Still In Dungannon. . .

Well, I had four pictures lined up for this post but had to pull one of them. The picture's in good shape but the genealogy proved lacking. There is still hope that I can include it later, but a couple people are missing from the 1940 census and I'm not at all sure of the identification of 3/5 of the people in the picture. I'll hit the Internet and see what I can come up with. Meanwhile, we're still in Dungannon with the Brinkeys.

This picture is my grandmother, Bertha Brinkey Wernet (1882-1969). I assume she was still a Brinkey at the time of the picture. She married when she was 26 and she looks younger than that here. I've been wondering about this print, however. I scanned it in color since I could desaturate it later if necessary, but I like the dark green cardboard folder which protected the print all these years. What I wondered about, was the tone of the picture; I certainly wouldn't call it sepia because it matches its folder so well. My guess would be that my grandmother kept the picture herself and, finding it unnecessary to display, kept it safe from ultraviolet light that faded all the other pictures from this time period to the many shades of sepia.

Great time for an example. This portrait is my great aunt Mary (1885-1981), Bertha's younger sister. It's more typical of what you would expect to see as sepia. Not only that, it's a good portrait of Mary.

The last picture of this post is the youngest Brinkey sister, Agnes (1889-1960), and the youngest brother, Herman (1887-1974), with a couple of Herman's horses. Just my luck that the horse on the left is the same shade as its background. If it had been just a little more different, I would've emphasized it a bit and the snapshot would have benefited I think. But, it's not too bad and I was able to clean it up overall pretty well. Whenever I look at this picture I get a flash of FDR and my attention is drawn immediately to Herman's cigar. Of course, Roosevelt was a bigger man - never mind that he smoked cigarettes in a holder, and not cigars - but it still makes me think him. Maybe it was the two years I spent aboard his namesake aircraft carrier.

Some Brinkey Portraits. . .

I'm going to take a couple days and restore portraits of the Brinkeys, the family you met in my previous post. I'm also trying to get some information from someone online about one of my great great uncles who served in two different regiments of Ohio Volunteer Infantry. I saw a reference to him in a blog the other night and I'd like to see some documentation since it would support a suspicion I had. Anyway, back to the Brinkeys.

This is my grandmother, Bertha, then about six years old, standing with her grandmother, Walburga Pfeffer Brinkey (1818-1896). When her grandfather, Lewis, died in 1886 Bertha was about four years old. Shortly thereafter, she started spending each night at her grandmother's house nearby and they became very close, an arrangement which lasted until Walburga's death.

This portrait of Adam (1841-1902) was taken about 1863 when he was 22. He didn't marry and start his family for another 18 years.

In June of 1881, Adam married Kate Hagan (1851-1932) in St. Philip Neri Church, Dungannon. Both Adam and Kate were lifelong residents of Columbiana County. I reworked this portrait several times and I'm still not satisfied with it. . . I just don't know what to do about it. I guess I need to get smarter and get more experience with Photoshop.

The Brinkeys of Dungannon

We'll stay in Ohio for awhile, but switch families to the Brinkeys. They came from the town of Wolschwiller in upper Alsace, where they lived for a couple hundred years after coming from Italy. Jacob Brinkey, whose wife, Susanna Weber, had died nearly 10 years before, brought his five children to America in the early 1830s through the Port of Baltimore. They settled in Columbiana County, Ohio by 1840. Lewis Brinkey (1812-1886) was the eldest son and married Walburga Pfeffer in St. Philip Neri Church, the oldest Catholic Church in Ohio. The youngest son, Maurice, enlisted in the Union Army from Illinois in 1862, reenlisted in time for Vicksburg in 1863, and reenlisted again, this time to be captured with the rest of his company in southwestern Virginia and died five months later in Andersonville prison. But Maurice's tale is another story for another time.

Lewis and Walburga's first and third sons both died young. The family in the picture above is Adam's (1841-1902), in about 1892. Up on the porch, from left to right, are grandmother Walburga, the "baby" Agnes, mother Kate Hagan Brinkey and Adam. The children spread across the first step down are the twins, Lewis and Jim, Herman, Mary, and Bertha. Mother penned a note on this snapshot that the picture was taken before the additions were put on the house.

This, I believe, is the same house after considerable renovation. I suspect they more than doubled the house's living area. I had assumed that was done while Adam was still alive, but there's no reason the boys couldn't have overseen the effort later. Bertha, my grandmother, was the only one of the kids to marry and leave the house. Lewis died in 1907 and Jim and Agnes died just before the 60s took hold, leaving Mary and Herman.

This is the same house again, and I don't know when it was taken, but it was probably shortly after Mary died in the early 1980s. Herman had died in 1974. Last summer when Cathie and I took Mom out to Ohio, she tried to show me where the Brinkey farm was. It was a path-finding failure - my only clue is Dungannon - but a pleasant drive for all that. We had started from the cemetery, but I guess things just looked different enough to Mom to foil our efforts. I hope to have another shot at finding it about Labor Day if my travel plans work out.

Here's another undated photo from the Brinkey farm. That's Jim and Herman harvesting wheat. This picture (or at least the print) has always bothered me, but it doesn't any longer. I think the photographer, probably Mary or Agnes, was falling over when she snapped the shot. I don't recall how many degrees I had to rotate the picture to stand the verticals upright, but my anxiety is gone now that I don't have to worry about the mower rolling over on Jim or Herman and upending the team in the process.

Aunt Lizzie

Alright, bear with me while I cover some new ground here. If you'll review my previous post, the third picture down is a portrait of Charles Wernet, Old William's youngest son. Well, on July 5, 1879, he was 21 years old and he married Elizabeth Shonts, a beautiful 18-year-old young lady, who I know even less about than Charles.

They were Austin Wernet's aunt and uncle, and Mom's great aunt and great uncle. While Charles died in 1925, when mom was four, Aunt Lizzie lived till 1948.

So far as I can tell, they lived in Hanover Township, Columbiana County at least until Uncle Charles died, then apparently she moved to this house in Alliance.

I don't know how old she was when this picture was taken, but she certainly appears to be a pleasant soul, someone you'd enjoy spending time with. Lizzie Shonts Wernet (1861-1948).

Too Rainy to Take Pictures. . .

But don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Not only is it wet out, the current temperature is only 76°. When I realized it wasn't a fluke, I had to do a cost benefit analysis, weighing the rain against the cooler temperatures. Sad to say, the analysis was inconclusive, so I've been reading, watching Lord Jim, and writing this post. At least one of the weather sites is forecasting scattered thunderstorms for the next two days as well. . . we can only hope. In any case, I haven't been idle.

If you've been following my blog all along, you've seen this fine fellow before. This is my great-great-grandfather, William Wernet (1818-1901) or, as mother used to refer to him, Old William. The difference between this version of the portrait and the other one, is that I re-scanned the original and did my restoration this time using Photoshop. The previous version was about as good as I could do with the program I was using then. Oh! And I got enough experience in the last several months that I was able to reattempt it.

This Wernet family portrait (minus the lovely Mable, who was in Cleveland at the time) would have benefited from some fill flash. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to do that after the fact even with Photoshop. I was able to scan it at a high enough resolution that the size is large enough to see some detail that had been missing previously and the restoration went fairly well. Up on the porch are William Alexander (without his straw hat), and his wife, Eliza Conlin Wernet. On the stone steps are my grandfather, Austin C, his elder sister Alice, and their little brother, Vincent (or Vint). Vint left home shortly after this picture was taken, working his way through Colorado and the Rockies and settled in Rathdrum, Idaho. Mother was interested in whatever she could learn about Vint because of the stories she heard growing up. Every Christmas, he would write my grandmother, Austin's wife, and tell her the year’s news from Idaho and eastern Washington state. He loved Idaho, where he owned the eastern half of a mountain a dozen miles or so north of Coeur d’Alene. So in 1999 mother flew from Dallas to Salt Lake City and I flew from Atlanta to meet her for a genealogy trek to northern Idaho. They were so helpful in the Kootenai County Courthouse that she found all the records she was looking for in less than an hour and we found ourselves four days ahead of schedule. That gave us the time for sightseeing and we drove through Washington, up into the Canadian Rockies (including Banff and Lake Louise) then back into Idaho, where we inspected the Snake River, crossed into Oregon to shop in Pendleton, back to Boise and down to Salt Lake again. That was the best road trip I've ever taken. My only regret is, of course, that I didn't then have the cameras I have now. . . or I'd be showing you pictures of the Great Northwest.

This portrait is of Charles Wernet (1858-1925), Old William’s youngest son, who lived nearby his whole life. I don't know very much about him. His portrait required very little in the way of restoration, and he's such a handsome gentleman that I felt like I ought to include him.

And this last little treat is because you've been so good. The portrait was in pretty sad shape and, alas, there were no notes on the back of the picture. I don't think mother knew who she was, and this is one case where she didn't even speculate. For my part, the child is so beautiful I had to at least try to salvage her portrait.

I'll give you the next Austin weather report when I've got a few more pictures to post. Bye.

Too Hot to Take Pictures. . .

Hereabouts, (that'd be Austin, son) if a person could figure out how to keep from going outside, he'd probably be okay. That's how it is in my case. David, Amy, and Gail left last week and should now be celebrating several birthdays and visiting David's uncle Richard in France. I haven't checked, but I suspect the temperatures there are somewhat less oppressive. Gillian, who also visited, is back in Atlanta. For my part, since it's too hot to be outside taking pictures, I've been scanning pictures from Mother's collection. I'd scanned most of them previously, but data storage has gotten so cheap in the last few years that I decided I probably ought to take the opportunity to re-scan some of the especially good ones at a higher resolution and practice my image restoration skills in an effort to enhance the selected photographs. So I scanned about 45 pictures today, which I'll work on as I get the chance, and spent the rest of the day restoring three of them, presented below.

I understand many of you aren't interested in family photos of folks with whom you probably have no connection. But, on the other hand, you could just like old photos - if they're any good; so, take a look and, if I've chosen well, maybe you'll appreciate these.

This first one carried a notation in Mother's hand that the subject is her grandfather, William Alexander Wernet (1847-1923) and that he's standing in front of the corn crib. The original picture is small, about 2 x 3, scratched, and badly faded. I always liked the composition well enough and appreciated the possibilities if I could scan it at a high enough resolution. I also really liked his hat, long before I knew it (the subject of the picture) was my great-grandfather.

This one is my grandfather, Austin Conlin Wernet (1879-1953). He's dressed to the nines, apparently showing off his new horse. I assume that's his barn and haystack in the background, but I can't recall enough details be sure. The hill seems right, though in my day there seemed to be more large trees nearby. Anyway, it's a nice-looking horse and I like his hat too.

This picture had no notes, but I think I'm safe in saying that the subject here is my Uncle Arthur (1917-1997), one of Mother's three brothers. The light-colored overalls in this picture always threw me, but by the time I came along I guess fashions had changed; he and his brother Jim both wore blue denim overalls and billed caps. The straw hat he's sporting here could even be his grandfather's (see picture one). I remember the horse that he's showing off as Jerry. When we were growing up, there were two other horses named Tony and Dick. They were both dark brown with black manes and tails, virtually indistinguishable from each other to someone with my eye for horseflesh. That was enough to make Jerry my "favorite", though it should be said that we're talking about seeing these horses once every few years. But, if I was ever going to be a cowboy, Jerry was the horse for me.

I've got plenty of pictures to work on before I have to start scanning again, but I need to do some planning for my next trip east too. By all reports that's where the rain is and, if we can't get any in Texas, I don't mind driving to the East Coast to remind myself what it's like.