If You Aren't Searching For Family On eBay You Should Be!

I kid you not. . . the first time I did a search for “Kalamazoo” on eBay I found a photo of my grandmother's sister (who was killed on Christmas by her ex-boyfriend). Talk about serendipity! Naturally, I bought it because I only had a newspaper clipping of this photo. Needless to say, after that beginning, I now make a habit of checking out the “collectables” for Kalamazoo.

I haven't scored anything like that since then, but only a few days ago I say another photo of one of “my” people. A photograph was listed with the name “Huntley.” Huh, I thought, I have some Huntleys in my tree. Fortunately, the back of the photograph listed the first name, Doris. It turns out that Doris Huntley is the granddaughter of my gg-grandmother's sister.

Here is the photo I found on eBay. On the back is written “Doris Huntley 18 months old.”

Doris, the only child of Harry Huntley and Lula Etta Rose was born in 1898, but after 1920 I lost track of her.

Armed with a new photo I decided to reexamine the photos in what my mother and I believe was my gg-grandmother's photo album (passed down to my grandmother). I came across the following photograph (unidentified, unfortunately).

The infant in the photo struck me as similar to Doris. If this is the same child then it would probably indicate that the adults in the photograph are Doris' parents. Like the labeled photo of Doris, this was also taken in Kalamazoo, albeit by a different photographer. The time period of the photo from my album was probably taken no earlier than the mid-1890s. The large sleeves on the woman's dress were very fashionable at the time and if I recall correctly, peaked about 1895. Harry and Lula married in December 1896 so if this is them the dress may date from their wedding.

Unless more labeled photos appear I'll never know if the photo from my album is an early photo of Doris with her parents, but that's my working hypothesis. In the meantime, I'll just keep checking eBay for Kalamazoo photographs and hope I get lucky again. This makes two wins in about three years so, considering the odds, I'd say that's pretty good. You might get lucky too.

To see what else you might be missing out on and to read about how I look for family items see Milking eBay For Family Artifacts.