The handwritten note on the back of the photo says:

1912

Salesmen of Wallace Elliott & Co.,
on trip to Hudson Mass.

Thomas T. Matthews

I assume the arrow written in pen on the front of the photo indicates which of the salesmen in the photo was Thomas. He was my great-grandfather, born 31 Aug 1868 in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland; died 01 Aug 1954 in Emmaus, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania.

This image turned up in a collection of Matthews family photographs that we briefly had access to a decade or so ago. My research on this line hasn’t yet turned up an Edith, so this person is something of a mystery to me. Can anyone help me with the uniform? What organization does it belong to? What time frame might it be from?

Based on the handwritten caption on the back of this photo, I believe this to be Sarah Caroline Trafford Matthews, born 21 Apr 1868 in Manhattan, New York; married Thomas Taylor Matthews on 23 Jan 1896; and died 27 Mar 1933 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts. She was my great-grandmother.

I talk with many Family History Center patrons who are leaving no stone unturned searching for the birthplace of an Irish ancestor. I’m fortunate. Birth places for my 5th great-grandparents–John and Ellen Cohen–were recorded in the 1901 English census.

Getting ready to take the train from Cork to Dublin to research my Mathews ancestors. Taken in August, 2006.

Note the inventory of gifts at the end of this very detailed announcement of the marriage of Georgianna Schryver to D’Linton W. Greenfield. (Found in a scrapbook at the Rome Historical Society, Rome, Oneida, New York; probably clipped from the Rome Sentinel.)

I think it speaks for itself.

I think my grandmother, Helen Gertrude Bielby Coyne, must have saved this valentine for sentimental reasons, but I’m not sure what they were.

I found it in a box of her family pictures back in 1996 and I think I would have photographed the back, too, if there had been something written there. My grandmother was born 15 March 1909 in Oneida County, New York and she died in 1985.

I wonder when this style of card was in use?

The back of the photo reads

Grandma Matthews
(Pa’s mother)
When she came from England (or
Ireland) to visit son
Thomas T. Matthews
She was English

Thomas Taylor Mathews was Dean’s great-grandfather.