Some have expressed interest in seeing how I do what I do here at Gonechester. I had an interesting example come across my desk, recently. So, by way of demonstration, I have gone over my process for pinpointing the whereabouts of a photo and learning a bit about it. At the end, I share a number of resources I avail myself of during my research.

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The Mystery Photo

My fellow historian, Lisa Melley Kleman, posted this photograph she had stumbled upon to her social media. The photograph showed her ancestor, Theodore Dossenbach, leading his famous Park Band. The caption read:

PARK BAND
G. A. R. Parade Rochester 1911
A. Newman Photo Rochester N. Y. G112

Kleman asked if anyone knew the whereabouts of the photo and, displaying my usual hubris, I declared it my mission to discover this information. It took me a small while, but I was eventually successful.

I’ve collaborated historically with Kleman before, resulting in my post Mathias Dossenbach, Block by Block and its companion post on her own blog, My Immigrant (Who is YOUR Immigrant?). It was lovely to get to assist her in her research pursuits, once again. Thanks, Lisa!

Step one, of course, was to figure out where the photo could have been taken. For this, I looked for references about the parade route. I began by some simple Googling, “G.A.R. Parade 1911” and such. The AI responded on this front, and it was correct in noting that 1911 was the year of a major event: the 45th National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, which took place between the 21st and 27th of August, 1911.

I searched for “45th Encampment G.A.R.” on Google Books and turned up the digitized Journal of the 45th National Encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic. Using the search function for “parade”, I was able to find a section laying out the schedule of events, including the line of march:

The route began on West Main Street starting at Washington Street, east to East Main Street at its intersection with East Avenue; east along East Avenue until Alexander Street, south along Alexander Street to Monroe Avenue, west along Monroe Avenue to South Clinton Avenue. On South Clinton Avenue, nearby the Convention Center, the parade would stand for review in Washington Square Park.

Step two was to narrow the location down further–in other words, to figure out where it could NOT be. The photograph shows streetcar tracks on the road, meaning that any street which did not have streetcar tracks in 1911 could not be our candidate. A quick reference of the 1910 Plat Map showed that only the following streets out of the ones listed for the parade route had streetcar tracks at that time: West Main, East Main, Monroe Avenue, and South Clinton. East Avenue was famously without streetcar tracks, and Alexander only had tracks on a very short segment between Gardiner Park and Park Avenue.

Given the fact that I personally recognize most of historic Main Street at a glance by this point, I set my sights on South Clinton Avenue and Monroe Avenue.

At this juncture, I tried another tactic to narrow things down: I looked up the photographer. The caption on the photo gave his name as “A. Newman”, which some cursory Googling revealed to be Almeron Newman, [https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/96776296/almeron-newman] a photographer who was well-known for photographing G. A. R. events and group photos of the organization, and others like it. I shared his name with Kleman and began searching https://nyheritage.org/ for “Almeron Newman”.

This gave me a number of parade photos, a couple of which were in the same location as Kleman’s original photo.

At this point, Kleman discovered a photo which broke the case wide open:

This photo provided a better view of the ad on the side of the building at left, which I was able to immediately recognize as an ad for Rienzi beer due to earlier research.

Given this, I knew the building must be a saloon, and that the “Bros.” above the ad meant the proprietors were a pair of brothers. All I would need to do would be to go to the digitized directories at [https://roccitylibrary.org/digital-collections/rochester-city-directories/rochester-city-directories-by-decade/], go to 1911’s directory, look at the list of saloons, and find any belonging to “Bros.” which were on either South Clinton or Monroe Avenues.

My first hit was “Ryan Bros.”

No. 530 Monroe Avenue at the time was between Rowley Street and South Goodman Street:

However, looking at this, things didn’t line up. One major red flag is that South Goodman Street is east of the easternmost route of the parade, Alexander Street. Thus, in order to be travelling west along Monroe Avenue at this point, they would have had to parade five blocks east of Alexander Street, turned down South Goodman Street, then turned right onto Monroe Avenue. Parades don’t often do that sort of major change without comment. So I went back to the saloon list for more Bros.

Then, I happened upon Wiegand Bros. at No. 144 Monroe Avenue.

My theory at this point was that Newman was across from the then-extant intersection of Manhattan Street with Monroe Avenue. He was facing towards the northeast, with a view of the buildings along the north side of Monroe Avenue all the way to Savannah Street and beyond.

To help test this, I had to go to that location in the present day, to see if any landmarks are still extant. And by “go to” I mean, on Google Maps street view. [https://www.google.com/maps]

The corner of what was once Manhattan Street’s junction with Monroe Avenue was pretty much where Howell Street turns onto Monroe Avenue these days, which means Newman’s vantage point in the photos would have been somewhere across Monroe from there, let’s say the red dot is “close enough” to where Newman would have been standing when the pressed the shutter:

Standing around that spot and looking northeast gives you roughly this vantage point. The buildings across the street would have been arrayed from the corner all the way along to the green building:

That green building is No. 182 Monroe Avenue:

The building at No. 182 Monroe Avenue is visible in the photos by Newman, indicated in red below:

I feel more than comfortable resting my case there. The photograph was taken across from the corner of Monroe Avenue and Manhattan Street, facing northeast towards Savannah Street. The parade had turned onto Monroe from Alexander and was heading towards South Clinton Avenue for inspection.

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Digging Deeper

The main question answered, it is at this point I begin to satisfy my own curiosity, and dig a little deeper.

For instance, are we able to find any more regarding the Wiegand Bros. and their saloon? For that, I take to the directory again, to collect pertinent pieces of information regarding the Wiegands. Starting at 1911, I go to W.

Alright, so it appears our saloon proprietors are Joseph Wiegand, house No. 102 Manhattan Street, and Leo J. Wiegand, boards No. 14 Strathallan Park. Let’s locate those houses, starting with Joseph’s.

Well, right away I see that No. 102 Manhattan is a large frame structure just north of the Wiegand Bros. saloon, on the corner of Manhattan Street and Ballou Place. This looks to be a two-family home, and an article in the D&C archives confirms it.

This house would now be in the middle of Howell Street. Interestingly, if one peeks at the plat maps, this would become the site of the General Garage around 1915:

This would, in turn, go on to become Rabe’s Road Service:

But let’s find what searching the Democrat and Chronicle archives for “102 Manhattan Street” gets us.

An initial newspaper search suggests this has been the home of the Wiegands for a very long time prior; The saloon and home of Adam Wiegand can be found as far back as the 1875 Atlas:

By directly searching for “Joseph Wiegand” and “Leo J. Wiegand” I was able to find notices of death or statements of wills. Remarkably, both brothers would die within a few years of the 1911 photo:

This gave me Joseph’s middle initial of “J.” making him Joseph J. Wiegand.

This information allowed me to pinpoint their graves on Findagrave.com: Leo John Wiegand and Joseph J. Weigand.

This gave me the further piece of information that Leo’s middle initial stood for John, making him Leo John Wiegand.

What about Leo J. Wiegand’s boarding house at No. 14 Strathallan Park? Well, that’s easy enough: looking at the plats suggests the addresses are all still the same as they were in 1911, and No. 14 is still there:

This was the address of John J. Schleyer, of the famous Schleyer meat market on East Main and Franklin Streets. Schleyer was married to Lucy J. Wiegand, daughter of Adam Wiegand and sister to Joseph and Leo John. Therefore, as of 1911, Leo John Wiegand was boarding with his sister and his brother-in-law.

No. 14 Strathallan Park would also be where Charity Wiegand’s funeral would take place. Charity was the widow of Adam and mother of Lucy, Joseph J., and Leo John, and their other siblings.

A search of Findagrave.com reveals Lucy’s burial site and full name: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/100486207/louisa_julia-schleyer gives her name as Louisa “Lucy” Julia Wiegand, married name Schleyer. Her husband’s burial site is at: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133618691/john-joseph-schleyer.

A search of https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html provides us with the following Daily Record article about the replacement of Wiegand’s saloon with a modern office block:

See? All sorts of interesting stuff. But let’s call it there, because–as you may have noticed–this can go on almost indefinitely. Part of the challenge of Gonechester is keeping my posts tight, focused, and pertinent.

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Resources

So you may be getting a sense of my process, here. Basically, take every name and address and search for every permutation of them on every resource I can think of.

A list of the resources I use routinely on Gonechester follows:

Plat Maps: These are maps of the city, streets, and structures. For the most part, they reflect reality, although some have planned developments that never came to be. There’s a few options available, which I’ve listed from lowest to highest resolution.

1.) Multiple Map Visualizer: This visualizer arranges the 1888, 1900, 1910, and 1935 plat maps onto the modern map and has a back/forth slider for comparison. However, the maps are very low-res and blurry.

Link: https://maps.cityofrochester.gov/historic

2.) Single Map Visualizers: Those four maps also have these clearer versions also set to the modern map layout, but still more blurry than the highest-res scans. Also, something seems to be wrong with them at present, but I’ll link them just in case they start working again:

Links:
➳1888: https://data.cityofrochester.gov/maps/RochesterNY::rochester-historic-plat-map-1888/explore?location=43.155640%2C-77.612203%2C18.84
➳1900: https://data.cityofrochester.gov/maps/RochesterNY::rochester-historic-plat-map-1900/explore?location=43.155640%2C-77.612203%2C18.84
➳1910: https://data.cityofrochester.gov/maps/RochesterNY::rochester-historic-plat-map-1910/explore?location=43.155640%2C-77.612203%2C18.84
➳1935: https://data.cityofrochester.gov/maps/plat-map-from-1935-and-1936/explore?location=43.155640%2C-77.612203%2C18.84

3.) Scanned Plates: The very highest resolution maps are scanned by the plate in the library archives, but you have to check the index to find your plate. I recommend sorting by call number, which sorts the plates in order with the index near the beginning. I tried to link it with those settings in place but who knows if that’ll work. This is also the only way to view the 1918 and 1926 plat maps, as well as the 1875 atlas.

Links:
➳1875: https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=search&term=1875%2Catlas%2Chopkins&page=0&pageSize=100&sortKey=CallNumber&db=ls2pac&branchFilters=[]&facetFilters=%5B%5D
➳1888: https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=search&term=1888%20Atlas&page=0&pageSize=100&sortKey=CallNumber&db=ls2pac&branchFilters=[]&facetFilters=%5B%5D
➳1900: https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=search&term=1900%20Plat&page=0&pageSize=100&sortKey=CallNumber&db=ls2pac&branchFilters=[]&facetFilters=%5B%7B%22facetDisplay%22%3A%22Cartographic%20Materials%22%2C%22facetValue%22%3A%22Cartographic%20Materials%22%2C%22facetName%22%3A%22Format%22%7D%5D
➳1910: https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=search&term=1910%20atlas&page=0&pageSize=100&sortKey=CallNumber&db=ls2pac&branchFilters=[]&facetFilters=%5B%7B%22facetDisplay%22%3A%22Cartographic%20Materials%22%2C%22facetValue%22%3A%22Cartographic%20Materials%22%2C%22facetName%22%3A%22Format%22%7D%5D
➳1918: https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=search&term=1918%2Chopkins%2Cplat%2Cbook&page=0&pageSize=100&sortKey=CallNumber&db=ls2pac&branchFilters=[]&facetFilters=%5B%5D
➳1926: https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=search&term=1926%2Cplat%2Cbook%2Chopkins&page=0&pageSize=100&sortKey=CallNumber&db=ls2pac&branchFilters=[]&facetFilters=%5B%5D
➳1935: https://catalogplus.libraryweb.org/?section=search&term=1935%20plat&page=0&pageSize=100&sortKey=CallNumber&db=ls2pac&branchFilters=[]&facetFilters=%5B%5D

Sanborn Maps: Sanborn maps are maps of city buildings drawn up for fire insurance purposes, and so they contain notes on building materials, locations of fire alarms, and sources of flame such as boilers, generators, and industrial machines. These maps are a bit difficult to link. If you go to the Library of Congress web portal at https://www.loc.gov/ you should be able to search “Rochester Sanborn Map”; the available years are 1892, 1911, 1938, and 1950.

Monroe County Library: It goes without saying the library is a most useful resource. Since it catalogs numerous other collections such as the Albert Stone negatives and Rochester historical photo archives, I like to type key-words in here and see what comes up.

Link: https://libraryweb.org/

Digital Collections: These are special digital collections of the Monroe County Library, including ephemera, monographs, books, ads, directories, et cetera. Worth looking at, even if you aren’t researching.

Link: https://roccitylibrary.org/digital-collections/

Historic Directories: The library maintains a database of historic Rochester city directories, with addresses for businesses and persons from the 1820s to the 1930s.

Link: https://roccitylibrary.org/digital-collections/rochester-city-directories/rochester-city-directories-by-decade/

Library of Congress: Contains a lot of stuff, so you have to narrow your search parameters appropriately, but will often give up some interesting bit of info.

Link: https://www.loc.gov/

New York Public Library: I’m not trying to be redundant here, but I like to search libraries.

Link: https://www.nypl.org/

NYHeritage.org: This site provides access to numerous documents and images about New York State. Give it a search:

Link: https://nyheritage.org/

Newspapers.com: This site archives tons of newspapers, including the Democrat & Chronicle. Invaluable for information, and sometimes photographs few have seen before if you’re lucky.

Link: https://www.newspapers.com/

Fulton History: This is apparently a single highly dedicated individual’s pet project. A wealth of historical newspapers have been digitized at this database, with varying levels of resolution and scan quality. Some of the earliest newspapers in Rochester can be found here.

Link: https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html

New York Historic Newspapers: What it says on the tin, a site archiving historic New York State newspapers.

Link: https://www.nyshistoricnewspapers.org/

Findagrave.com: A searchable database of many, many graves from many different cemeteries.

Link: https://www.findagrave.com/

Ancestry.com: A helpful website for genealogy, family tree construction, and searching records.

Link: https://www.ancestry.com/

Google Books: It’s worth searching Google Books. There’s lots of interesting books, some with full view.

Link: https://books.google.com/

I hope you find these resources useful in your own research! Please contact me with any broken links, or with any resources you think might warrant inclusion in the list.