At one point, while doing these posts, I had to develop a system to keep track of the photographs which had been used in posts and those which still needed to be shared and written about. I keep my cousin Joe Rooney’s original scans with his naming system in a folder. Copies with my own naming/numbering system are in my Genealogy folder – where I keep all images, documents, etc. with unique MRINs. I also created a temporary folder: !NOT USED old photos. As it contains copies, I can easily delete each photograph as it is featured in a post.
There are very few photos left in the temporary folder. As I was looking through it in preparation for a new post I noticed something about this young man.
The man is not identified on the back of the photo. He is wearing an overcoat and hat with a cigarette in his right hand and holding a bag in his left. The location it was taken at is familiar. The brick wall behind him is not straight. There are two and a half bricks and then the wall juts out at a tiny angle. The same as in the photos below.
It is in front of the apartment Samuel Royalty “Roy” LILLIE (1895-1979) rented at 2122 Marantette St. in Detroit, Michigan. The address is known from photographs taken about 1930 when the house number was still on the building. It is also the address at which Roy, his mother Florence, his brother Raymond, and his sister Ruth lived when the census was taken in 1930 and 1940.
In the next photograph, we see Florence with her sons Roy and Raymond on the right and a young man in uniform on the left. This young man, holding a cigarette in his right hand, is Everett Isaac LILLIE. The cigarette is what made me take a closer look at the unidentified man in the photo at the top of this post and all photos of Everett.
On Memorial Day 2015 I wrote about Everett Isaac LILLIE (1915-1944), son of Reese Gentry LILLY (1892-1965) and Dovie DEEN (1894-1918). Everett’s grandparents were Isaac Spencer LILLIE (1872-1932) and Florence ROYALTY (1868-1946).
Everett married before going to Europe to fight during World War II leaving a pregnant wife. No marriage record has been found for them and she remains unknown. Note: The unidentified woman above is older and cannot be his wife.
In Everett’s 1944 obituary his wife and daughter are mentioned as living in New Jersey but were not named. He never knew his daughter Patricia M. LILLIE (1944-2012) who was born two months after his death. She was seen as Patricia M. KENNEDY when she married Ronald R. GHAGAN (d. 1985) in 1976 in South Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut. It is not known if she had children, grandchildren of Everett Isaac LILLIE who died serving his country.
More about this collection, how it came to be in my possession,
and links to previous posts in the series can be found here.
© 2017, copyright Cathy Meder-Dempsey. All rights reserved.
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Opening Doors in Brick Walls 
It certainly looks like the same man to me. How sad that his daughter never knew him. I wonder just how many children experienced that same thing—born after a father (or a mother) was killed in a war. So awful.
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Thanks, Amy, for confirming. There are several more photos of Everett that my cousin Joe shared with me, not from the collection, and he almost always has the cigarette in his hand.
There were probably more than we would want. Sad.
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And continue to be, sadly, as there are still wars. 😦
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I agree with Amy. Very sad. I love your idea of keeping a folder of “not used” photos. I wish I had done that starting over 4 years ago. Now I am always guessing if I posted something or not.
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I needed to have something that would work for me, Luanne. I also add the links of posts on all my ancestors posts to their notes in my database. I use html so the link is clickable on RootsWeb WorldConnect where I keep a copy of my gedcom.
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I feel it’s too late for me to get this organized. Too much has NOT been organized.
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This doesn’t mean I’ super organized. But I know where things are. 😉
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Compared with me you are super organized!
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Have you checked Google Earth to see if those building are still there? The apartment building and the one with the row of houses in the background. I was wondering if the row of houses might be across the street from the apartment building.
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I checked Google Earth when I wrote the posts on the two little pictures I included. I don’t think the search was of any help at the time. Maybe I should try again. Thank you, Vera.
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Sometimes the landscape has changed so much that you can’t really get anything–except maybe “there house isn’t there any more.” But I’ve found 19th century houses that are recognizable. You never know.
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