Wednesday, 1 February 2006
flickr/family serendipity
In the fall of 2004, I posted on Flickr a series of century-old photos of my father’s side of the family that he had scanned into digital form. One of them was a beautiful formal family portrait of my grandfather, his parents, and his four siblings—that photo actually won an informal award from the “old photos” group on Flickr.
In the caption of the photo, I noted that my grandfather’s younger brother had emigrated to Brazil, and that the last my father had heard of his three aunts was that they’d gone to Australia. I had pretty much resigned myself to not ever knowing what became of that whole side of my family, because I really had no starting point for doing that research.
Yesterday afternoon, I received a new comment on the photo—from a Daniel Loebmann in Brazil. I suspect that he searched Flickr for the term Loebmann…and up popped three of my old photos. I followed up with a message to him asking what the family connection was, and he turns out to be the grandson of my grandfather’s younger brother Salo—which makes him (according to Gerald, my most reliable family tree decipherer) my second cousin.
Even more exciting, he had information about all of Salo’s descendants, and even about the three mysterious aunts—whose names, it seems, were Vali, Erna and Ruth, and who also eventually relocated to Brazil.
My dad and I are totally astounded and delighted by this Flickr-fuelled family reunion, and I’m thinking about trying to find a time to take a trip down to Brazil to meet some of my long-lost cousins.
So, how cool is that?
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Amazing! Talk about Web 2.0 fueled serendiptiy...
ouch! I can spell serendipity, honest I can...
I just got an email from my cousin Daniel, and when i started to look the pictures i was a great surprise. We don´t have many pictures at home from my grand father Salo.
Fisrt of all let me present myelf. Mi name is Glaucia, i´m 37 years old, daughter of Miguel Loebmann, and i have 3 sisters. I don´t know how much Daniel explained to you, but Salo an Emma had 4 sons, Martim ( died at 70 last year), Miguel ( my dad), Mario (died at 7 sometime in the 40´s), and Marcelo, Daniels father. This part of the familie eis very conected, and we see each ohter as often as possible ( i live in spain now, but just came back from a short vacation in Brazil). We always heard about the american coneccion, but not much more that Martim was there. It is really amazing what INTERNET can do. Daniel is the familie oficial photografer, he is really good, but prefer landscapes and animals... Well i will try to have a carefull look at the photos. It is really touching.
Best wishes
That's really cool! I'ma look for my own family name!
I'm very delighted to read about the family reunion but I must say: Daniel got the link to Flickr from me :-)
Best wishes
Glaucia, thanks so much for introducing yourself! It's very exciting to finally be building a bridge between Martin's and Salo's descendants--that's something I didn't think would ever happen.
And Andre, thanks for your role in helping to make this happen! I took a look at your site, and am trying to figure out if there's a direct connection between the people in your family tree and ours. I'm puzzled by how we'd have gone from a Catholic bishop in the 1700s to a Jewish doctor in the early 1900s!
It is indeed surprizing to see how Internet can be useful!
Thank you for sharing the story. Hope you can meet-up with all your cousins and their families soon!
Best Wishes!
Sandeep.
Hi Elizabeth,
I am Martin, Daniel's and Glaucia's cousin.
Just writing to share my e-mail, since Glaucia and Daniel have already gave you a good idea about the Brazilian branch of the family.
By the way, I have met your grandfather when my family went to USA in the 70s. I believe you can find some photos of this visit in your family album (I was 8 at the time).
Regards,
Martin
that is AWESOME. i love stuff like that. congratulations and have fun in brazil!
Hy,
My wife Miriam is the daughter of one of your aunts, Erna. I'm in Brazil right now, but we live in Switzerland. We'll send more info when I'm back.
Chris
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