Lost Gallery: Portrait of Aunt Minnie Bigford

On reverse:
Aunt Minnie Bigford
Ottawa, Il.

Photographer:
J. A. Wilson
Ottawa, Ill
Over First National Bank

This photograph was posted on Flickr 17 Nov 2007. It is always a good idea to add in the caption any extra information that might be included on the reverse of a picture. A descendant was able to find it through a name search on ancestry.com.

The following is from the comment sections of Flickr:

This is my 3rd great grand aunt named Minnie (Mason) Bigford. She lived from 1870-1954. Where did you find this photograph? Thank you for finding it and posting it!

I am glad you could make a connection to this portrait. This is why we rescue and post these old photographs.

I found it 28 Oct 2011, at the Apple Orchard antique store in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. If she is about 20 here, the photograph must have been taken around 1890.

Any idea how it might have gotten to Oklahoma?

I'm guessing this photograph was taken on the 16th of January in 1894; the year she married. She would have been twenty-four. She never left her hometown of Ottawa, Illinois. She had three children and only two survived past childhood. The children that survived both died in the 1970s; one in Ottawa and one in a neighboring town. I'm guessing a grandchild or great-grandchild who inherited the photograph lived in Oklahoma and that's how it ended up there.

Oh, thank you so much for the wonderful information! I will add that date to the caption.

That is what we usually find, that a grandchild carried it away and then eventually left in an estate. Then it was lost because their new family couldn't identify it and had no connection.

How did you find the photograph posted here? That may help us link up other rescued photographs with their family trees.

Apparently someone on Flickr read the caption which stated her name was Minnie Bigford and was from Ottawa, Illinois and found my family tree with her listed on Ancestry.com. I'm so thankful for the internet!

For the rest of the interesting observations about this photograph go to the
FLICKR POSTING HERE.

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