52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 2: Favorite Photo

It's Week 2 of Amy Johnson Crow's genealogy challenge for the year: writing about 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks (www.amyjohnsoncrow.com).

Week 2: Favorite Photo

Choosing a favorite photo is almost as hard as choosing a favorite ancestor would be. But, one of  my favorites is this portrait of Margaret (Maggie) Cumberland, my 2nd-great-grandmother on the Pirl side of my family tree.

Margaret Cumberland (1879-1945). Copy of framed photo shared with me by a cousin.

Photo undated. Enhanced, repaired, and colorized by MyHeritage's

free photo enhancement tools (www.myheritage.com).

I think this one is the oldest in my collection. I love that it shows some personal resemblance to myself and my daughter. I think I see strength and resilience in the set of her jaw and the directness of her eyes.

One of the reasons I love photos is that they raise so many questions. For instance, why was this photo of Maggie taken? She looks fairly young here, and based on that and her hair and clothing I would guess it was taken around the turn of the century. I don't have any other photos from this side of the family, until a couple of generations later. The family was not wealthy, by any means. They were laborers, mostly in farm work, construction, and mining, and they did not own land.

The documents seem to support, though I have not proven, that Maggie had a daughter when she was about 19 years old, my great-grandmother Jennie. Jennie was born about 7 years before Maggie married William B. Johnson in 1906. By 1920, William, Maggie, and their younger daughter, Daisy, lived next door to Jennie and her husband Homer Pirl in Dunbar Township, PA.

Maggie Cumberland Johnson died of a stroke in 1945 in the Connellsville/Dunbar Township area where she had lived her entire life.

Obituary of Maggie Cumberland, published in The Daily Courier (Connellsville, PA) on January 22, 1945. Accessed from Newspapers.com January 13, 2023.

Thanks again for reading! This challenge is really inspiring me to fill in my research gaps as I write about a new ancestor each week.