7th Festival of Postcards--Light--George Henry Hughes

Time for the 7th Edition of The Festival of Postcards featuring a scene of Light. Scenes – lit by the moon, neon or - lights of all kinds – street lights, headlights, lamps etc. or the play of light or objects as light as a feather, something that light-ens your heart, lights your way or lights your fire! Thank you to Evelyn over at A Canadian Family for hosting this event.

This postcard is part of my family photo postcard collection. George Henry Hughes is my paternal grandfather. Now you might wonder why it has been posted for the festival when the topic is "light". This is REALLY stretching it....the postcard photo was overexposed and was very light! Sorry, it is the best I can do. I suppose I could also say that the young people were outside sitting in the sunLIGHT when the photo was taken.

I wish I knew more about where this photo postcard was taken. If it was a day camp or a weeklong one where the kids stayed overnight. I certainly was unaware that my great grandparents had the finances to send their son to summer camp. However, thinking upon it further, since my great grandfather was employed by Jones Laughlin Steel Company, perhaps the summer camp was company owned.

One of the neat findings is that my grandfather wrote a note on the back of the card to one of his grandmothers. My suspicion is that it was Granny Olesen, Wilhelmina Weiss Olesen, as she was a widow. If he was writing to his Hughes grandparents he would have addressed it to Grandma and Grandpa, as both were still alive. Apparently, the card was never sent and it is now one of my proud possessions.

© 2010, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser

A Festival of Postcards 3rd Edition--Signs

Evelyn Yvonne Theriault over at A Canadian Family Acadian and French-Canadian Genealogy has called for postcards featuring signs for the 3nd Edition of A Festival of Postcards.

This photo postcard was in a photo album that my grandmother made for my aunt. When I first saw that it was from England, my educated guess was that it was a Hughes and with my grandmother’s identification written on the back, decided it was my great great grandmother, Mary Ann Storey Hughes. My grandmother had one too many great’s for my aunt. Mary Ann would have been her great grandmother!

I took the card with me when I had the good fortune to visit relations in Hartlepool, England back in 2003 and the picture was identified by folks that knew her. It was indeed my great great grandmother, Mary Ann Storey Hughes.

She is standing outside of the family’s green grocer store located at 70 Florence Street, in the Longhill section of West Hartlepool, England. Florence Street was one of three main streets in Longhill located near the steel mill. I have enlarged the area around her head to feature some of the signage on the storefront windows. About the only one I can actually read is the one for D.C.L. Yeast.

The family lived in rooms inside the store. John George Marsh, a grandson, who lived in the family quarters at 70 Florence as a child, said that the store was in one room that opened into a “family room” where Mary Ann would sit in a chair by the fireplace holding a big fly swatter to swat the flies. A grand daughter, Betty Hughes Jamieson told me that later in life Mary Ann was very overweight and had a huge wattle that hung down under her chin and when she walked it swung from side to side. A genealogist couldn’t ask for a more descriptive picture than that!

Carnival of Genealogy 74th Edition--Annual Swimsuit Edition

Carnival of Genealogy 74th Edition—Annual Swimsuit Edition. Back by popular demand, the topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy will be: Swimsuit Edition! Why should Sports Illustrated have all the fun? This edition of the COG will be hosted at Creative Gene.      Years back my Dad’s cousin, Kae Billick, sent me this photo of their mutual aunt, Mary Louise VanGilder, known to family as “Bobs.” She was the daughter of George Ethelbert VanGilder and Jessie Pool, born March 9, 1894 in Morgantown, West Virginia. During a telephone interview, Kae told me that Bobs was a flapper during the Roaring Twenties. She was the older sister of my Grandmother Hughes and as you can tell from this photograph postcard, loved to have fun.   A couple of years ago, as I was surfing around the ancestry newspaper site, I happened upon the collection of old newspapers from Charleroi, Pennsylvania. Unbeknownst to me, there was a gold mine waiting for me to explore in that collection. 

     My Great Grandmother VanGilder, all of her sisters and even a couple of articles about her daughter, my Grandmother Hughes, were hiding there. I also found the newspaper article above which explains the photo postcard of my bathing beauty.

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.

© 2009, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser

A Festival of Postcards--Wheels

Evelyn over at A Canadian Family Acadian and French-Canadian Genealogy is sponsoring a new carnival--A Festival of Postcards and this month's topic is wheels.


I am a collector of numerous items, however, postcards is not one of them. I am thrilled to have found a postcard photo of my Dad when he was about 2 years old, probably taken on the front porch of his grandparents house in Woodlawn, Pennsylvania. The date would be circa 1923 and there is my Dad, George VanGilder Hughes, driving his first set of wheels and from the smile on his precious little face, loving every minute of it. TOO CUTE!!

Smile for the Camera--The Dog That Swam the Pond, maybe

The 13th edition of Smile for the Camera features all creatures great and small. Now Smile for the Camera is definitely throwing me a bone.

     I come from an animal family. Dogs and cats have been photographed, in abundance, since before I was born. There are so many photos of family pets that to choose one would be impossible.

     I decided to spotlight a dog that I have never met and have no idea what his/her name is. This pooch appears in photos taken in West Hartlepool, England and seemingly made it across the pond to Woodlawn, Pennsylvania. Did dogs immigrate or is this just an American, English dog wanna-be? If this canine boarded a ship, he would have come in 1907 or in 1921…which begs (no pun intended!) the question, was he too old to make the trip? Perhaps the Hughes/Olesen team just liked this breed of pup.

     Photos that I have found picture the dog with my paternal gg grandmother Ferdinanda Weiss Olesen and my paternal great grandmother Elizabeth Olesen Hughes.

Great Great Grandma Olesen
A photo postcard taken in
Hartlepool, England circa 1890's

Great Grandma Hughes
a photo postcard taken in West Hartlepool, England
circa 1890's

     Great Grandma Hughes in a rare photograph taken in, and I am venturing a guess here, Woodlawn, Pennsylvania. That would make it circa 1913-1921. If the photo was taken when my Great Grandparents came over and were living on the South Side of Pittsburgh, then we are talking 1907-1913.

Also o Flipside

-HUGHES, ELIZABETH OLESEN--Biography

-OLESEN, FERDINANDE WEISS--Biography

-OLESEN, FERDINANDE WEISS--Crossing the Pond 1920

-OLESEN, FERDINANDE WEISS--Festival of Postcards

-OLESEN, FERDINANDE WEISS Psalms Bible--Treasure Chest Thursday

-OLESEN, FERDINANDE WEISS—Tombstone Tuesday

Updated October 2022

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.

© 2009 copyright Linda Hughes Hiser