Keep Her for a Pet

Over the past few years I have been sporadically, yet semi-obsessively, researching my family history.  The internet has been an invaluable assistant in fueling this obsession.  To be fair I have a clearer, if somewhat still hazy, impression of where my grandparents came from, and what their lives must have been like, so it isn't just squandered hours developing carpel tunnel.  I've convinced myself it is all part of my educational training, and my decision to study history.

There are so many amazing resources at your fingertips, and a lot of it is free.  I've been able to scan through the Hungarian archives, and have even started to make family trees for people I'm not even related to.  Well, this is largely because I somehow ended up with photographs of folks that were friends of my great grandmother, some of then which she labelled.  Others are sadly anonymous.  I keep hoping that I will magically discover just who they are, and why she kept the photos.  Some of the discoveries I've made about the people in the photos are amazing.  Their steamy personal lives are there to discover and speculate upon hidden in innocuous public records.   

One resource that is now available through Ancestry.com is access to City Directories from all over the US.  City directories are wonderful ways to find out where someone lived, who they worked for, and who their neighbors were.  I've tracked the progress of my grandfather's family across greater Providence.  Through the magic of Google Maps I can even discover that most of them are now empty lots and gas stations.  You used to have to go to public libraries state to state to get this information.  Now I can look at Manchester, Connecticut from my living room in Oxfordshire, England.  You can't beat that with a stick.

Now to the point of the photo.  I found this advertisement in the pages of the Manchester, Connecticut City Directory.  The horrible record keeper that I am forgot to record the year, but I think it was from the 1910's.  With any luck I could probably find it again.  It is the one for Rogers Home Lunch.  Enjoy.