Crazy!

Some crazy things have happened to me since I started getting into genealogy.

Several years ago, I put a message on the Ancestry Message Board looking for anybody that had any information about Illda Martha Austin. I was stuck.  I was stumped.  I was a rookie and didn't know what my next step should be.

A lady contacted me and said that she collects antique photos, and she had one that had the name Illda Martha Austin written on the back of it.  She had picked it up (along with a box of other photos).  She said that she would send me a copy.  Yea!  Great!  Oh, and to get a print of it would cost $14 and shipping.  Really?  Oh, I'm a skeptical soul.  Sounds like someone is trying to flamboozle me.  But it was only $14 so I fell for it and mailed her a check.  At least she gave me a real address, not a PO Box address.

Guess what?  A couple of weeks later, I got the picture in the mail.  I know.  I couldn't believe it.  And it was indeed my grandmother at about age 4 or 5.  And, really, I didn't need the name Illda Martha Austin to know it was her.  It looked just like her.  And years later, I found the same print in an old album in the attic.

But I wonder how it got into the antique shop.  The lady found it in Jackson, Michigan and I have some family in that neck of the woods, but who would get rid of a child's portrait.  Did the last person who knew who she was die and the photo meant nothing to no one?  How sad.