The Annotator's Album

Forty-nine family photographs, a blue-ink pen, and the women the labels name.

The Annotator

She is still unidentified. A child of Le Roy Warren Swift (“Papa”) and a daughter of the Winter family (“Mama”), she sat down with 49 family photographs, some dating to the 1840s, and wrote labels in blue ink.

“Many many years ago when I was very little.”

“My father Le Roy W. Swift.”

“My Mother's mother. Elizabeth Arden.”

“Mama she was so pretty.”

Without her, the Winter-Swift photograph collection is a box of anonymous faces. With her ink, it is a family archive spanning 170 years. She is the founder of this project, and we are still searching for her name. If you recognize her handwriting or know the children of Le Roy Warren Swift, please write through the About page.

Elizabeth Arden

An ambrotype case in the family archive carries a period handwritten label: “My Mother's mother. Elizabeth Arden.” Elizabeth Arden was the wife of Richmond C. Winter (1839–1912). The photograph shows a young woman in a snood with drop earrings, about the 1850s–1860s, in the Fall River and New Bedford area. She is documented through an inherited ambrotype with a period ink label, primary evidence held in the family. Research on her Arden family continues; see Warren & Arden.

Rachel Warren

Papa's mother. An oval portrait by the photographer Lotte Gützlaff, held in the family archive, carries a period label identifying her as Leroy E. Swift's wife and the annotator's paternal grandmother. Her maiden name survived in her son's middle name: Le Roy Warren Swift, a second, independent witness.

The Warren surname enters the line through Rachel T. Warren of Pennsylvania (b. 1843, M3PX-PV2), daughter of Isaac Warren (b. about 1812, Pennsylvania in the 1850 and 1860 censuses, New Jersey or New York in later records; died between 1870 and 1880, G9LH-3SV). These Warrens were a Philadelphia family; no Plymouth connection has been found. Whether the Isaac Warren line, which ends at Isaac in the current records, connects to the Edward Warren and Margaret Arden line of Maryland is open research. Pennsylvania Warren records before 1812 survive in the Pennsylvania State Archives and the Quaker monthly meeting books (notably Menallen Monthly Meeting, Adams County) but are not yet documented in the archive. See Warren & Arden.

Footnotes for this chapter are in preparation (the photographs and labels, cited as family-archive items).