Harriet Wakeman, Harriet’s sister, Marie Coburg, Merle Coburg

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. I’ve posted before about estate planning for authors here. Part of that plan, for me, anyway, included putting a couple of bequests in my will to protect material I’ve been hoarding for years. After I’m gone, my “author’s papers” and some other writing-related material will go to the Maine Women Writers Collection at the University of New England, which is housed in Portland. All the local history and genealogy material I’ve accumulated on my family, including a goodly number of old photographs, will go to the Sullivan County Historical Society in New York State—the area where I lived until I moved to Maine to attend college in 1965 and where both my paternal and maternal ancestors had settled by the 1800s.

Harriet Wakeman, Harriet’s sister, Katie Hornbeck, Marie Coburg

I’ve also blogged before about solving genealogical mysteries, most recently here and here and, wouldn’t you know it, I found another one.

Back in 1987, on her last trip north from her home in Florida, my mother, Marie Coburg Gorton, went through her family’s photo album to identify the people she recognized. I wrote down what she said next to each picture, but there were still a lot of question marks. And, as I discovered when I recently started sorting and labeling everything, there were a couple of identifications she got wrong.

Scattered through the album, although some seem to have been taken on the same day, are a number of photos of what I’m calling “the girls in the boat.” They show a rowboat on the farm pond (a pond dug to provide recreational opportunities for guests at the summer boardinghouse my ancestors ran at their farm in Hurleyville, NY during the last part of the 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th).  Even enlarged, it’s hard to see faces, but there were definite similarities, particularly in the hats these girls wore.

Harriet’s sister, Katie Hornbeck, Harriet Wakeman, Marie Coburg

Katie Hornbeck, Harriet Wakeman, Harriet’s sister

Fortunately, there were two non-boat pictures in which Mom was certain of the subjects’ identities. They are shown at the top of this post. One is of “the Wakeman girls” and Mom as a child, held by her aunt, Merle Coburg. As Merle was only ten years older than my mother, I initially guessed the photo was taken c. 1915, when Mom was about five. I’ve since reconsidered and think the date must have been closer to 1918, when she was eight. As an adult, she was only 5’3″ tall, so she would probably have been on the small side as a child. In the other photo, she identified Harriet Wakeman, Harriet’s sister, her aunt, Katie Hornbeck, and herself. Since the hats are the same, I cleverly deduced that these photos were all taken on the same day.

A little research using Ancestry.com and Find A Grave, plus the fact that Mom elsewhere gave one of the Wakeman girls a first name—Harriet—led me to more information. Harriet Wakeman was born on April 6, 1899, so she was a year older than Aunt Merle. She had two sisters, Lucy, (b. November 9, 1894), and Hazel (b. October 4, 1900). It is most likely Hazel who is shown with her in the photos. There was some brief confusion because what I had written next to one photo said “Harriet and Cole Wakeman.” In point of fact, on November 16, 1919, Harriet Wakeman married Palmer H. Cole, so her photos in the boat were most likely taken before that date. Yay! Mystery solved. People have been identified. Right? Not quite.

Louella Hornbeck

There were more “girls in the boat” photos in the album. Mom identified one woman sitting by herself as her aunt, Louella Hornbeck. I have other photos of Aunt Lou and this one didn’t look a lot like them, but there were two other photos of unidentified people that included a woman who looked like the one in the boat. Could one be Aunt Lou and her future husband, Anson Bates? They were married on October 1, 1921. They’re with one person I always recognize, my grandmother, Katie Hornbeck Coburg, who also appears in boat photos and in one with the Wakeman sisters and my mother, but there’s another woman in that picture, too—one who looks a little like Harriet Wakeman’s sister. But maybe not.

Then there’s the photo showing Lou and Katie’s parents and Katie and another young woman on the porch of the farm. Is that Lou, too? It’s definitely her in the photo with Katie, their older sister, Ida Hornbeck Crosby, Ida’s children, and my mother.

Lou Hornbeck, Ida Hornbeck Crosby, Katie Hornbeck; Walter Crosby, Martha Crosby, Marie Coburg, Eleanor Crosby

Then I wondered if the relative heights were a problem. Here’s a formal shot of the Hornbeck sisters.

Katie, Lou, and Ida Hornbeck

Yes, this was getting confusing, and that’s without adding in the fact that my mother’s mother, Tressa Hornbeck Coburg, sister to Ida, Katie, and Lou, died when Mom was born. My mother was raised by her grandparents, M.G. and Ella Hornbeck, and her Aunt Katie. Katie Hornbeck later married her sister Tressa’s widower (Mom’s father) but not until after her mother died, because Ella blamed Tressa’s husband for Tressa’s death. The fact that it had been a shotgun wedding probably didn’t help! I always knew my mom’s “Aunt Katie” as “Grandma Coburg.”

This whole process of labeling photos looks like it will take much longer than I expected, with lots of rabbit-hole research along the way, but if I don’t make the attempt to identify people, there probably isn’t anyone else left who can. That makes it a responsibility as well as a challenge. Meanwhile, if you enjoy looking at old photos, here are some more photos showing girls in the boat.

Grace Monroe, Lou Hornbeck, Marie Coburg

Merle Coburg, Harriet Wakeman, Harriet’s sister

Katie Hornbeck, Harriet Wakeman, Harriet’s sister

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new omnibus e-book editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.