TRUAX FAMILY PHOTOS
Leamington, Ont. and Michigan
I was recently contacted by a woman named Margaret Heinek who said she had a number of old photographs of the Truax family, some from Leamington, Ontario. She wasn't directly related to the Truaxs (she'd inherited the photos from an uncle), and she wanted to know if I was interested. Was I!
We eventually determined that these were pictures of the family of George Wesley Truax, son of George Truax and Edith Miller, and grandson of Martin Truax and Catherine Gowman of Leamington. George Sr. was born in Ontario in 1853 and moved to Spring Lake, Michigan sometime before his marriage in 1884. George and Edith only had the one son, and he never had children of his own, so these photos passed to Margaret. She identified the more recent ones of George Wesley and his parents, but the rest are a bit of a mystery.
I have made some tentative identifications based on my estimation of the age of the photographs and the places where they were taken (when shown), but these are only guesses. I would REALLY appreciate it if anyone with expertise in this area could give me a better idea of when these pictures might have been taken. Also, if anyone else has old photographs of the Truax or Gowman family of Leamington, please contact me.
For reference, these are the people involved:
Martin TRUAX (son of Abraham TRUAX and Jane SCOTT), b.1828 in Quebec, d.1913 in Leamington, ON. He married in 1849,
Catharine GOWMAN (daughter of George GOWMAN and Ann PETHERICK), b.1832 in England, d.1905 in Leamington.
Children of Martin & Catherine were:
- Amanda TRUAX b.1851, mar. William BATTISKILL
- George TRUAX b.1853, mar. Edith MILLER in 1884, MI - had George Wesley TRUAX, b.1886
- Jennie (Jane) TRUAX b.1855, mar. William BATTISKILL (her sister's widower)
- Charles TRUAX b.1857, mar. Elizabeth DRAPER in Leamington; lived in Detroit in 1813
- Henry TRUAX b.1861; lived in Leamington in 1813
 Martin Truax and Catherine Gowman? (the photographer�s imprint says �D. Whatmough & Co., Belleville, Ontario" - they were in business from 1870 to 1875, so given the ages of the people here, I suspect they are Martin and Catherine) |
 Catherine Gowman? (a hand-tinted tintype in a wood & glass case with brass matte - very beautiful. There is also a matching photo of a young boy, possibly her first son, so this may have been taken in the mid-to-late 1850s) |
 Catherine Gowman? (I�m assuming so since it was taken in Leamington in the 1890s) |
 George Truax Sr. |
 George Truax Sr.& Edith Miller |
 George Wesley Truax |
 Charles Truax? (brother of George Sr.; he lived in Detroit. There are a few pictures of him - some from Leamington and some from Detroit) |
 Charles Truax? (not sure if this is the same fellow - possibly one of them is brother Henry) |
  Truax Sisters? (These are both tintypes, same setting and probably taken at the same time. At first I thought the one on the left was Amanda and Jennie Truax - they'd be about the right age for 1870s, but then who is the third girl?) |
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