There is a tintype in a beautiful family album that I scanned with the other photographs. Since then, I’ve passed by that unidentified photo many times. Something always struck me as familiar; in fact, the woman looked like one of my great-great grandmother Alice Paak DeKorn’s sisters–perhaps Carrie or Mary. Carrie had no children. Mary had two girls and a boy and this woman is standing with two girls.
But it wasn’t right and I knew it. One of Mary’s girls was born much too late to be in a tintype.
So I let it go.
Until I saw it again the other day and it all snapped into place for me.
I focused on the girl with the face in clear image, and I knew who she was. That led me to consider the woman and the other girl.
Bingo. I thought to myself, “We have a match.”
The girl on our left (the woman’s right) is Janna DeKorn, aka Aunt Jen who I knew until I was twelve years old. Aunt Jen was born in 1873. Her younger sister, my great-grandmother Cora, was born Jacoba Wilhelmina DeKorn in 1875.
Alice, Lou, and Jennie (DeKorn) Leeuwenhoek
That means that the woman is Alice Paak DeKorn, their mother. No wonder she looks like her sisters. Gee whiz. Why did I not recognize her? There are a couple of reasons. For one thing, the photos I have of her when she’s older tend to be snapshots, and she had the loveliest smile. In this studio portrait, she is non-smiling, probably because she had to hold still for at least six minutes for a tintype. That would explain why Cora’s face is blurry. She must have moved while the image was being captured.
The other reason Alice looked different to me is that she has darker, curled hair here. She does not have curled hair in other images, and most of the photos show her with light hair, which I now realize was gray.
If we look back at the image on Kin Types of the tintype of her as a teen or young woman, we can see that her hair was brown and that this woman is, indeed, Alice Paak.
I thought you would enjoy the details of the clothing in the tintype of Alice and her daughters. The photo would have been taken most likely after 1881 when the youngest DeKorn, Joseph, was born. Jennie looks 10-12 here and Cora 8-10. That would place the year as between 1883 and 1885.
I had a thought about the “picket fence” as it seems an add-on since it doesn’t match the possible banister behind them. It looks as if it was used for subjects to “lean on” to help steady them for the long wait for the image to develop.
Here is another photo that was given to me by Professor Lawrence of Jennie DeKorn as a child. Although the photographer’s name is cut off here, I recognize that this photo was taken by John Reidsema who was a professional photographer in Kalamazoo from at least 1888. If this was 1888, Jennie would be 15 years old, which could be right. Notice that the photo I posted above of Jennie with her husband and child was also taken at Reidsema’s studio.
And this one is also from Professor Lawrence of Jennie and Cora.
So I have three good images of Jennie as a child, but only one of Cora because of the blurred face in the tintype. the tintype is especially precious because it shows Alice Paak DeKorn when she was a young mother, whereas our other shots of her are when she was younger and, mainly, much older.
The Family Kalamazoo 
I was surprised at their bangs. I guess I’ve never seen photos of that time with women’s hair cut for bangs.
Your comment fascinates me. They do seem exceptional with their bangs for the time period. I looked up the Dutch boy hair style for little girls, and it seems to be a 1920s thing, so I can’t blame it on that. I did find though that Alice’s hair (the curled bangs) would be consistent with the mid-80s style. This article explains that style in one sentence, but to paraphrase it was a look adopted by Princess Alexandra of Wales. https://www.crfashionbook.com/beauty/a32402994/hair-history-bangs-celebrities-models/#:~:text=Following%20antiquity%2C%20historians%20date%20the,of%20bangs%20to%20Medieval%20Spain.&text=According%20to%20The%20Encyclopedia%20of,to%20committing%20a%20mortal%20sin.
Aha!
I was trying to work out what was different and that’s it! They have a fringe (as we say here)
Nice find Luanne, and wonderful you were able to find out who they really are. So exciting when you verify a find. Thanks for sharing, and I have my book almost ready to take to the printer. Best wishes, Paula
Thanks, Paula. Oh, that is good news! My best with it!
What extraordinary photo’s all of these are. Good detective work on this Luanne. The tin type is so precious, from the tiny purse and gloved hands to the matching outfits on the girls. Look at the detail on their skirts and those hats 🙂
Since you sew, I knew you would notice those details! I wonder what she carried in her purse!!! And, yes, the matching outfits are so special. I couldn’t believe I didn’t notice before that that was Aunt Jen! If I had, I would have known right away who they were. The problem is you get ideas in your head, sometimes from just seeing one photo of someone or just seeing them at a certain time of their life. I forget that people look different in all different photos.
I really enjoyed this tour through some of your family photographs. It’s always so exciting to be able to say definitively who is in them. Alice and her daughters were dressed to the nines for their studio portrait. The clothing looked rather uncomfortable.
Yes, they look very dressed up. Can you imagine that tight-fitting coat that Alice is wearing? I mean, it fits her like a glove, as it is supposed to, but to me who loves loose clothing, ick! And the girls. Imagine getting those hats to stay on hah.
That was my thought about wearing the coat as well. Too hard to move and too hard to breathe.
One thing I noticed was how much the baby resembles her father in the one of the young family. They have the same mouth. I like how you figured it all out!😀
Baby Alice definitely looks like her papa’s family, not her mama’s. It’s relatively easy to spot her in photos because she looks a little different from the rest of the family! Thank you!
It’s always nice when there are strong genes to tie people together in photos! 😀
It sure does help in photo identification!
Fascinating – and painstaking research
Thank you, Derrick. It was very easy once I got my mind out of a groove that it was stuck in. That is one of the worst things in genealogy–not to keep a completely open mind.
These are such amazing images, and your analysis seems absolutely correct. Your persistence has paid off! And you are so fortunate to have these. Amazing!
Thank you, Amy! I can’t believe how I didn’t twig to Aunt Jen’s identity for so long. But once I did, wow. Defamiliarizing is probably a good process to use in photo identification. Kind of like how once I saw my 15 year old son rounding the corner in Staples and momentarily thought “that’s a good looking kid.” Hah, that was my good looking kid. He was briefly defamiliarized because I didn’t expect him right then.
That’s a great story! And I’ve never heard the expression “to twig to.” What does it mean?
It means to catch on or notice something.
Marvelous images, Luanne. Don’t you love it when you make the connections and identify the unidentified?? I have so many that I can’t find out now with the generation totally gone.
Thank you for this lovely story.
P.S. I also had a great- great aunt named Wilhelmina. My mother had a doll named Mina, and I just this second understood where she got that name which I considered so very odd as a child.
Oh how cool that is! That’s one of those names that nobody seems to “remember,” and yet they use the nicknames! My great-grandmother apparently went by Mina or something close when she was a kid. As an adult she took Cora from Jacoba. I like Mina!
I’m so sorry about not having anybody to help you identify photographs. If your library has subscriptions to Ancestry and My Heritage and if you don’t, you might be able to research your ancestors and see if by any chance someone else has put up a photo or two of them. That happens. It’s not foolproof because there’s a lot of fools out there, but it might be a lead.
See – this is why you are better at this than I am…my daddy used to say there were only two kinds of people in Texas: fools and newcomers. So he suspected the “fool” theory even way back when.
LOL hahaha. The fool theory. Now there is a good blog post subject for you, Sheila!