Larry's family, restored

My interest in family history and computers has morphed into restoring old family photos. Sister Betty
http://www.gallaarky.blogspot.com
saw the photo below where I have erased Sister Helen and wanted me to work on this photo of her husband's family. The original on her blog, has a large white scratch running through the picture. Here is the picture without the scracth, but what Sister needs to do is rescan the photo at 300 or 600 resolution to give me a much larger picture to work on. I did the best I could with the small photo.

Magic Picture

Look, Helen, I took your old picture and edited out all the scratches, folds and ugly parts. It looks much better now. Is that old Ring in the shadow of the house? Did we still have her in 61?

Thief! Thief!!

Like, the big monster human put corn out for the chickens, and like, the chickens were no where around, so I like was stealing the corn when the monster human like came out the door. I ran and hid here in this safe spot, and like if I sit just real still, like the monster can not see me.

I love a good mystery

Other people have ordinary hobbies like gardening and raising chickens. My hobby is digging for dead people. To me, it is like reading a good mystery story, where you use all the available clues to solve the puzzle. Since the sisters have recently re-connected with a cousin online, I thought I would try to find her father and his family on the census. So far Uncle Harold has been a complete washout, so I tired Uncle Tom Gwaltney. Again I came up completely empty handed, finding no trace of either of these men in online genealogies. My third choice was George Leo Reed. Until a couple of weeks ago all I knew of Uncle George’s history was that he married my Aunt Winnie, he was in the Navy in WWII, was from West Virginia and lived in St. Louis. With a little searching and a lot of luck, I found his obituary online listing his sister and brothers. This led me to his 1930 census record, which led to 1920, 1910, 1880, 1870, 1860 and 1850 census records for his Reed ancestors. In addition, I have found an obituary for his greatgrandmother, a bio of his great uncle listing both his maternal and paternal grandparents, and finally this photo on find a grave of the tombstone of James Quinter Reed, Grandfather of Uncle George. I have placed what I found, including the census records, on our Three Sisters web site http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~powell/reed/ and added the Reed family to our database
http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=fletaaday&id=I3726
on World Connect.

Maybe next week I will work on Uncle Harold again, but I fear he is like Grandma Betty Cooper who was born in a cave and the census taker did not list caves.

Happy Birthday Sister Betty

and many more.

Willis Powell, WWII, 1944

Grandpa & Grandma Powell

This is my father's parents, Robert Melton Powell and Gerturde Lee Maples. The photo was taken not long after they were married, perhaps on the day they were married. I believe the house is the first house they lived in after marriage.

For family members with an interest in our history, I have a Powell family research website here:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~powell/powell

Here I have placed a link to some family photos and to some family letters written in 1925. Enjoy, Fleta