FAMILY PORTRAITS COME TO LIGHT by Martha Murphy, [email protected]

I was formerly the director of a small county historical society museum. During my time there we received many wonderful items for our collections. One of the most amusing was the time a member who collected antiques brought in some large charcoal portraits from the 1870s or 1880s. He had purchased some antique picture frames that held landscape prints, and found the portraits under the prints. He wondered if we might want them for the museum. I told him to leave them for a while and I would take it up with our collections committee. One of the portraits was of a woman who was certainly no great beauty. Her most distinguishing feature was a very large "spit curl" in the middle of her forehead.

Shortly afterward our society president called. He had been instrumental in collecting a great many historic photographs for the collections. I said, "Larry, next time you are in town, be sure to come by and see the pictures Dave just brought in." I described the woman to him. There was a long pause on Larry's end of the line. Then he said, "That's a picture of my great- grandmother. Our family has been looking for it for years, and didn't know what had become of it!"

He drove into town that afternoon and brought me another picture of the same woman as evidence that his story was true. Needless to say, I gave him the pictures!