52 Ancestors: Gratitude

Gratitude.  The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.  Oxford Dictionary.

I know there is so much to be grateful for but in these challenging times, I sometimes have trouble remembering that.  Instead, this weeks' blog prompt brought to mind a time when a complete stranger was extremely grateful for my actions.  Most of the time, this brings me as much (or maybe more) satisfaction than being grateful for something someone did for me.

It started with a picture which has been hanging on my wall for at least 25 years, long before my genealogy journey began.

All I knew is that the soldier at the bottom right of the photo was my husband's maternal grandfather, Marcus Burket Byrd.  Since Marcus died before my husband was born, we didn't have too much information about him.  We added the photo to a collage frame we had and hung it on the wall.  And that was it.

A few months ago, we decided to break up the collage so we would have each photo individually so after all these years, out came the photo.  And suddenly a new world opened up.

Well look at that - a handwritten caption on the bottom.  

St. Mito
Feb. 25th 1919.  Dinard France

I assume it was written by Marcus but I wonder if I'll ever know for sure.  So now we know where he was during at least part of World War I - interestingly, my grandparents were married just 2 days after this photo was taken.

And then I did the obvious (sometimes it's not so obvious to me but I'm learning) and turned the photo over.

Five of the six men are identified and it looks like each of them wrote their own name on the back of the photo!

I did a quick scan on Ancestry to see if I could find some descendants of these men and before long had found two - a great niece of Arthur Sandberg and the grandson of Walter Waldschmidt.  I was thrilled to be able to provide this photo of their ancestor and was ecstatic to receive this e-mail from Walter's grandson.

"Oh Debi!  Bless your heart, you have made my year!  My grandfather is standing on the back row, third man from the left and that is his signature on the back.  He was a very handsome man.  I have to be honest, I got a chill and tears of pride came upon me when I saw this.......He didn't talk about his military experience, but I think he fought in France.....I want to thank you very much for reaching out so that I could have this treasure.  You're a very kind and thoughtful person."

This year has been rough in so many ways but this right here is a reason to keep me going.  Just when it all seems mundane and almost pointless, someone's year just got a lot better.  And that made my year a lot better.

Gratitude.  The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.  Oxford Dictionary.