If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years in genealogy research, it’s make sure to contact everyone in your family – you never know what treasures someone may have.
A great example of this is when I met with a 3rd cousin, 1x removed (name omitted for her privacy). She brought some old photos to share & had a wedding photo of her 2nd great-grandparents – my 3rd great-grandparents (3 greats!) – taken in 1875(!).
To put the relationship in perspective, her great-grandma & my dad’s great-grandpa were siblings. They grew up in the same home in the 1880s & 1890s, but then would have went their own ways, gotten married & had children. Over the decades, our branches of the family understandably lost touch. So we reconnected.
Here’s the photo, and I remember when I first saw it, I immediately had a feeling it was them. Sure enough, a label on the back, “Grandpa & Grandma Hilburger”…
I had a feeling it was them for multiple reasons:
(1) My Grandma Rita had a few pictures of them when they were older, including this one, and I definitely saw the resemblance.
(2) The approximate age of the photo. It was immediately obvious it was extremely old, the texture of the original, the clothes, etc. This was pre-1900 so the dates fit.
(3) The way they look so young. I knew already that they were 20 and 19 years old on their wedding day, and they certainly look that young in the photo.
(4) The photo was in the midst of other photos for the Hilburger side of the family (and of course, the clincher – the label on the back).
So who were they exactly? John Baptist HILBURGER & Mary Anna KARG – they went by John & Mary – both born in Buffalo, NY to immigrants from Bavaria. They married at St. Ann’s RC Church on June 15, 1875. Here’s that marriage record, written in Latin:
They went on to have 10 children, including twins in 1880. This distant cousin who had the 1875 wedding photo was a descendant of their oldest child to live to adulthood, Anna Maria (left), while I descend of one of the twins, Edward (right).
In 1925, John & Mary celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary together. They lived at 570 Adams St., the same home that my Grandma Rita grew up in. Here’s a notice from a local newspaper The Buffalo Times on their Golden Anniversary:
They passed away only a few years later, John first in 1929, then Mary in 1932.
So you never know… If I hadn’t been in contact with distant relatives, I may have never seen this photo. She had it stacked away in some old boxes and it hadn’t been digitized. Now it is, and it’s preserved for generations to come.
Craig Kanalley 
68 responses to “An 1875 Marriage Photo”
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