Ancestry Magazine

My great-great-grandfather has a medium mouth.

At least, that’s what some Joe Schmoe wrote on his passport application in 1892.

Actually, that Joe Schmoe’s name is Horatio Pickett, and he also said my grandfather had a large nose. His description for my great-great-grandfather’s face? Common.

C’mon, Horatio. Now you’re just asking for it.

I found all this in the U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925 collection on Ancestry.com. I have to wonder where they find this stuff. That’s good. Census records I would have thought of. Yearbooks? Maybe. Passport applications? Never. Seems like if my ancestor signed it, they’ll find it. When the collection went live there was a buzz in the office. Juliana, our editor for the Ancestry Weekly Journal, was first to check it. She found several relatives.

“Juliana always finds someone!” my coworker quipped, logging onto the site. “Must be ‘cuz her ancestors were wealthy. They could afford to travel.” We give each other the our-ancestors-were-paupers grin of camaraderie and feel better.

“Oh my word. There’s my grandfather,” she says suddenly.

I had spent the previous morning searching the collection for my own relatives and found an application for my great-great-grandfather, Harmon Hafen, within ten minutes. I was feeling pretty satisfied about that one.

“Is there a photo?” I asked, secretly hoping there wasn’t. There had been no photo for Harmon. Just a plain old application—saying he had a common face, a large nose, and a medium mouth. Whatever that meant. Oh yeah. And he was 5’8″. One inch shorter than I am. Huh.

“Yeah. Yeah. There’s a photo. There he is. That’s him.”

“No way. You always get the photos!” She was walking back from the good printer waving a nice 11 x 17-inch printout of his application, with a photo that—sure enough—looked exactly like he could be her grandfather. Same Danish features.

“It says he has a scar on his neck,” she said. “I didn’t know that. And he was naturalized in Washington. That explains why I could never find his naturalization papers before. He did them while he was out-of-state—in the army.”

That is neat. I can’t begrudge her that—even though I feel a little bit like I just lost the lottery.

“Oh sure. Miss Poster Child for Ancestry Success Stories,” another coworker chimes in on her way out for a noontime stroll. She can’t get further on her line than her grandparents.

I continue to be amazed by the breadth of collections Ancestry posts for us to do more sleuthing in. And I continue to be amazed that—despite what I think are impossible odds—at least one of my ancestors always seems to show up in even the most obscure collections.

Minus the photo.

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Jana Lloyd is editor of the Ancestry Monthly newsletter. She can be reached at AMUeditor@ancestry.com but cannot assist with personal research questions.

*Passports became common in the 1840s, but were not required until after World War I. The U.S. Passport Applications Collection contains more than 2 million passport applications filed by residents of the U.S. Of those, around 300,000 contain photographs of the applicant. Information can include date and place of birth, residence, naturalization, and other biographical information. To search the U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925, go here.