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I wanted to share this family photo of Mary Oliver with the community. Location: 1563 Madison Ave., Covington, KY. Date: about 1888. It has a special place in the history of my genealogical research. It is a hand-painted tin type that I inherited from my father, rattling around in a cigar box with other tin types. It was labeled on the back as Mrs. E. Oliver, with the above address. No one in the family knew who she was. I knew my father's father, Silas, was from Covington, KY, but nothing more about the family. Silas never identified his parents to my dad- his father had been an alcoholic itinerant glassblower who traveled around blowing the bulbs for gas streetlights, his mother had taken in laundry. In the census, I found a large family of Pearces in Covington that were all glassblowers, and a marriage certificate for one of them, Walter, who had married a Louisa Oliver (for whom no other record could be found). DNA matches on Ancestry also connected me with the descendants of a large family of Olivers, whose mother was Elizabeth Oliver. A lot of work had been done on that family, but there was no Louisa listed anywhere as a child of Elizabeth. In addition to the DNA, the key to placing Louisa in the family was the address inscribed on the back- I was able to identify, through Covington city directories, that Elizabeth Oliver had lived there in her later years. As far as I know, it is the only surviving image of her.
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