Fannie Moone Onderdonk: Identifying a Civil War-era photo using a Civil War-era signature album

My g-g-aunt Marion Irene BIRD (1839-1903) kept a signature album where friends and family recorded poems and wishes to be remembered.  My uncle, who owns the signature album, allowed me to scan it a number of years ago. Many names in the album were easily identified as Marion's siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins with ties to Warrenville, Illinois. Some of the names were totally unfamiliar, though. Who were those people?

I recently determined that the next step for that album was to assemble the individual images into a single PDF that could be uploaded to FamilySearch Memories. This act not only helped identify the unknown connections in the signature album, it also became a critical link in identifying unlabeled images in a photo album of Marion's that had been donated to the Warrenville Historical Society. 

1840 Map of Orleans County, New York
Dave Rumsey Map Collection

Marion was one of eight children born to Frederick Bird and Louisa Goddard Warren. Her father died when she was a teenager. Many years later, her mother married Silas WARREN, a distant cousin (making her mother's name Louisa WARREN BIRD WARREN!). In the early 1860s, Marion moved with her mother to live with her step-father in Orleans County, New York. 

Marion's signature album reflects the geography of her life: some entries are marked "Warrenville" (Illinois) and others are from "Yates" and "Eagle Harbor" (New York).  While reviewing the geography of these unknown people in New York, nearby Albion caught my eye. Marion Bird's photo album (in Warrenville) had a number of pictures from a studio in Albion (New York). It seemed likely that the people Marion would invite to write in her signature album could also end up in her photo album. 

The combination of names + dates + places revealed the identity of people I have been trying to identify for more than a decade. The first clue, and ultimately the key, was Hattie MOONE, who signed the album on 29th March 1862 in Yates, New York. 

The next really helpful clue was the unique surname ONDERDONK (which is so much easier to track down than, say, Smith or Warren or Bird). Two people named ONDERDONK signed Marion's album: Fannie M. and A. Starr, who both listed Eagle Harbor in their inscription.

I easily located the Lyman "MOORE" (MOONE) family in Yates in the 1860 census, and discovered that Harriet/Hattie had an older sister named Fannie. A google search turned up the Genealogy of the Onderdonk Family in America, which confirmed that Fannie MOONE, daughter of Lyman MOONE, had married "Andrew S." ONDERDONK ("A. Starr Onderdonk" in the signature album). 

Armed with familiar connections between MOONE and ONDERDONK families, I went looking for descendants of Fannie MOONE DONDERDONK by searching both Ancestry and FamilySearch. I reached out to the owner of a private tree that included ONDERDONK, and was delighted when he shared a photo he had of his g-g-grandmother, Fannie -- a perfect match to one of the unlabeled photos from Albion, New York.

Photo comparison

The clear resemblance plus the unique feature - a very slightly drooping left eye -- confirms the two images are of the same person. 

Further research revealed that Fannie and Hattie MOONE's older sister Jennie MOONE married Silas Leland WARREN (son of Marion Bird's step-father Silas Warren), which explains how Marion came to be closely associated with the MOONE and ONDERDONK families.

When I scanned the signature album, I mistakenly transcribed Hattie's last name as "MOORE." Revisiting the scans helped me see it was actually MOONE. (I am apparently not alone in mistaking the N for an R: several of the census records for this family are also incorrectly transcribed as Moore!) 

Amaranth Wreath - Food52

It is likely I will be able to confirm the identity of many more faces in Marion's photo album thanks to Hattie, who wanted "remembrance" instead of "palace or fortune" in 1862. The final stanza of her poem asks 

One beautiful wreath of amaranth blossoms
to whisper of Hattie till life's dreams depart.

Amaranthus is considered a symbol of immortality; dried amaranthus blossoms are made into wreaths because they hold their shape and color for years. And yes, more than 150 years after she wrote it, I am happy to "whisper of Hattie" and am so grateful she wrote that entry in Marion Bird's album!