Weekly Genealogy Blogging Prompt #1 ~ Favorite Picture

[This post is based on a great idea from Amy Coffin at WeTree. She has come up with a series of 52 different blogging.prompts, one for each week of the year.]

Week #1 Upload your favorite picture and talk about it on your blog. Answer the who/what/when/where/why of the subject matter and explain why it is your favorite.

I could never pick just one picture as my favorite, so I chose, "My Favorite Picture That I Never Expected To See In My Life That I Received From Someone I've Never Met In Person."

The people in this picture are:
Far back: Jack H. Quick [my grandfather]
Middle Row (l to r): Dick Heflin, Nelle [Eickelberg, Nissen, Quick] Heflin, Harry Nissen
Front Row (l to r): William Eickelberg, Nellie Eickelberg, Helen Nissen
Far front/extreme right - Ruth [Evans] Quick.

Ruth is my Mom's biological mother. Ruth and my Grandpa were divorced when my Mom was barely 2 years old. My Grandpa had custody and Ruth did not remain in my Mom's life so consequently I had no pictures of Ruth as a young woman. I do have a picture of Ruth when she was in her 50's and briefly got in touch with my Mom [long story, not for here] but that was it.

I also have a baby album of my Mom's that has a picture of her with her Dad and a space labeled, "Mother and baby" but the picture in that space is one of my Mom at about 2 years old! Also in the album were 4 carefully cut out heads, all of my Mom - adorable baby that she was - so I have to assume that Ruth was in all of those pictures. How I wish I had them!

Well, I have my tree posted out on Ancesty.com. Through a contact from the information posted there I began an e-mail correspondence with a man, Don, who is the grandson of my great-grandmother's [Nelle Eickelberg's] 3rd husband, Dick Heflin. Got that?!?

I turns out that Dick had been married before and had children from his previous marriage - something I hadn't known. Don and I exchanged e-mails for awhile and I mentioned that I had some pictures that included Dick. I sent Don scanned copies and then I put the originals in the mail. They were just snapshots, but I though he might like to have them.

Don really appreciated them and told me that he had other pictures of Dick that he had been meaning to scan. I told him that I'd be interested in seeing them. Even though Dick Heflin was not a blood relative, he was the Grandpa that my Mom grew up with. He and Nelle were married early enough that Dick was a big part of my Grandpa's life as well. So Dick was very much a part of the family stories and family life.

Some time later - I'd actually forgotten about it - Don sent me a whole raft of scanned images. I was looking through them thinking how fun it was to see pictures of Dick in his army uniform (WWI) and just having fun looking at all the neat old pictures.

Then, this one came up and I gasped. The young woman sitting right in the front was staring at me with my mother's face! At least the eyes and the smile were the same. I could easily identify everyone else in the photo, but this woman in the front - could it really be Ruth? I shot off an e-mail to Don asking if there was identification on the picture. I told him that I knew all the people - and named who I thought they were - except the woman in the front on the right. He came back almost immediately, thank goodness, and told me that it said, "Ruth Quick."

Amazing~