Thursday, October 27, 2016

Update on Identifying Missionaries using a Weird Trick

OK, so it isn't much of a weird trick, but after patiently waiting for this photo to make it to my inbox, I have to say it was worth it. It confirms some identifications, and not so much on others and in at least one case shows us how wrong we can be.

From the previous post here is the photo we were trying to put names to faces.
























And here is the new photo. For context, seven of the missionaries in the top photo are from American Fork. So before they left, some took the photo below. It gives us a pretty good indication of who some of the people would be, and the two photos were taken less than a month apart, and probably in the same suits.

Front Row: Rolfson, Harrington, Houston, & Taylor
Back Row: Hindley, Jacklin, & Buckwater






























Based on this new photo Houston is #8, Rolfson is #9, and Jacklin is #10.
Harrington maybe #7, Buckwater maybe #12 & Taylor maybe #13
Hindley is not #6, but he might be #1
That would kick Halliday out of the upper left corner. Halliday's name is on that side of the photo so we could just switch Halliday and Hindley, since we have yet to find any photos of Halliday.

1. John Roland Halliday William Henry Hindley
2. Angus Kepp Nicholson
3. John Mathew Johnson Allen
4. Isaiah Cox Jr
5. Ed - (great find, Joah)
6. William Henry Hindley  John Roland Halliday
7. Leonard Spencer Harrington (maybe)
8. Frederick Moroni Houston (yes)
9. Francis Bent Rolfson (yes)
10. John Jacklin (yes)
11. Thomas Rawlings Smith
12. Albert William Buckwater (maybe)
13. George Thomas Taylor  (maybe)

So what do you all (y'all) think? Am I heading down the right path?

9 comments:

Amy T said...

Wonderful! What an exercise in historical collaboration.

judy canty martin said...

looks good, i have a bunch i am working on southern states serving catawba, sc and my people in 1884, some into 1933. i build a tree on ancestry and collect some from there and family search, i also post them on facebook. i am looking for jerry d lee he wrote a paper about them in about 1970.

judy canty martin

Edje said...

Awesome!

Quincy D. Newell said...

Excellent! One of my North Carolina neighbors used to say "y'allses," an expression that I have only lamentably rare occasion to use--but I'm going to take the parenthetical (y'all) as my excuse to say: I think y'allses tricks for identifying missionaries (weird or not) are very impressive indeed. :)

Bruce said...

Thanks Edje.

Bruce said...

Quincy, you can say all the "y'allses" you want to, here. North Carolina and Tennessee go way back together.

Bruce said...

Amy, I too love the collaboration.

Quincy D. Newell said...

Aww. Y'allses hospitality warms the cockles of my heart. :)

Joah Fussell said...

After seeing the Church History Library blog postabout sleuthing here: https://history.lds.org/blog/history-sleuths?lang=eng ,it reminded me of some email exchanges that went on during hunt to identify the men in the photo that I had sent to Bruce. I know the African American man was not fully identified, but in a missionary journal from my ancestor McGee Harris Bullock, he does confirm the man as a guide named Ed. For the journal entry or two additional photos that include Ed with a different group of missionaries see the Family Search info here : https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/KWCS-TS6