A Photo to Remember

What a great photo, right?!!

This photo was among my grandmother’s (Elizabeth Anna Leach Tubbs) photo collections. I’ve seen it on numerous occasions and although it is marked with “Tyler Family” in my grandmother’s handwriting on the back, that’s all I knew about it!

I had no idea if these people were related to my grandmother (thus me) or if it was just some random family.

I decided to colorize it using MyHeritage to see what it might have looked like in color.

Since I do love a challenge, I thought I would try to figure out who these children might be. I made some assumptions to get me started:

1. The surname of the 4 children was Tyler

2. The fashion of the children appear to be the 1920’s

3. My grandmother lived in Ypsilanti, Michigan in the late 1920’s

It actually didn’t take me that long to find a Tyler Family living in Ypsilanti in 1930. In the 1930 Census, a family of 6 were living at 215 Cross Street. Parents were Lewis H. and Linda C. Tyler. The four children were Janet L (18), Mary E (15), John F (13), and Virginia P (9). The ages and gender of the children seem to fit. In the 1920 Census, the family of 5 (Virginia wasn’t born yet) were living at the same location. Janet was about the same age as my Uncle Clay and Mary was the same age as my grandmother. My great-grandmother was an elementary school teacher in Ypsilanti, so it is also possible that she was one of these youngster’s teacher.

When I showed my husband, he said it is possible that this is the same family, but he wouldn’t definitively agree with me. Maybe the photo Tyler family didn’t live in Ypsilanti? So on to looking for more evidence.

As I was starting to investigate the children, I started with Mary Elizabeth Tyler who was about my grandmother’s age. I found that she married Jack Robinson Donohoe at age 21, in 1936 in Steuben, Indiana. My grandparents also were married in Steuben in 1935…it appears that was the place to go to elope during the 1930s. (I later found that her sister, Janet L, also was married in 1935 in Steuben, Indiana.) Jack was from a farming family in Caro, Michigan, so they moved there and he farmed. She lived until age 91 and he until 85 and had no children and I could find no photos of her.

I then turned my attention to Janet Louise Tyler and that’s where I hit pay dirt! In 1932, there was a Janet Louise Tyler was attending Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) from Ypsilanti and majoring in Fine Arts and part of the Normal Art Club. Here’s her photo (clearly she found a way to tame her hair). And I enlarged the original photo and I was pretty certain at that this was the same person. Interestingly, my uncle Clay was in the same year, so probably they knew each other from high school, although he studied history and mathematics.

Janet married Cornelius James Fox in Steuben in 1935 after they had both graduated from Michigan State Normal College, he studied mathematics and science and was the year behind Clay and Janet, which happened to be in the same year as Clay’s future wife, Vivian Lantz. Vivian was also part of the Normal Art Club in 1933 but Janet was graduated by then. Both women became teachers, although Vivian became full time at home when the children came along. 

An interesting fact is that in 1950, both couples were living in Nueces County, Texas about 38 miles from one another! I have no idea if they knew that at the time, but a very interesting coincidence. Janet continued to teach and contributed to Art Education in profound ways, including authoring a three-volume series Modular Art Education, teaching in the Art Education department at University of Houston, honored by the art education community as Texas Art Educator of the Year and inducted as a Distinguished Fellow of the TAEA (Texas Art Education Association). After retiring she co-founded CityArtWorks, a nonprofit children’s art program in Houston. Quite a remarkable person! She lived to be 99.

Did you see what Janet is holding? A camera.
Clearly the budding artist.

I found photos for the other two siblings. It’s a little harder to be convinced that they are the same people because they were younger in the photos, but I’m pretty convinced that these are in fact the same family. The three women all lived into their 90s and John lived to be 78. This is interesting to note because I came across a fascinating article in the Detroit Free Press on Feb. 14, 1915 in which a large photo of Janet (referred to as “baby doll”) as a young child announcing the birth of her sister, but also advertising that she has all 4 grandparents alive and 7 of her 8 GREAT-grandparents still alive–something not many people could have (or still now) boast to have. Clearly they had long-living genes.

This doesn’t answer why my grandmother had a photo of the Tyler children, but there must have been something special between the Leach’s and the Tyler’s! 

Or maybe you still have doubts that I identified the right people…and these are just some other Tyler’s in a completely different state…where there is snow…?