Color My World

Addie May and John Fisher family, New Philadelphia, Ohio, before 1910. Behind their parents: Byron, Zula, Clyde, Verna, Oscar. Image colorized by Ancestry.com using Photomyne.

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.

Five generations caught in 1896. Clockwise, from left: Telitha (Meredith) English; her nephew, my great-great-great grandfather, John W. Smith; his daughter, my great-great grandmother, Addie May (Smith) Fisher; her son, Clyde V. Fisher, brother of Zula (Fisher) Ley; and my fifth great-grandmother, Martha Jones Meredith. Photo colorized by Ancestry.com.

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:

In 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).

Combination Atlas Map of Tuscarawas County

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.

back row: Emma, Ellsworth, Della, Barclay, Lily, George, Clara Alice, James front row: Sarah M, John William, Sarah Ann (Walters), Mary J, Henry. Pretty sure J.W. Fisher didn’t have pink hair.

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.

Zula Fisher Ley and an infant Robert Earl Ley, Jr.

Robert Earl Ley Jr. and Sr.

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.

Robert Earl Ley, Sr., in his Dover dental office he shared with son Robert Earl Ley, Jr.

Robert Earl Ley, Sr., and dog.

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!

Robert Earl Ley, Sr., and grandchildren Robert III, Jeanne, Sally and Betsy at his son, Robert Jr.’s, Dover, Ohio home in the 1950s.

A young Janet Ley, left, with brother Bobby and sister Betsy.

Robert Earl Ley, Jr.’s daughters Janet, Sally, Jeanne and Betsy post in front of their car in the 1950s in Dover, Ohio.

An older great-great-grandfather John William Fisher

An older great-great-grandmother Addie May Smith Fisher

Verna Fisher, great-grandmother Zula Fisher Ley’s younger sister, and her husband, Ollin Abbuhl, about 1960. Courtesy Amazon.com user abbuhl4401.

Color Me Enchanted

Erma Johnson rides a bicycle in Dover, Ohio in a series of snapshots near Don Foutz’s home in 1941. The black and white photo, left, is the original. The photo on the right has been colorized by AI.

Photo Colorization Brings New Look to Family History

I probably talk about generative artificial intelligence a dozen times a day at my job. From churning out articles, to tagging content, to even understanding a creative brief and crafting a virtual photo shoot, AI is constantly evolving the toolkit I deploy for my global digital marketing clients.

Being the seismic disrupter it is, AI has now found a way to shake my family tree, too.

In this case, while assembling an entirely different story for this blog, scrolling through snapshots I’d saved on Ancestry.com, I noticed a hint nudging me to “restore your old photo” and try Ancestry’s new filters. What the heck, I thought, and did some clicking.

In the very next moment: WOAH. Like, double WOAH.

Erma Foutz with in-laws Roy and Louise Foutz, Thanksgiving 1949.

Thanksgiving 1949, Revisited

The first photo I tried colorizing was from a series taken at a Foutz family gathering at Thanksgiving, 1949. One of my goals when starting this blog was to share stories of my family’s history in a way that we can relate to, as if we were talking about our aunts and grandpas and cousins, instead of ancestors from hundreds of years ago.

The goal of genealogy, for me, was not plugging in names and dates, but coming face to face with family. I didn’t know what my great-grandfather Vance Foutz looked like. I didn’t know about my grandpa Don Foutz’s brothers, Roy and Carl. I had only met my great aunt Doris later in her life. These were family who walked the same streets and attended the same schools I did in Dover, Ohio.

As I made those connections, I gained access to records, and documents, and photos. Sometimes from distant relatives we didn’t know existed. Sometimes, as in the case of this trove of Thanksgiving pictures, buried in a box we happened to have at home – but whose names and faces and significance could not have been deciphered without first putting in the research.

When I first shared these pictures in this space, my cousin Whitney remarked that it was almost like we could step into the frame, say hello, pull up a chair, join the family. Well I re-experienced that revelation as I used Ancestry.com’s colorization tool on more and more of these shots.

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  Don Foutz and oldest brother Roy Foutz, Thanksgiving, 1949.

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  Great candid of Great-Grandma Laura…

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  Erma Foutz, Thanksgiving Day, 1949

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  Erma Foutz comes in from the dining room to join mother-in-law Laura Foutz, brother-in-law Roy, and second son Bob, 1949

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  Erma Foutz with in-laws Roy and Louise

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Grandparents Don and Erma Foutz in colorized, sharpened images from Ancestry.com.

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

Another series I couldn’t wait to try were photos taken of my grandpa, Don Foutz, with his then-girlfriend, soon-to-be my grandma, Erma Miller, as they biked and posed at his home in Dover in 1941.

Ancestry uses AI technology provided by Photomyne to colorize photos and offer a series of filters you can use to adjust the result, preset filers like Restore, Cool, Warm, Contrast, etc. The effect isn’t perfect: sometimes the spectrum skews too often to red, or the color washes out like the edges of soap bubbles, or people behind the main subject or scenery in the background don’t get the color treatment. You can also auto-adjust the sharpness, but that ended up giving me oddly-focused faces in an otherwise watercolor-washed composition, giving the effect of AI baring its unnatural teeth.

Yes, there could be value in being able to really hand-tune the results, like we’re able to do on even basic social media. But I confess the initial results left me just tickled. Like our relatives stepping out of time and waving hello.

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  Erma Foutz bikes near Race Street, Dover, 1941

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  Don Foutz pedals a bike near his family’s home in Dover, circa 1941.

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  Don Foutz, 1941

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  Erma Foutz outside the Race Street, Dover, Ohio childhood home of her husband, Don

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  Don Foutz with mother Laura Zeigler Foutz, 1941.

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Vance Foutz Family – in Color

Like any old yearbook or photo album revisited, experiencing these classic portraits in a different light helps bring out details that might have been overlooked, like the shades of an expression, or texture in clothes or buildings or objects they used.

But the main effect is almost of meeting these beloved ancestors for the first time, as if they might just have passed by on the street, or posed for an iPhone snapshot at a backyard barbecue.

Maybe since so many of our photos today are filtered, and edited, and glossed to perfection, seeing these classic images with a different treatment, especially if it isn’t foolproof, bring out the life in them all the more.

All I know is I can’t stop looking.

Hangin’ in Mr. Morgan’s Neighborhood

Site of the former Hotel Morgan in Carnegie, Pa., in September 2023; model of the Hotel Morgan in its later incarnation as the Zug building in the historical museum across the street.

Exploring Site of the Hotel Morgan in Carnegie, Pa.

Well, howdy there, family history buffs. It’s a been a little while. Let’s dive right back in.

#3 on my list of “holy grails” of genealogy — as shared almost four years ago in this space (!) — was putting a place to a name. Key, of course, being that you’d already combed through enough records and matched enough milestones to the finely-pruned boughs of your family tree that you knew of the location and its significance, well, in the first place.

In September last year, the research and our madcap itinerary aligned enough that my oldest son, Jonah, and I were able to spend a few hours at the end of a visit to Pittsburgh to pass through Carnegie, Pa., home in the late 1800s to early 1900s of my great-great grandparents, Thomas and Janet Morgan.

We’d spent a few days back in the burgh so I could run The Great Race 10K for the first time in college, then show Jonah around both the University of Pittsburgh and my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon. In between we took in a couple favorite eateries (Primanti Bros.; Pino’s); rode to the top of Mt. Washington from Station Square on the Monongahela Incline, and pored over the excellent Heinz History Center right across from our hotel.

Credit Jonah for being a game enough explorer to squeeze in one last stop before turning in our rental Tacoma. I punched in coordinates for Chartiers Cemetery in Carnegie, where Thomas and Janet were laid to rest.

At Rest in the Green Hills

When I’d researched my great-great-grandparents’ lives and deaths, I’d relied on the photos of others, posted on FindAGrave.com, to appreciate their burial place. So it wasn’t absolutely necessary to take a detour off the main road into Carnegie into the tree-shaded lanes of Chartiers Cemetery to snap my own photos.

But there’s always been something mystical about visiting our ancestors’ places of rest and remembrance. I just didn’t know how much time we’d have, with a couple hours until our flight home later that afternoon. And I didn’t have precise coordinates.

Still, there may have been some familial magic guiding us as we took a single lap around the cemetery, peering through the passing rain showers up into the pines. We were turning back toward the entrance again when I spotted their monument and the two familiar gravestones.

We got out of the car and stood quietly for a moment, contemplating how long it had been since they were laid there — nearly 110 years now, for Janet, and close to 130 for Thomas — and wondering at the pilgrimages my great-grandmother and her brother and sisters, or my grandmother had made there before.

I dutifully recorded images of their headstones and some related names around them, including their son, Thomas, a war veteran. And we turned back onto the pike to head into Carnegie.

Corner of Chartiers and Main

In my research years ago, I’d marveled at discovering a map of Carnegie from 1897 that recorded the town in high-resolution detail, including my great-great-grandfather’s namesake hotel.

In keeping with my early tradition of employing my journalistic skills to gather all the genealogical sources I needed online, I was also tickled to find at least two different views of the Hotel Morgan in newspapers from the period, recounted here and here.

But from years winding in and around Pittsburgh during college, and whizzing by that Carnegie exit in a blink on my way in and out of town, and even contemplating that map from a bygone century, I just couldn’t imagine making an easy stopover. And so, I’d resisted on previous occasions.

Well, our incredible luck this trip held. Or, maybe it was divine ancestral invention? We managed to drive right up to the former site of the hotel, now a PNC Bank at Chartiers and Main streets, and even grabbed change from a teller inside for the meter.

After scoping out the views on the bridge over the river, and from either corner, we were drawn to the old building across the street, home of the Carnegie Historical Society and the actual building from that map I’d pored over years ago. What the heck, I thought, let’s take a look inside. Maybe they knew even more than Honus Wagner, famed baseball star from the early Pirates (and well known as owner of the most pricey oldtime tobacco card).

Well, not only did our incredible streak hold, but we were treated to an actual scale model of oldtime Carnegie, complete with little Hotel Morgan — in its later guise as the Zug building — set the way the neighborhood looked from the 1890s through the 1950s.

I snapped a few shots from all angles — next best thing to being there, I guess — and Jonah had a chance to heft one of The Flying Dutchman’s bats.

Inspired, I punched in the address of Jannett Morgan’s house at the time of her obituary into Google Maps and we drove across the tracks and wound uphill to her old neighborhood. But this is where our deadline-drive luck finally ran out. The addresses, it seemed, had changed since 1915, and though we were still tingling with a sense of history, we knew it was time to get back to the present and head for home.

Still, it was a fine interlude in an honored family place. And I hold to the notion we would not have been able to find our way there and back without something deeper in the blood and spirit guiding us through. Till next time, then.

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  The Morgans appear on their first U.S. Census in 1880, in Appollo, PA. By the time the family appears again, in 1900, they live in Carnegie, and Jannett Morgan is widowed. An entry in an 1896 book provides a clue as to what Colt’s great-great grandfather Thomas Morgan was doing in the years before his death.

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  Another view of the Hotel Morgan, shown about 1890 in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. This was the hotel managed by my great-great grandfather, Thomas W. Morgan, until his death in 1897.

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100th Anniversary of Sue Ley’s Birth

Me and Grandma Ley, her house, 1979.

Happy 100th Birthday, Suzanne Abbott Weible Ley

 

I was blessed to grow up in a town where I was only a short drive — or bike ride — from my grandparents.

It’s not so usual today, with families spread across the country, or, in some cases, the globe. But Dover, Ohio had been home to both sides of my family for better than 100 years, with the roots of the Leys stretching back to the next county over in the early 1800s, and the Weibles just south of Dover and its sister city, New Philadelphia, about a decade earlier than that.

It was important to my parents that we grew up knowing both sides of my family, and we sure did. Birthdays, grandparents days at school, rides to and from track and cross country and band practices, piano recitals, spelling bees, Thanksgivings, Christmases and vacations every year to the Carolinas — these were occasions made all the more memorable and sweet by sharing them with my grandparents, my mom’s parents, Bob and Sue Ley.

In fact, I shared the same elementary school, Dover Avenue, with both my mom and grandma Sue. She grew up just about two blocks east of our house right on Dover Avenue. And lived most of her married life within a mile of her childhood home and grade school.

But grandma was a lot closer than that. On the day I was born, June 2, 1976, — so the story goes — she just had a feeling and drove down to our house near Columbus, Ohio. When she and grandpa looked in the window and saw our dog, Shannon, but no mom and dad, they headed straight for Riverside Hospital.

They were there not long after I entered the world. And they were there for so many occasions during my childhood and young adulthood.

Once, when grandma was out hauling me somewhere and a car warning light went on, grade school me helpfully piped up, “Should we check in the manual, grandma?” She got a kick out of that.

Some of my first inklings of freedom as a kid was being able to bike to their house at the top of the hill on Parkview Drive. There, my cousins and brothers and I would play for hours in the pine trees bordering grandpa’s grapevine and apple trees, dubbing out hideouts Cousins’ Castle and the like. Grandma was always ready with a glass of Pepsi with ice to relax with in the shade of their patios. Over the years, the glass wore smooth and squeaky with their constant trips through the dishwasher.

When I was older, she was always ready to request a song or five from their living room piano. And always responded with enthusiastic applause.

We could walk into their house, day or night, and call out and be greeted by them.

She enjoyed sipping cold beers and talking about our adventures. She’d had several herself. She attended Miami University and Kent State University in Ohio — rare, in her generation — and worked in Columbus for the State of Ohio during World War II. She was also, I found out much later, an avid writer and, rumor had it, had authored a book of stories that was secreted away somewhere. They have not turned up.

We were blessed to share her 88 years, 63 of them married to my grandpa, Robert Earl Ley, Jr. But there are many times I wish I could walk right into their house again, pull up a chair, enjoy a Pepsi — or a cold beer — and hear her characteristic laugh.

As with my blog commemorating the 100th anniversary of my grandpa Don Foutz’s birth six years ago, I’m happy to be able to share so many great pictures of my Grandma Ley to celebrate her 100th.  Even happier — so many of these photos have family in them, including me.

They’re a mark of how family was always at the center of my grandparents’ lives. They were blessed with a big one. Seems to me we should find a way to celebrate them both this year — Grandpa’s 100th is Sept. 30 — and get the gang back together again.

Sue Ley: 88 Years in Photographs

(Scroll to view the gallery below, or click any photo for a closeup slideshow.)

Beatrice (M.A.) Weible and son Robert Colt, left, and Suzanne Abbott, about 1918.

Sue Weible and brother Robert Colt (Arry), 1918.

Sue Weible about the time of her high school graduation, 1936.

Miami University yearbook in Sue Weible’s early college years.

Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

A series of shots of Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

A series of shots of Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

A series of shots of Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

A series of shots of Sue Weible about the time of her marriage to Bob Ley.

Sue and Bob Ley about the time of their 1943 marriage in Oxford, Ohio.

Sue and Bob Ley family, minus son Robert III, 1968.

Bob and Sue Ley attend the wedding of their oldest son, Bob III, in Germany.

Bob and Sue Ley attend the wedding of their daughter Janet to Fred Foutz in 1975.

Bob and Sue Ley greet their grandson, Colt Foutz, shortly after his birth.

Bob and Sue Ley with their oldest grandchildren, 1978. (More would follow!)

Bob and Sue Ley attend a backyard picnic with the Foutzes in 1980.

Bob and Sue Ley attend a backyard picnic with the Foutzes in 1980.

Bob and Sue Ley with children, 1984.

Bob and Sue Ley with children and grandchildren, 1984.

Bob and Sue Ley with grandchildren, 1984.

Bob and Sue Ley at their home in Dover, Christmas 1987.

Bob and Sue Ley with Foutz grandsons Dan, Colt and Sam (front), 1992.

Bob and Sue Ley with cousins Dorothy and Scoop Weible, 1990s.

A photo from the reception following Sue Ley’s funeral, 2007. We definitely felt her presence, and miss her still.

 

Sue Ley 100th Birthday Slideshow

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So, This is 40

The dates on my great-grandfather R.O. Weible’s Elks leader portrait probably peg his age accurately — 39 in 1931, right on the cusp of 40.

Family Men at 40: A Rogue’s Gallery

I’ll say this for investing a little time in genealogy as a hobby: the presents you can create for family sure beat the silk off gifting another tie or purse.

As much as genealogy plays into my passions for research and writing, my bouts of document diving and image archiving have generated a few keepsake Christmas and birthday and anniversary and just-because gifts commemorating loved ones lost and living.

What fun would it be, after all, not to share?

Blogging about my Grandpa Foutz’s special 1931 football season led first to a Christmas book collecting both his source scrapbook and my blogs about his exploits, and later to a project to create an authentic reproduction of his 1931 jersey, as well as his actual game-worn uniform.

Before that, I’d taken a first crack at a frame-worthy family tree poster for my parents’ 35th anniversary. Then, a few years ago for my own 10th anniversary, I’d included my wife’s side back to the great-greats in an even bigger piece that hangs in our dining room at home — a record I’ve got to update, anyway, since we added a third little grape to our own family vine, oh, three years or so ago.

I’ve gladly cut my cousins into a trove of photos and newspaper clips I’ve stockpiled for their own efforts at milestone-marking.

And speaking of milestones, some of the less-sleuthworthy but more generically blogworthy posts in this space have focused on monthly birthdays and anniversaries of our ancestors.

This blog site and the notion of Whispering Across the Campfire, of course, is a means of sharing, too — releasing the newfound mysteries and facts so we can revel at them together, or send a beacon to relatives yet unknown in order to make sense of a particularly gnarly nugget.

You can bet I get a lot out of that, too.

So genealogical generosity, evidence indicates, is mostly a zero-sum game. You get what you give.

Well, today, I found my thoughts turning to… myself. Specifically, at about 12:12 a.m., the clock having ticked to a milestone of my own. I found myself, newly 40, pondering… a variety of sleep-evading thoughts, mostly on family. For instance:

• my inlaws, in their 60s; when we’d first met, sharing beers at a festival tent in Columbus, Ohio, they were barely 50. Is it possible so much time has racked up, and so quickly?
• my youngest son, turned 3 just 3 days before; when I’m 50 he’ll be 13, still house-bound to us for another 5 years, but also likely to leap in an eyeblink.
• my oldest, almost 10, will be out of the house by then; his brother, Ben, on the verge of leaving.
• my own parents, at 40, contending with a 16-year-old me. Seems so recent, but actually….
• the things I’d hoped for, some lost, some attained — were they me? Another me? Someone else?
• and the memories which still seem close enough to step into; events and people at 12 and 20 and 9 and 30, how long do we hold them, and for what end?

All right. So at least I’m old enough to know the antidote — a trusty book, kept bedside. Reshuffling my thoughts in the rhythm of narrative. Finding rest.

Mostly, in that interval, I thought of family. And the lessons we grope at — however profound, however fleeting — of the things they’d done, and the ways they’d lived. What it says about us, about all this: there is always someone who came before, always stories to be written after.

Ahem. Well.

OK, so I eventually found sleep. And woke up today with a little nugget of an idea for a milestone blog of sorts. Not about me, really. But a visual reminder of some of the ragged thoughts bumping around in my middle-aged brain.

A few years ago, when my parents turned 60, I put together a little slideshow compiling photos and facts of their own parents and grandparents and great-grandparents: what they looked like and the way they lived in the years they turned 60. A little parallel time capsule, of sorts.

So today I find myself thinking about the men in my family. A few of whom I’m told I resemble. (That’s generous, in some instances, plainly tragic in others. But ah well. Our faces are just the facades we present to the outside.) Without over-narrating, then (having done that already), a slideshow. Of Foutzes and Leys and Weibles, etc., at or around when they turned 40.

Of course, 40 is relative. (Accidental pun, hahaha. Relative.) What would it mean, without a little juxtaposition? So, I’ve thrown that in, too.

Prost! Skol! Cheers!

So this is 40? A Slideshow

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