I am posting with the hope that others may provide insight. In 2017, my aunt, Phyllis Reakes, submitted the following photo to Photo Detective Maureen Taylor and Family Tree Magazine. You can read the photo analysis right here.
According to Maureen Taylor, the photo was likely taken between 1900-1910. The photo was sent to my aunt by her first cousin, but other information regarding provenance is unknown to me. The identity of the older man is given by a different photo as my great-great-grandfather, Samuel Kirsch (born 1835). The back of the second photo contains the following description: “mother’s father + 2 half-sisters/My Grandpa/picture taken in Russia with 2 of mothers sister/Pauline left/Lydia right.” From this, it is likely the original photo is in the possession of the Rempel family (Pauline Yackel and Lydia Adler are half-sisters to Julia Rempel and Christina Schwerderke, and, as far as I know, there has been no contact with Christina’s descendants – see Kirsch Research for reference). The identities of the other people in the photo are unknown.
If you compare the two photos, you can see that the depictions of Samuel Kirsch are exactly the same, the first photo appearing to be the original photo that he sat for. Information about why he was superimposed onto the second photo is unknown, but perhaps it was a way for the family to commemorate their father.
Who are the people with Samuel in the first photo? My first guess was the same as the one posed by Maureen Taylor, that the man in the middle of the photo is one of Samuel’s sons and the others are his wife and children. If the photo was taken between 1900-1910, Samuel’s sons from his second marriage would be too young. If it is a son from his first marriage, the only one still in Volhynia at the time was Karl Kirsch (he left for Canada in 1913). Karl and his wife, Olga Dymmel, had five children: three older daughters, a son, and an unknown child who died young. While his family might match the family in the photo, his son Daniel was born in 1911 and would have been too young to be one of the boys in the photo. Another possibility is that it is Gottlieb Kirsch, but nothing is known about his first marriage and family.
Is the woman in the photo Samuel’s second wife, August Reiter? August (born 1863) was twenty-eight years younger than Samuel. According to her grandaughter, Monda Bohn, she died when her youngest child, Olga Kirsch, was around two years old, which would have been around 1907.
I hope that one day we can identify the people in the photo. I would love to read your guesses!
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