Five Generations of Photos

Achievement unlocked! With a small collection of photos that my mom gave me to look through and scan from her side of the family, I now have photos of every one of my ancestors five generations back to my great-great grandparents. That’s pretty impressive, at least I think so, compared to my wife’s tree where she has very sporadic photos beyond her grandparents.

A few months back, I was three photos short of having all 30 ancestor’s photos. I recently received a scanned copy of a photo of my great-great grandfather, Carl “Charles” LAST, which filled in one of those three. Then, this weekend, I scanned photos of my great-great grandparents, Johann & Wilomene (RATHKE) THIELKE. One of the photos is labeled “John Thielke” and one is labeled “Grand Pa Thielke. Art’s dad”, with Art being my great-grandfather. He is shown with another older woman in one photo and I can really only assume it’s his wife, Minnie. She has that stereotypical “old, German woman” look to her as do a lot of my German ancestors. I have now added his photo to the Everything I Know About Johann Thielke site, which does feel good.

This doesn’t mean I don’t have any photos beyond the fifth generation, as I definitely do. Sadly, I think getting photos of all 32 of my great-great-great grandparents is an almost impossible feat as I don’t even have names for some of them. The oldest ancestor that I do have a photo for is that of my 4th-great-grandmother, Frances (QUINET) THOMPSON, who was born almost 200 years ago in France in 1817. Who is your oldest ancestor that you have a photo for?