I've encountered a spate of difficult photos of late. Here's another for anyone who loves a challenge. The reverse of this postcard photograph, found in a Nanaimo, BC antique shop, reads:
The challenge here is that the two married women are identified by their husband's names. The youngest daughter Annie is, presumably, Annie Mcauley. So I started my search looking for a Dan Mcauley who had a daughter, Annie. I found one exact match after an Ancestry search, a Dan Mcauley in the 1891 Scotland Census living in Barrhead, Barrhead and Levern, Renfrewshire with a daughter Annie. I found another possibility on Ancestry.com and a few others that might fit.
My next thought was to try and find a Fred Allan who married a Mcauley. I didn't find anything on Ancestry. I headed over to Familysearch.org. Nothing.
The house in the image looks like a first homestead of the type you would find on the prairies. It was taken after 1907. While the image was found in British Columbia, that doesn't necessarily mean it was taken in Canada. It could very well have been, but my experience is that the photos I find are pretty well evenly split between Canadian and American images.
Another image to remain a mystery?
UPDATE November 21, 2012: This once-a-mystery postcard is on its way to Alberta to be reunited with a descendant of Mrs. Dan McCauley, who has been identified in the comments section as Mary Norn McCauley. The two other women are Mary McCauley Allen and Annie McCauley.
A couple short words would have clarified things a bit - is it "Mrs. Dan Mcauley [with] daughter Mrs. Fred Allen and [her] children?"
ReplyDeleteWhich is the "standing Annie"? I assumed the one in the middle-back. Is standing Annie Mrs. Fred's daughter or Mrs. Dan Mcauley's daughter?
Add to your woes, Mcauley could be spelled McCauley or even MacCauley" and Allen spelled Alan, and/or Allan in the records.
The building is a "log cabin" - which rules out a lot of the grassland prairies.
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DeleteI know, I know. I think it's wonderful that someone actually labelled this photograph, but an added bonus would have been that they label it as if they are recording the information for someone who may not know who the people are at all. Who, When and Where is a good starting point.
ReplyDeleteNo, you wouldn't find this on the grassland prairie, first homes were more likely to be sod or other material. I was using the term "prairie" loosely to refer to the interior plains of Alberta, Saskatchewan & Manitoba. The parkland, where I grew up in Alberta, you could definitely find these on a homestead. Certainly could be somewhere even more wooded, like be BC, Washington State...and so on. I just wish they'd helped us out a little and given a location.
This photo of Allen - McCauley is a picture of my grandfather's sister annie McCauley at the homestead near Pigeon Lake Alberta.
ReplyDeleteHi Bill,
ReplyDeleteThanks for identifying this image of Mrs. Dan McCauley. I bought this image at an antique store in Nanaimo. Have you seen this picture before?
Also in the picture is my grandfather's grandma, Mary McCauley (Norn) and my grandfather's mother who goes by the same name Mary.
ReplyDeleteOh! How exciting!! :)
ReplyDelete