Henry Habben FamilySomething really incredible happened in the quest to identify the above photo. My Cousin Brenda had forwarded it to me to see if I could identify any of the people in the photo, which I couldn't, so I showed it to my Mom and she didn't seem to recognize anyone either. At that point Brenda forwarded to another cousin, but that cousin didn't seem to know either - but that cousin forwarded it on to a cousin in Nebraska (Am I confusing you yet?). The cousin that was finally able to identify it was Jennifer who I just met and who had copied the 1980 Ufkes genealogy book. Good grief - I didn't even realize that Jennifer was my cousin - how sad is that? What really made this terrific was that now Brenda had a picture that included her Great Grandparents when they were younger! And what made it fabulous for me was that now I had two Habben cousin that I never knew before - and beyond that both of them enjoy family history - a bonus in my book!
I now had a photo of the Henry Habben family and of his sister Trientje Rose for my book. Plus I had all the photo's that Jennifer had copied for me - or so I thought. In the past I've had some luck with paper copies of photo's and the quality of the photo's Jennifer had done for me was pretty good. I kept my fingers crossed as I began scanning them, but, as luck would have it they were terrible. Every picture was full of the texture of the paper - I call it the "black blog disaster". Now what? I really hated to contact Jennifer and ask if she would scan all the photo's and email them so I had a workable copy. I thought about it for a few days and decided that all I could do is ask. I explained how I was making this book and was trying to include every Habben that I possibly could. I was thrilled when she emailed me back saying she would do it - no problem.
I guess I should explain that this book is of three generations of Habben family members - my great great grandparents, great grandparents and grandparents - not the entire Habben clan - yikes that would take volumes! To further clarify it includes the children and grandchildren of two brothers - Rolf and Habbe Habben. The book also includes some of the Ufkes family - because Rolf and Habbe married sisters.
Copying all the pictures seemed to make Jennifer curious about her ancestors too and she started asking her father questions. Another bonus, because now the information has been handed down another generation - and a huge bonus for me because Jennifer shared all that information with me for my book - woo hoo!!
The old saying - "blood is thicker than water" is a fact in my book!
"The Ties That Bind" - to be continued -
(please ask permission before using restored photo's on this site)
That was such an awesome moment when we finally had names for all the people in the picture. I recognized my grandfather and father (the shortest child in the picture who is now almost 87 years old), my cousin Ginger recognized a few more people, and Jennifer's family recognized the rest. Isn't the internet wonderful! Brenda
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