Week 2 - Favorite Photo

Beginning when I was a very small child, I traveled with my grandmother from Oklahoma City to Moberly, Missouri each summer (by bus, and that is a story unto itself) to visit her brother and sister. In their home hung two old sepia photographs of who, in my young mind, were George and Martha Washington. Grandma Powers and Aunt Naomi related story after story about these two important people that were somehow related to me, but I couldn’t have cared less.

Fast forward to 1998 (more than 30 years later) when I discovered these same photos while going through my father’s things shortly after his death. Apparently, they were passed on to my grandmother, then to my father. I remembered them from my childhood, and decided to take them home.

A few days later, while pondering the meaning of life, the name “Michael Hillegas” popped into my head. I realized this was the name my grandmother and great-aunt had tried to pound into my head all those years before. Not knowing how to spell it, I attempted to find some information (remember this is 1998 – pre-Google). “BAM” (using my best Emeril impersonation) Michael Hillegas appeared before me on my computer screen. But…the photo of Michael Hillegas looked ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like the sepia photograph hanging over my desk.

This was the beginning of my obsession with family history. From that moment on, I was determined to find out exactly how I was related to this Michael Hilllegas person. Eventually, I was able to connect all the dots and, as he was the first Treasurer of the United States, I decided to join the Daughters of the American Revolution. I was, however, still unable to explain the difference in the likeness between the $10 Gold Certificate that bore the portrait of Michael Hillegas, and that old photograph.

Several years later a distant cousin, who I had met through my genealogy research, asked me if I’d ever seen the portraits of Joseph Anthony and his wife, Henrietta Hillegas (daughter of Michael) that were painted by the master portraitist Gilbert Stuart and now hung in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City (Joseph Anthony and Gilbert Stuart were first cousins).  When I said I hadn’t, she emailed copies to me. I swear my heart stopped for a moment when I saw the sepia photos miraculous appear in full color before my eyes…