Friday's Faces from the Past - Hello Aunt Sarona!

Sarona Källman & Stanley Alvine (1year) ↔Lydia Abrahamsson and Albin Kallman (7mo)

This is another photo that arrived from my second cousin in Sweden. The photo is marked "Albin 7 months Stanley 1 year". The lady on the right is my grandmother Lydia with her baby (my uncle) Albin on her lap. The woman on the left was unknown to my second cousin and although I readily recognized my grandmother my first thought was, boy I wish grandma had taken the picture of just her and uncle Albin. Who needs a photo of some unknown woman? I put the photo into my adobe photoshop and quickly transformed the photo into one of just Grandma and Uncle Albin. A cousin in California is the only child of baby Albin in Grandma's lap.  I knew she would want the photo. I emailed it to her and in the last moment also emailed the original, in case she cared.

She immediately recognized the other woman! "That's Aunt Sarona and our Dad's cousin Stanley Alvine on her lap." Great Aunt Sarona was my grandfathers older sister and Lydia's sister-in-law. I had only a grainy snapshot of Sarona and her husband in their later years. Sarona and her husband Hugo had moved out to California from Illinois. I had seen her and my grandfather's other two sisters, Olga and Tekla, only once or twice in my life and I was a child at the time. My California cousin had grown up knowing these aunts.

Family History lessons for me were:

1. Those "unknown" people were photographed with our ancestors because they were important to them. Spend a little time researching them. They may also be someone who was part of who you are and someone you would have liked to know. Don't be so quick to "photoshop" them out of the family.

2. Share your findings with others. Others may have the important answers to questions that you didn't even think to ask yet.

Thank you cousin!