How I Came To Know The Holmes Cook Family
When my interest in family ancestry began, I reached out to those in our family who I knew had photos and/or documentation. As I had already started scanning and copying stuff from Aunt Susan's collection, I asked our Uncle Bill if he had anything. Sure and begorrah, he did!
It was April of 2013. My previous job with the Choral Arts organization, known as Singers Marin, was celebrating its 25th anniversary with a big concert at Davies Symphony Hall. Those were busy days at the office for me, assisting with organizing the concert and rehearsals, while trying to locate every adult singer who had been with the group and invite them to join for this special anniversary. A few days before this, Uncle Bill and Uncle Jeff invited me to the city for dinner and a play.
Over cocktails with Jeff, Uncle Bill went down to his storage room and brought up a bag full of photos and documentation. The bag was one similar to what a new blanket would be in. Desperately wanting to look into it, I had to be patient. It was dinner first, then the play and home. By the time, Uncle Bill got me home, it was close to 11:30 pm. Since the Singers Marin 25th anniversary concert happened over my Mom's birthday, Dad and I planned to celebrate her birthday and Easter together.
I wanted to clean up the apartment a wee bit the following day, so it was off to bed so I could be up early on Sunday. However, whie lying in bed, curiosity got the better of me. I SIMPLY COULD NOT WAIT !! Throwing off the covers, I went into my living room and began opening the bag.
What I found first absolutely astounded me, a small sepia photo of family ancestors/relations possibly taken in their backyard. Who were they?, The only person I could positively ID was the man on the far left. In the original sepia photograph (as shown below) the name Charles was written above the man's head. Still in the early stages of my research, I knew very little about who the others in this family might be. Mom said grandma Bruemmer would often talk about the San Francisco relatives. A thousand questions came to mind. Who were they? Have I ever met them? Are they descendants and if so are they still alive.?
It was around this time, that I reached out to a new ancestry member named Sandra. Looking at her tree, it appeared that she was connected to the Holmes Cook family and ta da, as it turned out Sandra is the granddaughter of Corporal Frederick Holmes Cook, great grandpa Charles older brother. We exchanged email addresses and began a wonderful friendship of sharing information and photos that has continued to this very day! Although we've never met in person, we once did a video chat which was great fun.
Sandra also introduced me to another ancestry pal Becky with whom I have also continued to correspond with. The connection to our family is explained in her words: "My father's sister, Marie Perez, married Leslie V (Jack) Cook son of Harry and Irene Cook".
Recall in a previous blog that two brothers of the Holmes Cook family Charles and Harry were married to two sisters of the Steele Family Nell and Irene
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Harry and Irene had six children altogether. Even though there was a bit of a love triangle between two brothers and two sisters, all worked out in the end and the two families became quite close often getting together for camp outs and holidays!
After corresponding with Becky and sharing with her my photo of Holmes Cook family, a continual running email dialogue between the three of us went on for many weeks! It soon lead us to the conclusion that this photo must be of the Holmes Cook family.
Even more exciting was the 100% confirmation of who each of the people were in this photograph, based on additional photos in Aunt Susan's collection and what my new ancestry pals Sandra and Becky knew of or had photos to compare with.
This original photo took some time to get the colorization just right. The ancestry site called, "My Heritage" did a fairly good job BUT Ancestry.com did it even BETTER (as shown below)
CHILDREN OF HARRY AND IRENE COOK
Charles
1.Catherine
Gustavus & (2)Jeannette
John and Catherine
Using photographs that I had from Aunt Susan’s collection and the knowledge that Sandra had learned about her grandfather’s family, we began going character by character.
(1) Catherine. In the above family photo, the woman on the far left below Charles looked just like TINTYPE photograph (Above) of Katherine Clark, the matriarch of the home family. To her immediate right tall man with a mustache and hat we thought to be her husband Frederick Cook.
However, an 1896 voter registry tells a different story. Frederick's height is listed as 5' 3 1/2", green eyes, dark hair. Yet this rather tall man does continues to appear in other photos taken with the Holmes Cook family! So who is this rather handsome man with the mustache? Well, read on!
(2)Jeannette Jeanette is standing next to the tall gentlemen and holding the LYRE. She was the first born child to Frederick and Catherine Holmes Cook on April 17, 1869.
height this man is 5'9 in fact, continues to pop up in other photos of the Holmes Cook family.
let us do the conclusion that this must be Gustavo Harper, who was the oldest Jeanette.
Sitting on the chair is your younger sister, Catherine Emma, and immediately to Katherine right is her younger brother. John
An article on Reddit described how it was in the early days of taking photographs of people.
In early these days of photography 8 to 20 1830s people or subjects had to sit wait or stand for several minutes to nearly 8 hours for a photo. Are the 1850s the time was reduced to 20/62 by 1880s. It was down to 1 to 3 seconds.
Yet even based on this photograph, we wondered, where were the other characters such as the father Fredrick, his name sake, Frederick, the corporal of these department, sister, Mary Ann Holmes Cook and brother Harry
Linda
The original tintype photo
BEFORE Revision
AFTER
