Collectors of all stripes are familiar with the term “want list”. It’s a list of those items we don’t yet own but seek to acquire. And while I do not consider myself an “ancestor collector” exactly, there are a couple of items that I know were in possession of family members at some point in the recent past that I greatly desire to obtain a copy of for my personal family research. If you know the whereabouts of these items, please contact me.

Wallace Four-Generation Photo

Four generations of the Wallace family: Reuben Wallace (1798-1887), Washington Reed Wallace (1818-1907), Francis Marion Wallace (1844-1920) and Robert Reed Wallace (1867-1952).

A male descendant of Reuben Wallace (1798-1887) contacted my brother a number of years ago. He sent a grainy photocopy of a four-generation photograph of the Wallace family of Elyria, Ohio to my brother. Reuben Wallace, our mutual ancestor, was photographed, along with his son Washington Reed Wallace, his grandson, Francis Marion Wallace, and Robert Reed Wallace, his great-grandson.

If the people in the image have been correctly identified, then the original photograph should date to about 1869-1870. I descend through Washington Reed Wallace’s son, Albert Reed Wallace. The original surname of Reed was used as a middle name in successive generations of the Wallace family and was the maternal surname of Reuben Wallace’s first wife, Jane Chadwick, mother of Washington Reed Wallace.

Carson – Tindall Family Bible
One of my brickwall lines is that of William Carson of Middlesex County, New Jersey (1790-perhaps 1862). He married Annie (“Nancy”) Tindall. The couple had a total of fourteen known children, whose names and birthdates were duly recorded in the family bible. I am a descendant of their daughter, Caroline, who married into another Carson family with early ties to Monmouth County, New Jersey.

At some point, the names and birthdates of the family members were extracted by a family genealogist. This information is the basis for many of the Carson-Tindall family trees that have been posted on the Internet, without any mention of the information having come from the family bible. Yet, I have learned that the family bible was in possession of the William Hausman family of Jamesburg, New Jersey, as late as 1914, when it was referred to in a Civil War pension file. William Hausman (1836-1919) married Amy Carson (1838-1910), the youngest child of William Carson and Annie Tindall. The Carson family bible is known to have been subsequently in the possession of their daughter, Bertha (Hausman) Quackenbush, who died in 1963, the longest-lived of her generation.

The current whereabouts of the Carson Family Bible are unknown, but I would dearly love to have a copy of the family pages within, assuming they have been preserved.

UPDATE: 5/14/2016
In a 1921 deposition, Bertha Quackenbush made this statement regarding the family bible: “I have my mother’s old Family Bible at home and the names and dates of birth of all the children recorded therein.” Bertha was a resident of Jamesburg, Middlesex Co., New Jersey when she was deposed.

UPDATE: 5/21/2016
A direct descendant has informed me that the Carson family bible was no longer in Bertha Quackenbush’s possession when she died in 1963 and has provided some names of living family members that may have the bible. Now to reach out to those individuals.

Identification of women in this Cyrus family photo collection

My father received this page of photos as part of a larger collection of original photographs following the death of one of his Cyrus cousins who had been living in South Carolina. The small photographs are pasted or glued onto what appears to be a blank page about the size of a small family bible. We have not attempted to remove the images, as there is likely some context that would be lost, and the photos themselves may be damaged in the process. Suffice it to say, we would like to know who the women are, and assume they are probably  all related in some way. We do not know when the images were taken, but at least some were clearly taken in a photo booth. Photo booths began appearing in the United States about 1925, but the the high collars, elaborate hats, and lace appear to be from an earlier time. We have traced our Cyrus family members back to Nimrod Cyrus of Grainger County, Tennessee, about 1800, who may have been from North Carolina originally.

Do you recognize any of the women in this Cyrus family photo collage? If so, please
e-mail me: AncestorRoundup [at] gmail [dot] com.

[Last updated 27 Jun 2018]