Knees in the dust, Mike Rodriguez dug through a plastic bin on the Mission Open Air Market on the city's South aspect and pulled out an sudden treasure.
It changed into July 2018 and the X-ray technologist had simply unearthed a virtually pristine image album packed with dozens of black-and-white portraits of stern-confronted aunts, uncles and cousins courting back to the 1800s.
René A. Guzman writes about quite a few styles of tradition with persona in San Antonio, from ancient institutions and individuals to colourful collectors and conventions. The San Antonio native has written for the express-information for more than twenty years.
study him on our free web site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber website, ExpressNews.com.
rguzman@categorical-news.internet | @reneguz
as a minimum that's how they were listed in the album, comparable to in a photo marked 1896 that featured an Illinois farmhouse with a horse-drawn buggy and small row of darkly clad family members ranging in age from a towheaded "Cousin Albert (5 yrs historical)" to a "Grandmother Andine Sommerfeldt" in a head scarf.
Rodriguez marveled at the album's first rate condition and particularly at its attention to aspect. Clear handwritten names accompanied every vintage image, most of these photographs so neatly-preserved behind their protective page coverings that they regarded as although they could be in the back of glass in a museum.
Who would lose or part with this kind of cautiously curated archive? The album didn't designate any proprietor or contact counsel, and Rodriguez refused to eliminate any of its photographs for concern of damaging them, so clues scribbled on the backs of those photos also had been a mystery. all the album's vendor may offer became a shrug.
however Rodriguez may tell a person had put heart and hard work into the picture album. And such a prosperous heirloom deserved to be in the arms of a rightful inheritor, so he paid the $8 asking cost.
"It's no longer simply a photograph album. It's somebody's family heritage," Rodriguez talked about. "and i knew right away the appropriate thing to do become to are attempting to get it lower back to the common homeowners. That grew to become my mission."
San Antonian Mike Rodriguez made it his mission to get the photo album back into the fingers of a rightful inheritor.
(Billy Calzada /body of workers Photographer | specific-information)The mission begins
When Rodriguez brought the album domestic, he combed each web page and jotted down every identify. One surname rose above the leisure: Sommerfeldt. It in particular graced the album's first pages, which Rodriguez figured bore probably the most magnitude to its fashioned proprietor and for this reason the greatest clues for any potential family contacts.
The album opened with an ancient wedding image of a veiled bride named Augusta Schutz and her debonair groom named Albert Sommerfeldt. Subsequent pages featured photographs of a a bit more youthful Albert. One had him standing at consideration in a defense force uniform, whereas an extra confirmed him outside deliberating a huge, black dog mountain climbing a ladder.
Then came a few photos of what changed into listed because the Sommerfeldt farm between Marine and Highland in Madison County, ill. One turned into the photo dated 1896, and others confirmed the farmhouse greater than a century later, now a sagging husk with fallen beams and missing patches of roof.
A photograph of a gaggle of americans standing earlier than a home is covered in a antique photograph album that Mike Rodriguez bought for $eight at a flea market in San Antonio. using the web, he has discovered a family unit who has hobby in it, and will be returning it to them.
(Billy Calzada, team of workers / personnel Photographer | categorical-information)
A photo of a gaggle of people belonging to the Schaefer and Sommerfeldt families standing before a dilapidated house is included in a colour photograph in a antique image album that Mike Rodriguez bought for $8 at a flea market in San Antonio. other pictures of the domestic in the album demonstrate it in pristine circumstance in the 1800s.
(Billy Calzada /team of workers Photographer | categorical-news)Rodriguez spent the subsequent three weeks plugging all of the album's names into fb and Google searches, but came up empty. Flustered, he set the album apart and eventually forgot about it.
"It did get placed on the again burner," Rodriguez spoke of.
it might be a little greater than a yr later when a random newscast rekindled his hobby.
San Antonian Mike Rodriguez purchased this picture album for $eight in a flea market.
(Billy Calzada, team of workers / personnel Photographer | express-news)The hunt renewed
In late August, Rodriguez and his spouse, Angela, caught an evening news file about a handbag that had been stolen in downtown Detroit in 1957. It lately had been present in an deserted building and again to its now aged proprietor Margaret Cohen.
greater than 60 years later, the purse nonetheless housed Cohen's historic photographs, compact mirror and even her Social protection card, which became used to tune down her son so he may return the purse to his mom for a surprise teary reunion.
"My wife and that i simply form of checked out each different," Rodriguez said, "and we're like, 'You understand, we should truly get again on it.'"
This time, Rodriguez shot a video of himself going web page by way of web page throughout the photo album and shared it on YouTube and facebook, recruiting family in Dallas, Corpus Christi and California to spread the note. Then he reached out to media retailers and historical protection companies in San Antonio as well as in Chicago and East St. Louis, sick., both closest principal metropolitan areas to the Sommerfeldt farm.
again, no success. Then Rodriguez opened an account on the well-known genealogical web site, Ancestry.com.
When he entered album names into a search container, his search started to undergo fruit, or in this case shaky leaves known as "guidelines," which Ancestry uses to fit entered statistics with its many facts and household trees.
The greater album names Rodriguez entered into Ancestry, the extra hints he received for a family tree from an Ancestry user named "JulieSommerfeldtW." Most of that content turned into inner most, notwithstanding the account listed Edwardsville, sick., in Madison County. There changed into the Sommerfeldt name and Illinois connection right all the way down to the county.
a marriage portrait of Augusta Schutz and Albert Sommerfeldt adorns the first page of the old photograph album. (Billy Calzada | categorical-information)
Rodriguez messaged JulieSommerfeldtW with news of an ancient photo album that may additionally belong to her family. Then he despatched a link to his video.
Julie Worthen knew it turned into her family's album from the first page.
"It changed into my grandpa and grandma's marriage ceremony image," she stated.
The album's opening wedding photograph of Albert Sommerfeldt and Augusta Schutz became taken in 1919 in Edwardsville. Albert Sommerfeldt died in Edwardsville in 1957 at age 66. Worthen's father, Arnold Sommerfeldt, 84, nonetheless lives in Edwardsville and is the only real surviving baby of her grandparents.
"He's all about family unit," Worthen said of her dad. "This has just lifted his spirits so a lot."
Worthen moved from Edwardsville to Prior Lake, Minn., a year ago and now could be a coordinator for a senior travel membership. She first joined Ancestry around six years in the past, working facet-by way of-side along with her mother, Kathleen Sommerfeldt, to scan family unit photos and enter family unit names from the household tree her mom compiled on her personal computer.
Worthen continued that work after her mother's dying in 2015.
As Worthen awaited the birth of the album earlier this month — Rodriguez shipped it to her Sept. 6 — she anxiously hoped it will give greater information about her paternal grandfather and more suggestion to hold constructing out the family tree.
Then the album arrived.
Julie Worthen and her two sons — Garrison Worthen, 13, right; and Jonathan Worthen, 16 — leaf through an old photograph album that includes photographs of her family unit dating back to the 1800s.
(Nina Robinson /Contributor | specific-news)'It's unbelievable'
The image album turned into delivered around midday Sept. eleven, and the primary grownup Worthen called became her dad. Her sons — Garrison, 13, and Jonathan, sixteen — had been nonetheless in faculty, so Worthen took her first fingers-on voyage in the course of the album's contents with her father there on the cell, a very good 550 miles away.
"We went photograph by using photograph," she observed, "and that i changed into telling him every single element."
The adventure became emotional, reminding her in regards to the significance of the region each and every person holds, as a result of they're special to their family. each new friend she found out had their own talents and contributions that helped future generations.
"All these people are gone, but no longer forgotten. and that i hope that I may give recognize to their contributions via retaining and retaining and sharing these photos," she talked about.
a kind of greater high-quality particulars was Worthen's connection to a German immigrant whose lineage literally spans the album's pages.
Worthen is the first-rate-tremendous-granddaughter of Andine Sommerfeldt, Albert's grandmother. The album's 1896 photograph suggests her simply earlier than her demise right here 12 months. The album's ultimate page holds a list of her arrival at a new Orleans port on Jan. 5, 1835, when she became 12-yr-ancient Andine Jandt, clean off the ship Orion, touring from Hungary.
Andine Jandt Sommerfeldt is shown in a antique picture in a photograph album that San Antonian Mike Rodriguez bought for $eight in a flea market. a copy of a passenger arrival record shows an Andine Jandt arrived in the u.s. from Germany in 1835.
(Billy Calzada /body of workers Photographer | express-information);A old image indicates two Sommerfeldt boys on horseback.
(Billy Calzada | San Antonio categorical-news);shown is a copy of a passenger arrival doc that turned into within the photo album. Passenger facts display an Andine Jandt arrived within the united states from Germany in 1835.
(Billy Calzada | San Antonio specific-information);A antique photo in a photograph album that San Antonian Mike Rodriguez bought for $8 in a flea market.
(Billy Calzada | San Antonio specific-news)Worthen nevertheless had a catch in her throat three hours after receiving the long-awaited album.
"i like it," she spoke of. "I mean, it's awesome. it's in fact brilliant."
Worthen referred to that for her sons, the album converted their granddad's tales into precise background with real people, and they marveled at the facial features and especially the clothing of those far-off family.
Worthen noted most of the Sommerfeldt pictures in the album have been ones she under no circumstances knew existed, similar to those of her grandfather's older brother, John Sommerfeldt. And when she noticed the picture of her grandfather Albert as a young man contemplating a ladder-climbing dog, she additionally noticed a extraordinary resemblance to her youngest son.
Worthen deploy a fb web page to keep her two older sisters and different members of the family apprised of the album's contents as she scans more photographs into her desktop. identical to she did with her mother.
"it's so enjoyable filling in my tree," Worthen stated.
As for how this kind of meticulously crafted photo album based around a family in Illinois ended up in a South Texas flea market, Worthen has a concept.
Catherine Grace Schaefer turned into cousin of Worthen's who changed into born a Sommerfeldt and looks in a photo in entrance of the farmhouse. Worthen heard Schaefer might also have lived with a daughter in San Antonio before she died in 2017. Worthen thinks the daughter may have moved and the album acquired misplaced in an property sale.
"We're surprised that it got far from the household," Worthen said.
Albert Sommerfeldt figures prominently within the old photograph album. When Julie Worthen saw the photo on the right, she noticed a impressive resemblance to her youngest son.
Albert Sommerfeldt figures prominently within the antique photo album. When Julie Worthen noticed the image on the right, she saw a stunning resemblance to her youngest son.
photo: René A. Guzman /group of workerspicture: René A. Guzman /workforce
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Albert Sommerfeldt figures prominently within the antique photograph album. When Julie Worthen noticed the image on the appropriate, she noticed a awesome resemblance to her youngest son.
Albert Sommerfeldt figures prominently within the antique picture album. When Julie Worthen saw the picture on the appropriate, she noticed a impressive resemblance to her youngest son.
picture: René A. Guzman /personnelThe $8 flea market discover named an 1800s girl. He returned it to her great-exceptional-granddaughter.
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returned to Gallery
household united
Worthen intends to provide the album to her father next month in Illinois. meanwhile, she'll upload every photograph to Ancestry and share them with different family members on social media.
"after which we're going to do something for Mike Rodriguez," Worthen observed.
Rodriguez demurred on the mention of any reward or restitution, stressing that he easily did what was right. during this case, discovering the right domestic for a treasure trove of misplaced memories.
Julie Worthen of Prior Lake, Minn., sits at her dining room desk on Sept. eleven, searching in the course of the ancient photograph album mailed to her that includes many photographs of her family unit relationship returned to the 1800s.
(Nina Robinson /Contributor | express-news)Design by using Mark Dunphy.
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