A recent prompt for 52 Ancestor in 52 Weeks was Favorite Photo.
I have a lot of favorite photos, but below is my current most favorite one. Last weekend, my second cousin, T., sent me a photo via Messenger and asked if that was my dad in the photo.
YES! My dad is in the photo and so is his dad! And as far as I know, this is the only photo of my dad with his dad. I was thrilled to see it and share it with my family.
My dad, Charles L. HEISER (1913-2001) was raised by his maternal grandparents, Montgomery PRICE (1859-1947) and Sallie PYLES PRICE (1862-1940) in Frederick, Maryland, after his mother, Goldie PRICE HEISER (1893-1919) died during the Spanish Flu Epidemic when Dad was five. You can read about my grandmother here.
After Goldie died, my dad’s father, Daniel Wilbert HEISER (1882-1974) took his 2 little daughters (my dad’s younger sisters) and went to his parents’ home in York, Pennsylvania. He married a widow with a few children of her own. It’s a mystery as to why my dad stayed in Frederick instead of joining his father and sisters in York.
As far as I knew until last Sunday, there were no photos of my dad with his dad.
It was always clear that my dad looked like his dad but seeing them in the same photo sure drove that home. I played around with the photo a bit using My Heritage’s photo tools. I like that it made the photo clearer, but the color enhancer got the eye colors wrong and I don’t trust the rest of the colorization, so I didn’t show that photo in this blog post.
Here’s the original, the enhanced version, and a comparison I created.
Maybe it’s just me, but the picture of your dad bears some resemblance to my dad, Charles Alonzo Pyles, son of Reginald Pyles. I’m in California now, but when I get back east, I will see if I can find a good picture for you to see and compare.
Please do. I’d like to see it!