This week’s challenge for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun with Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings was a no-brainer for me. Here’s the question:

1)  What are the oldest family photos that you have?  Can you date them?  Do you know who is in them?

I know exactly which photos are the earliest in my combined Sabo-Stufflebean family tree collection and I’ve shared them in previous blog posts, but I love these two pictures.

Thomas Adams (1783-1859) & wife
Sarah Brawn (1786-between 1851-10 September 1852)

I own the originals of this photos, although they are looking like copies in these images. Thomas Adams was the son of Loyalist John Adams from Fairfield County, Connecticut. He and his family were in the Fall of 1783 fleet that sailed from New York to New Brunswick, Canada. Thoma was either born just before they left or shortly after they arrived. He reported in the 1851 census that he was born in New Brunswick.

Sarah Brawn was actually the granddaughter of a pre-Loyalist, Benjamin Brawn, who was in Nova Scotia by the 1760s, having reportedly left Newbury, Massachusetts for a new life in Canada. Her father, also Benjamin Brawn, died as a young man and it appears that her grandfather raised her.

My great grand aunt Pearl Adams Chadwick was born three decades after they died. However, she was the keeper of the family photos and stories and her father, Calvin Segee Adams, knew both Thomas and Sarah, as they were his grandparents.

Aunt Pearl’s son, Charles, passed the photos and the stories on to me. 🙂 He, too, is now with the ancestors, but I am very thankful that he knew so much about those who came before us.

I am also thankful that these family photos have been preserved.

Thanks, Randy, for this week’s challenge.