This photo came from an album that belonged to either my 2nd great-grandmother, Elizabeth Nimmo Dean, or her mother, Elizabeth Louden Nimmo. My grandmother's sister labeled many of the photos by name, but this one, as you can see, says "Great Nieces of Grandmother Nimmo."
Luckily, the photo was taken at the studios of William Notman in Montreal. He was a prolific and well-known photographer and his existing plates are in a collection at the McCord Museum there. Even better, more than 60,000 of those images are available to view for free on the museum's website, most with names and dates. But I still needed a lead to find this photo in that vast collection, since neither "Louden" nor "Nimmo" returned any results.
So, how were these ladies related to "Grandmother Nimmo" and was my great-aunt referring to her grandmother who's maiden name was Nimmo or her great-grandmother who's married name would have been Nimmo? Based on my estimated date for this photo, which was the 1880s, I proceeded as if it were my 3rd great-grandmother, so I began researching her siblings.
Her brother, John Louden, is as much of a mystery to me as I write this post as he was when I began researching him. I have a photo of him, from this album, and a burial record that I am 99% sure is his, but that is ALL. I can't tell you if or whom he married or if he had children. There are some trees on Ancestry I may follow up on at a later date, but they did not appear to be my John Louden.
After more than a few hours of fruitless research I moved on to Elizabeth and John's sister, Martha Ann Louden Linton. Right away, I found documentation for Martha that seemed to match what family lore had told me. One afternoon when I only had a short time for this project, I turned to the tree of a second cousin who does good research. It turns out she has a lot of information on these collateral lines, and using the married last names of Martha's daughters to search, I found "The Misses Maxwell" on the museum website in just a few minutes. I can't identify them individually, but between Aunt Dorothy's description and the caption on the museum website, I feel reasonably certain that these sisters are the daughters of Margaret Linton and Archibald Maxwell, Margaret being a daughter of Martha Ann Louden. And that would make them Great Nieces of Elizabeth Louden Nimmo. Also, the museum says the photo was taken in 1880.
I do have one more Notman photo from that album that has no identifying information whatsoever.
Is that some expression or what? I really want to know who this baby is but none of the names that I know solved the mystery. I later searched for hours using terms like "baby" and "child" since I had seen photos labeled "Mrs. X's baby" or "Mrs. X's child", but had no luck. There is a number on the back of the photo but the online collection is not searchable using those numbers. Once the McCord Museum is open again, I will contact them to see if they can offer any suggestions.
Any time I am lucky enough to identify a photo in my collection I find it very satisfying, which is why the one major-ish genealogy purchase that I have made during the pandemic has been a trio of online recorded courses from Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective. And as soon as I finish editing this post and have a little breakfast, I will be spending some time immersed in her Identifying Family Photographs course.
I hope your personal time this weekend will be as much fun!
