Nov 13, 2024 4 min read ancestry

The Violin

A stack of hundred-year-old photos led to the discovery of a family treasure hiding in plain sight.

This newly found family photo triggered a childhood memory.

Last week, the morning after the election, I read a sad update on Facebook:

I am closed ... If you have a new repair, etc. I will no longer accept the job. There’s not enough joy left in my soul now to do this any longer. Thanks for your business since 1998.

This man, Aaron Morris, did a wonderful thing for my family and me a few years back...

In 2017 my aunt found a bundle of negatives wrapped in paper in the attic of her home in Buffalo, NY, which has been passed down generation to generation since our relatives built it more than 100 years ago. She sent me the package and I hired Photoworks in San Francisco to scan them.

The images were astonishing. For the first time we had pictures of family we had never seen. Before they were only anonymous names on family trees, names that were later given to newborns to remember them, but whose faces were unknown, whose worlds shared the same landmarks as ours but on another timeline. Now, we could meet our ancient grandparents – as young parents and children – and peer into the lives of Polish immigrants settling into early Buffalo, which then was emerging from fields and a simple lakefront into the country's 8th largest city.

Family scenes from 1900-1910. Still searching for the exact location of the photo on the right, believe it to be near the corner of Walden Avenue and Pine Ridge Road in Cheektowaga, NY.

What is now an inner city neighborhood in East Buffalo was then their little farmstead.

There was a lot more than just their neighborhood. There were glimpses of an undeveloped Lake Erie shore, as well as Niagara Falls.

But, there was one image in particular that caught my eye. I had seen that violin before.

I recalled that when I was a kid, my great grandma passed away and we cleaned out her house. My parents moved boxes of stuff from her attic to ours. Sometimes I would rummage through our attic, looking for hidden Christmas presents, and I remember seeing an old coffin-style case with a violin inside.

On my next trip home to visit my family, I went up into the attic with my wife and we couldn't believe our luck, the case was still there.

My wife Court search another family attic.

The violin I remembered from the day of my Great Grandmother's funeral.

A few quick Google image searches narrowed it down to a German factory-made violin, possibly in Markneukirchen, between 1900-1910, which checks out because I believe the original photograph was dated to 1912. The GSB-engraved clasp suggests the case was manufactured by George S. Bond in Charlestown, New Hampshire.

My college buddy's father, Aaron Morris, is a luthier in North Carolina. He encouraged me to send it his way to have a look.

He quickly dissected it and confirmed it was a Stradivarius replica with a "Germany" decal pasted inside.

Six months later, I received two pictures from his shop with the caption: It can play again.

Aaron, thank you to for restoring our family's treasure and bringing color and sound to a very old memory.

And I must say, I hope you find the joy again. We need more people like you.

PS. Since these photos were discovered, I have begun to experiment with AI tools to colorize black and white photos. Here is that original with a quick color pass, next to a photo of my daughter 115 years later with her great-great grandfather's violin.