BONUS: AI Brings New Life to Fisher-Ley Portraits
This blog has always been more about stories than the nuts and bolts of genealogy process. What would you share about your ancestor, sitting around a campfire? What would bring that person to life?
But when I outlined my process, highlighting my Six Holy Grails of Genealogy, all of the exacting steps lead to making connections: with descendants who can shed light on places, the shape of a life, and bring you face to face with your history.
Toward the beginning of this blog in 2010, new connection Noreen Moser shared a view of my great-grandmother, Zula Fisher Ley, I never dreamed of: a family portrait with she and her sister, Alverna, as young girls. This lent another, poignant dimension to Zula’s tragic story of dying of the flu when my grandfather was not yet two, losing the baby girl she was carrying as well. Here she was years before, bright-eyed, innocent, whole life ahead of her.
As I shared in yesterday’s post featuring great-grandfather Vance Foutz’s family, generative artificial intelligence has given us another tool to enhance our views of ancestors long gone. With just a few mouse clicks, Photomyne, an AI service used by Ancestry.com, colorizes and restores family snapshots through layers of automatic filters.
Today, I turned the tool on snapshots from the Fishers and Leys.
Seven Generations in Living Color
We can trace Zula’s ancestry through her mother, Addie Mae Smith, to the Merediths and Joneses, from Wales. I originally scanned the above photo from the Combination Atlas Map of Tuscarawas County Ohio, which features an entry tracing the route of my fifth-great-grandparents Martha Jones Meredith and husband John William Meredith from their home in the mountains of Nantyglo, Wales to their settling near Goshen, Ohio in the early 1830s. As to the photo above:
Combination Atlas Map of Tuscarawas CountyIn the accompanying picture of Five Generations taken in 1896, this most worthy old gentlewoman is shown with her daughter, Telitha, with her grandson, John W. Smith and his daughter and her great granddaughter, May, who married William Fisher (my great-great grandparents — Colt), and with their son, Clyde V (Zula’s brother, my great-great uncle).
John William Fisher’s father’s family originally came from Nordhein-Westphalia in Germany, whereas his mother, Sarah Walters’ family came from Bavaria. (Though her mother, Marty Mathilda Wallace’s parents came from Ireland and England.) The below photo, shared by Noreen Moser, shows my great-great-grandfather John Fisher with his mother, Sarah, at a gathering of his siblings.
John and Addie Fisher lived their entire lives in Goshen Twp., in a house my mom would point out to me whenever we drove out that way to and from the mall or elsewhere around the home county. A family portrait a little later in the 1910s captured Zula, Verna and their three brothers and parents, also provided by Noreen Moser.
After Zula’s tragic death in 1920, my grandpa Bob went to live with his Fisher grandparents for a time, before coming home to live with his father, Robert Ley Sr. and stepmother in Dover. Before connecting with Noreen and others on Ancestry, the only pictures I’d seen of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother Ley were these touching portraits with my grandpa as a child. I actually wondered what AI could do to “enhance” these, since the original, slightly washed-out colors lend them an appropriate air of mystery and sadness.
My great-grandfather Ley was one of the most prominent dentists in the county, as well as being active in clubs, organizations and politics, a path set by his own Ley ancestors after they emigrated from Germany, and an example his own son followed. Grandpa also joined his father in a joint dental practice in Dover and was working alongside his father when R.E. Ley Sr. succumbed to a sudden heart attack at age 65.
Lending Color to Family Scenes
Some of my favorite pictures to colorize so far have been everyday scenes of family members — gathering to enjoy a meal, lounging around the yard or house. Here are a few more of Robert Ley, the Fishers, and the young children of Robert Earl Ley, Jr., in the 1950s, including my mother, Janet Ley Foutz.
I hope you enjoy seeing these loved ones in a new light as much as I do!
Whispering Across the Campfire 
Love that slider feature, Colt! I remember your great grandpa living next door to my grandparents (Minnie May Ley and Ed Wible) on Iron Avenue and, of course, knew your grandpa and grandma Ley, so the story had particular interest for me.