At left is a vintage photo album that I purchased on Ebay in the spring of 2009. I bought the album because I suspected that it might contain a few shots of the Mt. Lowe Railway, a resort complex that existed around the turn of the last century in the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California.

Once the album arrived, I found that the vintage pages did indeed contain a few interesting, if unremarkable, Mt. Lowe Railway photos. But as I paged through the album it struck me that a some of the photographs of the family who had vacationed at Mt. Lowe sometime between 1909 and 1912 had been identified.

If you've ever had the opportunity to page through one of these old albums, you know that very seldom do the owners bother to identify anyone. If the photographs have any caption at all, it will often be something like, "here we are in Yellowstone Park," which tells you nothing about who "we" might be. You might find the first names of some of the subjects, often in the form of a nicname, but seldom do you ever see a surname.

This time, however, the maker of the album had not only told me the first names of many of the folks pictured, but had also noted several of their last names.

I was immediately intrigued. Since I am fortunate to be a member of the genealogical research web site, Ancestry.com, I wondered if I might be able to learn a little more about the family pictured if I did some research.

The first thing I wanted to know was, who crafted the photo album. To do that I needed to find a photo somewhere entitled variously, "this is me," or "my best friend Mary and me," or something like that so I could compare the "me" photo with other photos where the first name had been noted.

The photo I found that seemed to be the key to the album was the one at right where the subject of the photo is identified as "Lelia Lombard." From elsewhere in the album I had seen where Lelia seemed to be also referred to as a Carlisle. Since wedding photos were included in the album, I concluded that Lelia Carlisle must have married someone named, "Lombard." I further reasoned that to commemorate her wedding, Lelia was the one who had crafted the album.

At this point I pulled up Ancestry.com and looked for census records for the Carlisle and Lombard families in one of the several states mentioned in the album: Michigan; Indiana; and Illinios. Thanks to Lelia's unusual name, I instantly found the Carlisle family in the census document for Portland Village, Ionia County, Michigan for the year 1900 (see below). It's pretty hard to read, but the family members listed are: Father John W. H. Carlisle, aged 59; Mary M. Carlisle, aged 53; Lelia J. Carlisle, aged 20; Orville E. Carlisle, aged 18; and M. Ethel Carlisle, aged 16. Since the album contained photos of both young people, Ethel and Orville, indentified by name, it was obvious that I had found the correct Carlisle family.

Naturally, I was thrilled. It had only taken me one search to verify who the family was, where they lived at the turn of the last century, and who some of the family members were.

Encouraged, I next searched the 1910 census record for Lelia and her new husband, who the photo album told me was named George. And there I ran into a brick wall. For no matter what spelling combinations I tried, I could not find ANY Leila Lombards anywhere in the country in 1910. I tried Lela. I tried Lydia. I tried Lilia, Lili, and Lulu, but no record of the Lombard family could I find. I next tried searching on George's name. But try as I might, I found no one named George in the whole country under the name Lombard, or under any possible approximation of that name.

It took me almost an entire day to discover that George and Lelia Lombard didn't show up in my census search for 1910 because the census document is so illegible where the names should appear that transcribers had been unable to determine just what the family name was. The couple is displayed as George and Allin with no last name noted at all. Fortunate for me, the states in which each of the couple's parents were born, as noted in the census, is fairly unique: George's father was born in Wisconsin, his mother in Michigan; Leila's father was born in Delaware, her mother in New Jersey. Had it not been for the parent's birthplace notations, I would never have found George and Lelia in the 1910 census at all. But such are the frustrations in genealogical research.

So, finally, I had established that in 1910, George and Lelia Lombard were living in Michigan City, La Porte County, Indiana. George was working as a ticket agent for the Michigan Central Railroad and Lelia was a housewife. Though I can't tell how long they lived in Indiana, I do know that the couple had a brand new house built in Michigan City in the summer of 1911 (photo left). Lelia's album is filled with photos of the couple's house from initial construction. I also know that the house was sufficiently finished to allow the couple to invite their respective parents to thanksgiving dinner in November of 1911.

So, now I wanted to discover on which street the Lombards had constructed their new Michigan City home 1911. You can see in the photo below right that their address was 2054. Now, that's a pretty big number for what was a fairly small city in the first decade of the twentieth century. Using Google Maps, I tried plugging in that address for every "long" street in the whole city, but did not find the house.

The Lombards lived in Ward 1. Today, Ward 1 is west of Franklin Avenue. The 2054 address tells me that the Lombards probably lived outside the city proper, which is somewhat evident in the photo of the house above.

Assuming George, as a ticket agent, had to work in the city depot where the railroad came through (see color postcard below), how did George get to work? I found no photos of an automobile in the album, nor do photos of the Michigan City house seem to include a garage. Yet, I think we can assume that a ticket agent who built a fine house on the outskirts of town didn't have to walk.

There is, of course, another possibility. In 1903 the Chicago & South Shore Railway opened an interurban railway line between Michigan City and La Porte, Indiana.

In 1907, Michigan City's third local streetcar route was introduced on Franklin Street south of 9th Street, using trackage of interurban line to La Porte.

Since Franklin avenue runs straight south from Michigan City and soon becomes the road to LaFayette, just over 100 miles away, it is automatically a very long street. It is, therefore, easy to find the address 2054. Which leaves me with only one problem: the property at 2054 has become commercial now and no sign of the house shows up.

Moving on, I tried to find George and Lelia in the 1920 census. Just as before, I discovered that George and Lelia Lombard didn't show up in the record. But this time it didn't take me quite as long to discover where the couple was hiding in all those dusty records. Even though I had no trouble correctly reading their names on the census document, the census transcriber had recorded the couple as George L. and Lelia J. "Lambert," with a second choice of "Comford" for their surname. By 1920, George and Lelia had moved back to Michigan and are living in Grand Rapids, Ward 3, Kent County. George lists his occupation as, "Asst. City Ticket Agent," presumably for the railroad as he had been doing in Michigan City, Indiana, the previous decade. The census document lists their address as being at 2056 Francis Avenue southeast.

At the time of the 1930 census, the Lombards are still living in Ward 3, Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan, on Francis Avenue southeast.