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I reunite identified family photos that I find in antique shops and second hand stores with genealogists and family historians. If you see one of your ancestors here and would like to obtain the original, feel free to contact me at familyphotoreunion [ at ] yahoo [ dot ] com. I also accept donations of pre-1927 images to be reunited. I hope you enjoy your visit!
~The Archivist


Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Oscar Cash, 1845-1930's, From Kentucky to Missouri to Washington and Oregon


After having some success with the Edna Dalling image from last week's post, I thought I'd try revisiting a few other mystery photos from the Family Photo Reunion collection to see if I could uncover anything new about them, too.

This image was originally posted as one of three cabinet cards taken in Kittitas County, Washington (see original post here).  The photo was merely identified as "Oscar Cash, 1897" and was taken at the Pautze Studio in Ellensburg, Washington.

A new search for Oscar Cash in Kittitas County on Ancestry.com brought up several entries in a local history book, "An Illustrated History of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas Counties...."  If we have the correct Oscar Cash (and I must emphasize that this is not a certainty, but only a good possibility), he was the son of William and Elisabeth (Duncan) Cash1.  Oscar was born October 13, 1845 in Harrison County, Kentucky.  He was one of eleven children born to William and Elisabeth; the other siblings were Thornton b. 1843, Mary b. 1846, Talitha, b. 1848, Milton, b. 1851, America, b. 1855, Ellen, b. 1858, John H., b. 1861 and Mollie.  I do not have information on the other children.   In 1856 the family moved on, settling in Lone Jack, Missouri.  There Oscar learned the blacksmith trade from his father.  Oscar's father had been doing quite well financially prior to the civil war, but lost nearly all of his property during the war2.   Oscar left for the coal mining town of Cle-Elum, Washington sometime between 1880 and 1900.  Oscar's brother John H. Cash followed in 1900.

In 1903, Oscar sold a quarter section of land near Cle Elum to the town for the sum of $20001.  He then moved to Portland, Oregon where he lived with his wife, Emma3.  Oscar's last census appearance is in 1930, at the age of 83 living with Emma and two nephews with the surname Robenow in the happily-named town of Sunnyside, in Clackamas County, Oregon4.

As always, we would need a known and identified photograph to compare ours with, to verify that this is the same Oscar Cash.


1 Interstate Publishing Company. An Illustrated history of Klickitat, Yakima and Kittitas Counties : with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington. Unknown: Interstate Publishing Company, 1904; pp. 307-308, 919, digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed May 31, 2013).
2 Union Historical Company, The History of Jackson County, Missouri: Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns, Etc., Biographical Sketches of Its Citizens, Jackson County in the Late War.... Jackson County, Missouri: Union Historical Company, 1881, p. 932, digital images, Google Books. http://google.com/books : accessed May 31 2013.
3 "United States Census, 1910," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MLYV-CCF : accessed 01 Jun 2013), Oscar Cash, 1910.
4 "United States Census, 1930," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XC9C-K2C : accessed 04 Jun 2013), Oscar Cash, 1930.>

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