It's Not Always Just About Us.

Next Monday I'll be getting on the road to ride the bike over to Wilder, Idaho.  Not a long trip mileage wise, but a long trip in that it will bring together a family, and photos of their ancestors from ninty-three years ago. 

On October 10th, 2010 we uploaded 105 photos we had scanned in from my maternal grandmother's family photos and put them into an album on our Family Tree Website. One of the photos was captioned, "1918 in Almira, Washington." On the back of that photo my grandmother had identified the fourth gent in from the left as Wellborn. The corner was torn off the picture, so we didn't have a first name. Doing a little research on a website called Find A Grave, we eventually found a grave in the Almira, Washington Cemetery belonging to a John Leonard Welborn. It showed DOB as 17 Sep 1885 and DOD as 30 Sep 1935, but that was it. Continuing to search, we then found a cemetery transcription on Interment.net. There, John Leonard Welborn with same dates of birth and death had the following additional information: "WWI, Co F Inf"


So back to the photo album--there were several photos of WWI Army members from Company F out of Camp Lewis (what subsequently became Fort Lewis and is now Lewis McChord). We knew John wasn't a family member, but apparently he and several of the other people from some of the camping pictures in the album were friends of my grandmother's family and friends. We then began a search online to see if we could find anyone researching John Leonard Welborn or who had him in their family tree. We found a public tree with John in it. I used Ancestry.com to send a message to the gent maintaining the tree to find out if this was a relative of his. The tree owner, of Reno, Nevada wrote back to let us know John Leonard Welborn was a brother to his grandmother--his grand uncle.

As we've scanned in all the photos and have them in digital format on the hard drive and also backed up on another drive, we offered him the original copies of all the photos with the soldiers/gents in uniform in them. To say the least, he was very pleased and will make sure they get to the appropriate family members. It turns out he and his wife are headed to Eastern Washington to visit next week. I will meet them in Wilder, Idaho as they travel north and be able to personally hand him these photos. What a great feeling it is to know that we've had these photos in our family for ninty-three years and they are finally getting returned to family members of the individual. So, while building the tree, and learning about our own family is really an inspiration and great experience, it's deeply gratifying to know that it isn't just about us. Sometimes we are able to help others discover their roots as well. Life is truly GREAT when that occurs.