Memorial Day - John McFadden (1842-1863)

Memorial Day - A day for honoring and mourning people who died while serving in the United States military. 

John McFadden, my great grand uncle, was about twenty one when he died at the battle of Mission Ridge in Tennessee on November 26, 1863.[1]

John served with the Ohio Infantry, 36th Regiment, Company K.

Not much is known about him other than from the testimonies of his parents, sister, brother-in-law and other acquaintances in his Civil War pension file submitted by his parents, Edward McFadden and Alice Collum.

 Some things learned about John in the pension application:

• According to Patrick Ward, private, 36th Regiment, Company F, John was found with a bullet wound in is chest, still breathing. As they took him down in the ambulance (stretcher) he died.[2]
• The testimony in the pension application mentions a photograph of John in his uniform which was unfortunately destroyed in a fire that destroyed the McFadden home.

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[1]Parent’s pension application no. 218859; service of John McFadden (Pvt., Co. K, 36^th Ohio Infantry, Civil War); Case Files of Approved Pension Applications…, 1874-1886; Civil War and Later Pension Files; Department of Veterans Affairs, Record Group 15; National Archives, Washington D.C.

 [2]

 The Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion 1861-1866.  http://www.archive.org/stream/ohiowarroster03howerich#page/672/mode/2up

Mystery Photo for whatever day this is

 As we're locked down, I have been able to make good progress on my family history photos and documents scanning project. Of course, the more I get digitized the more mysteries seem to pop up.

Below, is a mystery photo of a couple. Looking at it, I'm inclined to say it is from the 1920s to the 1930s. On the back of the photo is written Dennis. I have a Dennis McFadden (1847-1924) in my line, but about when this photo was taken he'd have been an old man.

Why would it have been so hard to add a last name or a name for the woman?

DeOldify your photos

MyHeritage.com has released a program that colorizes old photos. 

You can sign in for free and test out the program. It looks like after you do a few it requests you sign up for a paid membership.

The results are very cool though not perfect, but I'm sure it will improve in the future. In the meantime, it will be fun to play around with.

As soon as I finish organizing and digitizing my photo collection, I'll probably sign up for an account and start creating colorized versions of all my photos.

June 1922. Possibly my grandmother Ruth McFadden Webb (1905-1985) and an unknown girl

An unknown family and location

An unknown woman sitting on a car with a man visible through the window

Old cylinder recordings and my grandfather

The UCSB Library invites you to discover and listen to its online archive of cylinder recordings; donate to help the collection grow; and learn about how these sounds and songs create an audio history of American culture.

The UC Santa Barbara Library has a digital library of a lot of old cylinder recording from the late 1800s to early 1900s.

They have all types of recordings from music, speeches, sermons, vaudeville etc. I love listening to them and can spend hours just browsing the collection.

Then I came upon this recording:  He'd have to get out and get under (to fix up his automobile).

I then recalled an old photo of my Grandfather, Clyde Lee Webb from circa 1915.

 Clyde is the man under the car. The other person is unknown.

According to the site the song was released about 1913, so it may have been fairly popular back then. I wonder if the writing was a reference to the song. It's seems quite likely. Putting a pop-culture reference on a photo is something I would definitely do.

It's kind of  strange. When I knew my grandfather he impatient and seemed humorless and not much fun to be around. Something as simple as this all these years later kind of makes me feel a little closer to him.