Forgotten Photos Find Their Way Home

Perhaps my most amazing genealogy story has to do with someone else’s family, not mine. I was living in Orlando, Florida, in the early 1960s, not far from the Harry P. Leu estate (now public gardens). My younger brother, Sam, was more adventurous than I was (then), and he was a great one for exploring forbidden places (such as the Leu family graveyard, but that’s another story). He found a small abandoned cottage in the neighborhood, with dozens of old photographs scattered on the floor, along with player piano rolls and a pink satin corset. I collected only the photos, which dated from early in the century.

A couple named Fred and Eva (nee Burston) Rogerson had lived in the house since the 1920s, and apparently had no children; there were no photos of them with children, and of course, no one had cared to take the photos. I, however, grew to love Fred and Eva; they looked like a cheerful pair, with friends and relatives from all over. Eva may have originally come from Deadwood, South Dakota. Fred was an Englishman. Photo postcards included a picture of his handsome brother Bert in a kilt during World War I.

The pictures went with me in a box wherever I moved for years, until I stored them at Sam’s in Ohio and almost forgot about them. One day he called and said he was cleaning out junk and found the photos, and was about to throw them away. It was a miracle they’d survived the damp of his storage shed. Once again, they were saved at the last minute. He mailed them to me, and my old friends and I were reunited.

In the late 1990s, I discovered online genealogy, and it occurred to me that I might be able to locate the Rogersons’ relatives through the Internet. I scanned and posted a couple of the photos on what I thought were likely sites, going by inscriptions on some of the photos, and again forgot about them. In 2000, I received an excited e-mail from David Rogerson, of England, Bert’s son and Fred’s nephew. He’d found my photos online in the course of his family research. Of course I sent him the photos, but not without some sadness at parting with them, even though I kept copies of all of them.

Finding David Rogerson – and his finding the family photos – was sort of like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it out to sea, the Internet being the sea. I think Fred and Eva must have been waiting for the Web to come into being – a true Web of family.

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