02 Favorite Photo

 One of my favorite-photo candidate's would have to be this unremarkable one, taken in 1893, of Ingrid Sophia 'Sophie' Erickson, born Johnson, my 2nd great aunt. Born 16 December 1861 in Geneseo, Illinois to my 2nd great grandparents who had both emigrated from Sweden about 10 years earlier, Sophie probably posed for this photo in the mid-1880s. 

My second cousin Linda writes: "Sophie, along with sister, Anna and stepsister, Amanda, worked in Chicago where they all learned dressmaking and tailoring." Sophie married at age 31 and died at age 41, probably of tuberculosis, which also caused the death of her mother Caroline and her older sister Lottie, my great-grandmother. 

This photo stands out because it reminds me of how I got started on genealogy. It was one of several photos of unrecognizable ancestors that I remember seeing at a large family reunion in Breckenridge, Colorado in the summer of 2004. Only my 86-year-old Aunt Marian knew who this was, though Marian was born 17 years after Sophie died, and the photo was uncaptioned as were many others that were being shared. That week I decided to help preserve these old photos and capture the stories behind them, and over the next three years found myself sucked into the black hole of genealogy. I brought my scanner with me to the next reunion in 2007.

But was this really Sophie and not one of her sisters? It took some comparisons with other photos to decide it was. It was clear we had already lost much to time: what prompted this photo? How many copies were made and to whom were they sent? What was a typical week for Sophie at the time? It has been said that pictures are worth 1000 words, but here most of those words are questions.

Sophie married and had three children; two survived but none had children, and so there is little that Sophie has left behind in this world besides this photograph: vital event records, entries in some genealogies, a grave. But the photo she had taken survived, and helped to introduce me to genealogy.