Identifying people in antique photos of ancestors–then finding their stories–can present fun history challenges.
As my family’s armchair history detective, I became curious about the boy in this photo.
Who was he? How could he have been a captain at such a young age? What happened to him?
The photo was mixed up with miscellaneous photos from my attic. At first, I wasn’t sure which family line he even came from. So I decided to try combining family records with internet tools to get my answers.
I checked for clues on the back of the photo, and found these notes written in ink:
Capt. W.B. Piper, E.H.S Go Fi 1st Bat BSR ’89.
As in 1889–one hundred and thirty seven years ago!
My first challenge: WHO the heck was W.B. Piper?
Thankfully I had a good start. The last name Piper is in a tree I previously created on Ancestry.com, so I recognized the Piper name. I have the app in my phone, so it’s very easy and quick to pull up a specific tree.
In the Piper tree, a W.B. Piper did not appear anywhere. So as an experiment, I decided to temporarily add him to it. (If you try an experiment like this, I suggest you set your tree to Private; if Public others may copy your tree including potential errors.)
But before adding him, I needed to guess which generation he was born into. I couldn’t make him his own grandfather, right?
I pondered: why do I, in particular, own this photo? Which family member am I personally connected to in the Piper family tree, who would have logically passed this photo down to me?
The answer lay in an antique lowboy given to me by my great-aunt Dorothy. In a drawer is a DAR certificate for an S. Lizzie Piper. (Her fun story I’ll share about in another post.)
Anyhow, I knew by now that Dorothy’s mom, Gretchen, had an aunt Lizzie. It seemed logical that W.B. would be connected to Gretchen or Lizzie, for Dorothy to have had this photo and me to now have it.
It made sense that I might have a picture of my aunt Dorothy’s uncle.
So as you can see in the image of the tree below, based on Gretchen’s birth year and how old the boy in the photo looked in 1889, I added W.B. as Gretchen’s brother.
Bingo! Next to W.B.’s name, I clicked the waving green leaf and confirmed that his full name was William Benjamin Piper, so I did add him permanently to the tree.
Official documents linked to clues in Ancestry.com revealed his parents names were indeed William Piper and Mary Green and Gretchen his sister.
Woohoo! Official grave information found via the app recorded his exact birth date, which fit perfectly. He was only a year younger than his sister Gretchen.
(As a side note, as you look at the tree above, you’ll see a Susan Elizabeth Greene or Green, who was S. Lizzie Piper. I think she must have been a fun person to insist on being called Lizzie instead of Susan or Elizabeth!)
My second challenge: Decipher the notes on the back of the photo.
I typed into a Google Search in my computer the strange abbreviations to see what they might mean:
Again, those were: Capt. W.B. Piper, E.H.S Go Fi 1st Bat BSR ’89.
Google Search made a few guesses, but as I later discovered got many of the abbreviations wrong. It was on the right track though–thinking E.H.S. was a high school. That made sense, as I now knew the photo was taken in 1889 when William was only sixteen years old.
But Google’s AI could only guess at the military notes, so it was time for:
My third challenge: Upload the photo to see if the military uniform could be identified.
[Want to try this? Take a picture with your phone of an antique photo of ancestors, or one ancestor, who you can’t quite place. It helps to also have the Google app in your phone. Go to your Photos folder, and select that photo. Click the tiny upload/share box with an upward arrow below your photo. Next, click Google, then Search with Google Lens.]
Because I included the whole photo (including watermarks for a Boston photography studio) then selected advanced AI, I quickly solved the school and captain mysteries.
“E.H.S.” was the English High School in Boston. “Go Fi” was the sports team’s cheer for “Go Fight,” apparently when they played their rival, Boston Latin School.
William wore a uniform for the Boston School Regiment of which he was captain of the first battalion. (1st Bat BSR )
The Boston School Regiment was a military program for Boston high school students, also known as the Boston School Boy Cadets. It was started in 1863 during the Civil War, to prepare young men for potential service.
It became a century-long tradition with competitive prize drills and parades. But by the 1950s it was phased out as JROTC began, going from involuntary to voluntary.
Now that William had become a live person to me, I wondered what happened to him.
Well, if you want to end this story on a happy note, read no further.
But if you want the details: William Benjamin Piper’s life came to a tragic end. An ancestry link sent me to Newspapers.com, to which I also subscribe to, to read newspapers from the 1700s and 1800s. (That’s often great fun, by the way–though not reading the sad stories like this one.)
William died in a hotel at only 23 years old (a few months shy of his 24th birthday.) The cause? Chloral poisoning. Chloral was used at the time as a sleep aid. William had overdosed, with the article suggesting it was due to “melancholy” (depression).
That made me sad. Yes, he died 130 years ago, so of course would no longer be alive anyway. But still, what a tragedy for a family. It makes me think about how Dorothy’s mom was only 25 years old when she lost her brother, and my great-aunt Dorthy was born only 5 years later. I can recall having a preschooler while also grieving loss of a family member. Grieving is grieving, no matter what time period you live in.
Below is a photo of the home where W.B.’s family lived (according to the address is listed in other documents attached to W.B. and a Google Maps search.) It’s certainly a beautiful home. I sincerely hope many beautiful memories have been made in that home in the five to six generations living it it since the loss of W.B.
Are you inspired to research and identify people in antique family photos of your own, and find those ancestors’ hidden stories?
I’d love to hear comments from you about any family mysteries you’ve solved this way.
Laurie
A little P.S. for Piper or Bartlett descendants:
Dorothy Bartlett was married to my grandpa’s brother, Max Pearce. Her mother was Gretchen Pickering Piper (1871-1943.) Dorothy had no children, but had two brothers: Dudley Bradstreet Bartlett and Phillips Payson Bartlett. Their great-aunt was Susan Elizabeth Green (sometimes spelled Greene.)