationships.  It was a thrill to find a copy in the ACPL.

There are also several books on my mother's side written by those studying the Hammon and Belnap family.  Here is one I've had on my shelves through the years - Gold Medal Pioneers - full of journal entries from when they crossed the plains to Utah.

When you run into a deadend while looking for records, search for a book instead!  Or at least visit a library.