Who are these People?

Often, it seems that the answer to every question about family history includes the seed of at least one more subject to research. For example, my wife, Ann, came into possession of a set of old family photos about twenty years ago. These belonged to her mother. Ann wanted to give the pictures to her sister, who was (and is) more into family history. So I scanned a good number of photos in 2008 and her sister got the originals. Then the scans sat on a thumb drive until a few months ago. Fortunately, they were still good and upon finding them, I gave the files a more permanent home on my desktop computer. I’ve been slowly working on restoring them ever since. But this picture was a mystery. I remember when my mother-in-law first showed it to me more than 20 years ago. Even she didn’t know who the subjects were. When I scanned it, I just named the file “Mustache,” for the obvious one on the young lady on the far left.

When I began examining the photo in more detail, I came to the conclusion that there really wasn’t a mustache at all. The spot appeared to be a discoloration on the print from the passage of time in a most unfortunate location.

The first order of business was to try to improve the overall quality of the picture using Photoshop’s AI photo restoration, some contrast adjustment, and the healing brush. I came up with this:

Not perfect, but an improvement.

Now, to get started on solving the mystery of “who are these people.” First, the photos were among a good number of others that were known to be of the Brinkman family. Ann’s maternal grandmother was Mayree Brinkman. A pedigree of her Brinkman family line from my Rootsmagic 10 software is shown below.

Mayree’s great-grandfather, Frederick “Fred” Brinkman was born in Hanover, Prussia around 1818. ¹ However, he had immigrated and was living in Dearborn County, Indiana by 1839, when he married Catherine Myers there.² I found the following photograph purporting to be that of him and his family on Ancestry.com.

Two things immediately struck me about the photograph: first, the background is the same as the one in the mystery picture of the Brinkmans; and second, the man on the far right in both photos is the same man! It’s almost as if the photographer ran everyone else off the set and left him sitting in the same spot for both pictures. The picture that had been uploaded to Ancestry was identified by the poster as being of the Frederick Brinkman family. ³ It is believed that the elderly gentleman seated in the right middle is Frederick Brinkman and the woman seated to the left of him (from the viewer’s perspective) is his wife, Catherine Myers Brinkman. The other subjects are believed to be their adult children at the time the photo was made. In the 1860 U.S. Census, the Fred Brinkman household included: Fred, age 40; Catherine, age 39; William, age 20; George, age 18; Emily, age 16; Edward, age 14; Henry, age 6; and John, age 3. ⁴

Now, clearly Fred and Catherine are not 40 and 39 years old respectively in the photo. Their appearances in the picture would tend to indicate that the picture was made in the 1880s. We’ll return to that issue later. For the time being, let’s return to the man on the far right in both photos. I submit that this is Fred’s and Cahterine’s son, George F. Brinkman.

The beard is different in the picture above, but the pale eyes and hairline are the same as in the family photos. Not only do I see the similarity, but so does FaceShape (https://www.faceshape.com/face-compare). ⁵ In comparing the man seated on the far right in the family portaits to the man above, the website provided a similarity score of 100% – the highest score possible.

Next, attention was turned to identifying the woman just left of center in the portrait that now appeared to be of George F. Brinkman’s family. That is, the woman with her arm resting on the prop table in the photo. This would seem to almost certainly be Jennie Henderson, George F. Brinkman’s wife. There are numerous pictures of her in which she is expressly identified as “Jenny” or “Jennie” Brinkman, and her face is too distinctive to be mistaken about her identity. I suspect that there is really no need to point out which person is her in the following photographs. ⁶

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That first picture is of special note because everyone in it appears either in the George F. Brinkman family portrait or in the family portait featuring his parents, Fred and Catherine Myers Brinkman. The man on the far right is once again, George F. The woman to his left is, of course, his wife Jennie Henderson Brinkman. The man on the far left is George’s brother, Lewis Edward Brinkman. He also appears of the far left of the Frederick Brinkman family photo. The handwritten caption on the picture is “Lewis-Ed Edna Jenny Geo Frances.” The Edna of the photo is George F. Brinkman’s daughter, who is standing beside him in their formal family portrat.

To summarize quickly, the people now identified in the subject George F. Brinkman photo are: George F. Brinkman on the far right; his daugther Edna to the immediate left of him, and his wife Jennie on the far side of the table in the middle of the picture. That leaves three subjects not yet identified: the woman formerly known for her mustache on the far left; the man between her and Jennie, and the boy between Jennie and Edna.

The 1880 U.S. Census for Dearborn County, Indiana lists four individuals living in the home of George F. Brinkman at the time.

The census-taker made some initial mistakes which were corrected before they left the home. George was initially given the occupation of “cooper,” or barrel-maker. But that was corrected to “Foreman in Furniture Factory.” In addition to his child, Edna, the Census lists a “George E.,” initially as a 12 year old male. But that was corrected somewhat by changing the “M” to an “F,” by putting an “X” through “George,” and by identifying the person as a “Daug.” As other records make clear, this was George and Jennie’s daughter Georgia “Georgie” Brinkman. ⁷ And she is the young woman on the far left of the family portrait.

In comparing the above portrait to the woman on the far left in the George F. Brinkman family picture, the “Face Compare” feature of FaceShape.com found the similarity was 100%.

Next to be addressed is the little boy on the right side of the central table. Missing from the 1880 Census for Dearborn County, Indiana, which was taken on the 6th of June of that year, was one of George F. Brinkman’s children – his son, Raymond O. Brinkman. Raymond was not born until the 9th of September, 1880. In comparing the child on the right side of the table to a photograph of Raymond O. Brinkman, reportedly made in 1884, FaceShape once again found the faces 100% similar. So, the conlusion is that this is indeed a portrait of the George F. Brinkman family.

This leaves the identity of the gentleman standing between Georgia and Jennie to be determined.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, it seems that in genealogy, every mystery solved inevitably just leads to another mystery. And so it is with the current question that began this essay – “Who are these people?” Addressing the issue has involved review of U.S. Census records, notes and captions on other photographs of the subjects, and use of software to clean up and compare the individuals in the photos. Having resolved that five of the six subjects are George F. Brinkman, his wife, Jennie, and their three children, this detective will leave the identity of the standing man a mystery. For now.

Notes

1. 1860 U.S. Census, Dearborn, Indiana, population schedule, Jackson, p. 10, dwelling 79, family 79, Fred Brinkman household; digital images, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/8300989:7667?tid=&pid=&queryid=354bbd02-a9a8-4cf9-86c9-748414a58d2f&_phsrc=BAI1037&_phstart=successSourchttps://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/8300989:7667?tid=&pid=&queryid=354bbd02-a9a8-4cf9-86c9-748414a58d2f&_phsrc=BAI1037&_phstart=successSource : accessed 21 August 2024); NARA microfilm publication M653, 1,438 rolls. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration.  ↩︎
2. Indiana State Library, “Indiana Marriages Through 1850,” online database and index, Indiana State Library (https://digital.statelib.lib.in.us/legacy/ : accessed 30 August 2024), Marriage of Frederick Brinkman and Catherine Myers in Dearborn County, Indiana on 2 Nov 1839. ↩︎
3. Actually, the indication was that it was of the “John Frederick Brinkman” family. There are several trees on Ancestry identifying the patriarch as “John Frederick,” but all of the actual records discovered so far have identified him as simply either “Frederick” or “Fred.” ↩︎
4. 1860 U.S. Census, Dearborn, Indiana, population schedule, Jackson, p10, dwelling 79, family 79, Fred Brinkman household. ↩︎
5. The site uses AI and expressly indicates that the “results may not meet the stringent requirements of professional forensics or ancestry research.” But what it lacks in certainty, it makes up for in ease of use, and if used appropriately, it gives a good second opinion. I simply uploaded the family portaits that included the person I thought was George F. Brinkman, as well as the photo expressly labeled as being of George F. Brinkman for comparision. ↩︎
6. Nevertheless, she is third from the left in the first picture, second from the right in the next photo, and is on the right in both of the final two photographs. ↩︎
7. The person taking the Census in 1870 got “Georgie” right, although they listed George F.’s wife name as Jane instead of Jennie. To be fair, there are references to the woman as “Martha Jane” online, so it is possible that was her actual name and she was simply called “Jennie,” or “Jenny” as that was originally a dimunitive form of the name “Jane,” per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_(given_name)). ↩︎