Wilton is home to Tom and Connie Zeleny. Connie is my second cousin twice removed and we scheduled out get-together months ago to go through Kerr family history. As with the majority of my family history excursions, I had never met the Zelenys before, but we corresponded via email for several months. I shared photos and information with them and we had a good time renewing long-lost family connections.
I learned through these conversations that Connie had been very close to her mother's cousins, the Rothlisberger siblings. These siblings are those whose estate I've been hunting for over the past year. The three Rothlisberger children were the children of Charles and Lulu (Kerr) Rothlisberger. Earl, Helen and Hazel never married and all lived to advanced ages. Earl was the last to pass away in 2007 a few months shy of 100. I've done a lot of investigating so far looking for the remnants of their estate, including contacting the executors and a local historical society. Though I had no firm proof, I believed their estate included family photos of the Kerr families. That search is ongoing.
The Zelenys had their own wealth of treasures to share with me. Connie had many photos from her parents and grandparents spanning the years. She also had some family histories and documents. Among the items were photos taken of older photos. She said they were photos taken by Earl and in the images were very old Kerr photos. Of course, the location of the originals remains unknown, but this is proof they exist! Fortunately, the images were fairly clear and I was able to scan them. They may not be as crisp as scanning and actual original photo from 1884, but it will have to do for now!
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| David and Lydia Ann (Clapper) Moats, Elgin, Iowa. |
Photos in their collection also helped answer some questions about other images. I identified one previously unknown photo as that of Ferne (Kerr) Malkow and another one as Floyd Patterson, Connie's grandfather.
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| Ella (Moats) Kerr and Thomas J. Kerr |
At the end of the day I came away with nearly 100 new photos of the Kerr and Moats families and a renewed drive to find the remaining Earl Rothlisberger images. Sadly, I fear now that they may have gone to the wayside or have been thrown out by people with no connection or concern for the Kerr family. The executors aren't at fault - they didn't know the details of the family and weren't related. They were charged with the daunting task of processing a life spanning one century. I may have to plan a road trip northeast again soon to scout antique shops in the area. My only hope now is someone bought up a box of our family treasures and are selling them in a discount bin in some forgotten corner. To the average Joe they're just anonymous old photos. To me, they're a unique piece of history.
Happy hunting!
P.S. I usually try to place photos throughout the text so I'm not just plopping a lot of photos on here and calling it good. However, I've run out of content before I've run out of photos I want to share, so I guess for this day you'll have to deal with it!
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| Four Generations (1914): David Moats Ella (Moats) Kerr Hattie (Kerr) Patterson Alo (Patterson) Yearous |
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| The various Kerr families in 1914. My great-great grandparents are in the center: William Y. and Anna (Gruver) Kerr. Will is holding my great-grandmother, Leone (Kerr) Shaffer. Anna is holding June (Ker) Light. The remaining members are Floyd and Hattie (Kerr) Patterson and Alo (Patterson) Light; Charles and Lulu (Kerr) Rothlisberger and Earl, Helen and Hazel; Lydia Kerr and Fern (Kerr) Malkow. |
