Guest post by Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective

The handwriting on the back of this image is about the only detail that’s clear, “Little Joe—son of Joe Friede.” You’re probably thinking finding this young man’s identity will be a snap.

Not so fast!

As the Photo Detective, I know that picture mysteries come in all sizes. In this case, there are Friede’s, Friedl’s, and other similar spellings. Sorting out the right one took time and a little luck.

Nancy Desmond, co-founder of genealogy photo app MemoryWeb, found him in an antique shop on Belmont Avenue in Chicago on December 28, 2003. The exact date is easy for her to remember. Her son was born the next day. More than a century had passed from the date this teen posed for this picture and the birth of a new lad.

Every identification starts with a series of questions: who, where, what, why, and of course when. I know his name but not all the particulars about who took it or where or why he’s wearing that decorated hat and corsage. There are no clues as to who wrote the caption or how ended up in an antique shop.

Can I find the real Joe?

Who Times Two

Thank goodness his name is on the back. It’s a great piece of information and helps anchor the image to a family. The caption on the back tells us his name, Joe Friede and that his father has the same name. Two valuable bits that will help sort him out from other Joe’s.

We don’t know the writer’s relationship to Joe. If she was a close relative, she might have clarified it with a term—sister, brother, father, cousin, but she didn’t. Perhaps it was a gift. Our ancestors exchanged images all the time for friendship. Just as your picture collection and mine is a mix of family, friends, and neighbors.

Time for a Pose

It’s clearly a postcard. There is a lined space for mailing details, blank space for a message, and a small block big enough for a stamp. Effective October 1, 1907, postcards could be issued with divided backs. The design of the back identifies a beginning time frame for the image of after October 1907. His name and this date anchor us to an approximate year and possibly a family. It might not seem like a lot of data, but it’s enough to start searching.

Joe posed in a studio. He’s standing with typical props such as a table. There is no name or printing company mentioned on the reverse of this postcard. Too bad. That would tell us where he posed.

Finding His Story

The clues in this image provide us with some information, but the rest of his life story is outside the picture. Sites like, Ancestry.com, can help me locate him and his family.

A quick search of Ancestry.com for Joe Friede’s turned up a lot of hits. There are variant spellings for the name and many of these men have immigrant origins. That’s not a surprise. The hat on Little Joe’s head suggests that. He’s dressed for an event, likely one that marks an important occasion in his community. Many of the Friede’s came from Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Germany.

Census records can help you find the whole family living together. The closest census to the beginning date of the time frame is 1910. To help us sort through the Joe’s, let’s estimate his age as between 13 and 17. He’s a young to mid-teen. That suggests a birth year of between 1894 and 1897.

Let’s search Ancestry.com for a Joe Friede born in those years with a father of the same name, without a place. I don’t know that he was from Chicago, only that the photo ended up there.

Suspense

I always find myself holding my breath when I do a search hoping for a positive result rather one with no matches. It would mean starting over or editing my assumptions.

So how many hits were there?

ONE.

I gasped.

Joseph Friede, born abt. 1899 was born and raised in Ohio. In 1910 he lived with his parents, Joseph and Maria and three other siblings. His parents were born in Austria.

The census enumerator actually wrote down a more specific place of origin—Bohemia. His parents immigrated in 1890 and lived on a street with many families with similar origins.

Yes, they wore similar designed hats in Bohemia. I’m still looking for more information about his headgear, though. Traditional clothing can sometimes link a person to a town.

I consulted with a Czech research expert, Helene Cincebeaux of www.our-slovakia.com/genealogy.html and she added new information. She thought the hat could be for a wedding, but the lack of a bride suggested something else. When boys turned 17 they participated in a regruty celebration.

The combination of the census data and the traditional clothing clues date this photo. Little Joe was 17 in 1916.

History Clues

While there is family history in this photo, there is also a lot of history. Anyone with roots on continental Europe knows the challenges of shifting country boundaries. The same is true with this case.

Little Joe’s parents claimed Bohemia/Austria as their birthplace. Today the region they hailed from is now known as Czechoslovakia.

Cleveland, Ohio was home to the largest population of Czech immigrants. You can read about it in Gregory Stone’s article, Czech Migration Patterns to Cleveland, 1865-1940.

Do I have the right Joe? Maybe. There is still some searching to be done, but it possible.

About Maureen Taylor

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is an internationally recognized expert on photo identification. She loves helping clients discover their family history, a picture at a time. You can find her at MaureenTaylor.com and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.