One of the fun things about family history and genealogy to me is the mystery and the "who-dunnit" mentality it takes to find people. It's also good to be able to follow rabbit trails.
One of my genealogical bucket list items this year was to find a photo of my birth parents. Not an easy task as my birth father died in 2001 and my birth mother is still (to my knowledge) living.
Usually when I go 'hunting', I start with basics that I know: name, birth date, place of birth, spouse, parents names -- pretty much anything I have. Sometimes you can type all that into a search engine line and get a couple of really good hits. Sometimes you get junk. I also go to Ancestry.com (I purchased a full subscription this last fall so that I can look up whatever I want when the urge strikes me). Ancestry is great for some families and not so great for others.
I've hit a road block with my birth families; I have pieces of information I've gathered from all over the Internet, but none of it really gets me anywhere with Ancestry. I have some census records, a death certificate, some family histories; but nothing that really has given me an "EUREKA" moment!
So today, I started with my birth mother's name: Helen Adele Gusmini, her birth date, her parents and a brother (side note -- it pays to read all the stuff you have on a name; both brothers died young so they wouldn't have been in much). I tried the 1940 census, birth/marriage/death records, and some general records and found nothing (other than what I already had).
So, I moved to Google and typed in a series of names, etc. I found my birth father's obituary (I have a copy saved) and re-read it. It lists the high school he graduated from, so I tried that as a search item.
I found the 1943 Waltham High School Year book. BINGO!!!! It's not a very good photo (I copied it to Word) but it's pretty clear in the digital year book .
By the way, John Joyce was married before he married Helen, and I have a half-brother. So, I looked up to see if I could figure out who "M.W." was mentioned in the yearbook and there was only one Senior girl with those initials and she was apparently dating "J.J." Coincidence possibly, but it gives me some fodder for future searches for my half-brother's mother.
Most of the yearbooks are archived on the Internet (thanks to http://archive.org). I hoped that they had attended the same High School at the same time (they are born four years apart, so it's a good guess). Unfortunately no. So then I looked up to see how many High Schools there are in the Somerville/Newton (Massachusetts) area and went back to archive.org.
After a bit of trial and error, I found my mother's sister, Mary at Newton High School, 1944. I did not have a birth year for Mary, so I didn't know if she was older or younger than Helen; but I had a birth year for Helen. I guessed what year Helen would have graduated from High School and looked in 1945 and then 1946.
I also looked in 1944 and 1945; but she must not have attended there those two years because there were no other Gusmini's (except for Mary in 1944).
I'll spend some more time when I get the chance looking up photos of Mary and Helen's brothers Gerald, Richard and Louis. Again, I have no birth years so it will be guessing. I don't see the brothers on the 1930 census and I don't find the family at all in the 1940 census (I'll keep looking), so it will just be "luck" that I find them. I'll also look at the yearbooks of other High Schools in the area to see if I can find them earlier.
