Suburban Valkyrie

The paper is brittle and yellowed, the ink fading away in spots. The man and woman stand side by side, barely touching, and with only the trace of a smile on their faces.



The wedding portrait of Anna Holden and Harry L. Wilson is one of my most treasured family heirlooms, but it didn't start out that way. The photo of my great grandparents was found tumbled amongst a heap of old photographs of nameless faces in a box passed on to me after my grandmother, Marion Wilson Larson, died in 1992. When I became interested in genealogy in 1999, I opened that box and began searching the faces of the people staring up at me. Who were they? Where had they come from? How were they related to my grandmother, to my father, to me?

Before the mid-1800s, of course, those questions never could have been asked, much less answered. The commercial introduction of photography in 1839, however, eventually made it possible for great great grandchildren to gaze upon the faces of long-dead relatives they had never met. Photography, at first reserved for the elite, eventually became accessible even to the farmers of Fulton County, Illinois, where Anna and Harry and their families had lived.

The family portraits for which they posed formed a thread that later would connect my present back to my past. Years worth of investigation eventually enabled me to match the vast majority of those once-unknown faces with their names.

But the fact that I even had to investigate to discover who these family members were should illustrate just how fragile our connection to our past is. And in some cases, that link can be broken forever.

So it was that I found myself crouched on the floor of an antique store in Bucks County, Pa., one recent afternoon, sifting through someone else's family treasures. Instead of being passed down to a family member - however unwitting that family member initially may have been - these treasures had been cast away. They were now staring up at passers by from boxes and bins and frames on shelves. Memories for sale.


For just $3, you, too, could own a little piece of someone else's family story. Such as this portrait of a couple on what is likely their wedding day.


Or this one of a happy bride and groom and their attendants.


Or these portraits of dapper young military men.


I touched each photo lightly, holding it by the edges. The oils transferred from careless hands can destroy old photographs. It was likely, however, that few other hands had been as careful over the years. Did the care I took in holding those photographs - those parts to someone else's family story - matter? Was I the last person to "care" for these strangers, for whatever wisps of their presence had been captured by silver nitrate to proclaim that they had lived?

A historian friend reminded me that it has been said that we die two deaths: our actual death, and another death when the last person who remembers us dies.

What was the name of the young man frozen forever in his military uniform? Did the young bride who smiled slightly up from her wedding portrait ever have children? Did she like iced tea? Did he know how to whistle?

I didn't know these people. I don't remember them, and the answers to the questions I would ask are almost certainly lost forever. For one brief moment, though, they lived again in my palms, staring out at me from the past, mutely asserting that they had lived and loved however long ago.

Genealogy can be a lonely, obsessive pursuit, and one that doesn't always seem to have an obvious benefit. By the time I set those photos of strangers back down in their antique shop bins, they had whispered confirmation of what I already knew in my heart: it is my job to ensure that Anna Holden and Harry L. Wilson do not end up staring into the eyes of a thrift shop customer in the 2050s.

It may be years before my children care to learn how the stories of their lives are entwined with the stories of those who had come before them, of the great great great grandparents who left behind everything they had known to set sail for America and the hope of new, prosperous lives. When they are ready, however, it is my job to ensure that our fables and our photos still survive, to be bequeathed to the care of the next generation to tell our family story.