"Genealogy is all about chasing your own tale." - Unknown

This Blog post is dedicated to photographs.

Thanks to modern technology, it makes restoring old photographs fun to do and amazing to look at. Recently I was thinking I need to start sharing these photos with everyone and I was trying to figure out the easiest way, then I remembered my old Blog here which I haven't updated in over a year. My excuse...yeah, yeah, the same excuse we all have..."I've been busy."

But, during the past year I have acquired a few of the latest and greatest photo restoring software and some are AI powered, so it opens up possbilities that we hadn't had available to us before. I wanted to share some of the photos that have been restored and colorized.

It's been a great journey connecting with relatives that I didn't know that I had and becoming good buddies with several of them. It's also been great getting old photos from some of these new connections. What I am posting here are photos of my Great Grandparents and 2nd Great Grandparents. It's amazing to me to have been able to get my hands on these photos. I don't know anyone else who has photos of their 2nd Great Grandparents.

Below is a branch of my family tree focusing on my Dad's Mother's ancestors...in other words, the Parents and Grandparents of my Grandmother Matilda Lovcik. I made a simple chart below so everyone can see who is who. I started this chart with me at the bottom in case anyone gets confused as to who is who and how these people are related.

Below are the original photo and the restored photo side by side. This photo of Vaclav Lovcik and Barbora Louzensky was taken in 1895. We have had discussions about what is the white fabric on Barbora's lap. We're guessing that it's some handmade something that maybe is a family heirloom, or perhaps something she made? It was expensive and not that common to have portraits taken in 1895, so it must be something important, or something she was very proud of, if she is photographed with it. Even with the touched up photo we still can't really tell what it is. Originally I had thought it was part of her dress from the original photo, but once I saw the restored and colorized photo, it looks like something she's holding on her lap.....what could it be?

Here is the side by side of the original and restored photos of Anton Lovcik and Aloisie Rumreich. I'm not totally sure what year this was taken, but the restored photo looks like she's wearing a wedding dress, although we don't know for sure if it was really white as in the colorized photo. If this was a photo taken at their wedding, they were married in 1899, so that would be when the photo was taken. However, we may never know for sure.

Lastly, here is the photo of my Grandparents taken at their wedding in 1928.