Life From The Roots: First and Third Cousins Sharing Their Old Family Albums, and Look What I Got!

My first Poole cousin shared many of the photos with me in 2021.

In December 2001, I received an email from a rather young researcher inquiring if I was related to a particular member of his Poole family. David found me through a Rootsweb Gedcom and provided quite a bit of information about his line. We emailed back and forth several times and he reluctantly shared some photos of his line, which I am showing at the end of this post. It wasn't his album and the owner wasn't keen on his sharing. David and I are third cousins once removed. When family trees online came into our lives, I often thought about these pictures, but always kept them private. We didn't correspond again until I wrote him recently, fortunately, he had the same address and email.

In the past few months, I have been talking genealogy with my two first cousins, one living in Illinois and the other in Colorado. I met the Illinois cousin when she was about three in 1953 at our grandfather's house. Several years ago, she and her husband photographed a large family album, with about 100 small pictures all glued on! Each page was sent to me, but it was put aside until now since I did no genealogy last year. I knew it would be a big project because I couldn't read some writing and it was difficult cropping individual photos out of groups of 4 or more tiny pictures.

This year through a discussion with my two cousin sisters, I learned they were going to get together and plan to talk about their genealogy. Since I am a first cousin, with a lot of information, and they have the album, I told them I would send quite a bit of information to them before they meet. They don't use a database like my RootsWeb. I'm not sure either about FamilySearch.org or the other genealogy companies, I won't name them.

I realize these albums and the story will mean little to anybody else, but it is important to me to share what I have and what they have, and our relationship with each other. The lineage chart was done in order to figure out their relationships for this post. I wish more writers would do lineage charts to help readers follow their complicated family stories.

William Frederick Poole and his wife Fanny (Frances) Gleason. I can't tell which of the two photos of him is the oldest. I think he is younger than the below picture. He is one of my most famous ancestors. I've written a lot about him, but here is Wikipedia's information.

There are many photos of William, see my post The Aging of My Great-Grandfather. Now I have a few additional photos to add.

Clarence Frederick Poole was my grandfather. His wife was Marjory, her name and ancestry aren't shown, because I didn't want anything about my father shown. I have photos of two grandparents (Clarence and Marjory), two greats (Charles Clarence Poole and Anna Poole), four great-grandparents (Charles, Mary, William, and Frances), and two great-great-grandmothers (Eliza Cutler Poole and Elizabeth Wilder Poole).

I believe the oldest photo is of Eliza Cutler Poole, dau. of Manassah Cutler (Wikipedia article) who was born on 4 July 1779 and died on 22 April 1854. Mother of Charles Henry Poole.

Mary Abbie / Abby Daniels Poole (wife of Charles Henry Poole) Born 5 Feb. 1825. Below, she is with her granddaughter, Frances.

Nurse Frances and the Flu was a popular blog post of mine, it might be of interest to you.

I'm not sure if we ever met, but I was lucky to inherit my great aunt's dining room table when my mother died in 1990. Dorothy died in 1965 in Florida. Her death was noted in my diary which I still have.

Charles Henry Poole went to West Point. He married Mary Abbie Daniels, her father was Stephen Daniels of Salem, MA. (There are six direct lines of Stephen Daniels in her line.) He was a civil engineer and surveyed San Diego, Roxbury, MA, and Long Island, MA. Also wrote the 250+ page manuscript of the Poole family located at the New England Historic Genealogy Society, and I copied it, and then a friend transcribed it for my blog.

Charles Clarence Poole married Annie Poole, they were my great-grandparents. He was a patent lawyer.

Annie Poole and Charles Clarence Poole, perhaps before they married. At least some names were clearly written with dates in this album.

My Great-grandmother, Annie Poole married Charles Clarence Poole in 1884.

Clarence Frederick Poole, my grandfather. He was a patent attorney like his father, Charles Clarence.

I feel this is a sweet page. The pictures at the upper right show of my grandmother Marjory Adams Poole holding my father in 1919. I have the original photo, so apparently, copies were made. The photo below was enlarged so you could read why these pictures were taken.