This week – week 35 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge -- we get to go wild and write about whatever we want (Free Space!). I love, love, love looking through old family photos. That’s one of my favorite parts of genealogy. It’s always fun to find familiar family features in the faces of ancestors who came before us, though sometimes we have a difficult time finding those similarities in our own faces. I always thought I looked like a cross between my parents, an idea that was reinforced every time I was out with one of them and we met someone. People who knew my dad insisted that I looked exactly like him, while people who knew my mom thought I looked exactly like her. When I started sharing old family photos on social media, people I’d grown up with as well as internet friends I’ve never met in person all said, “Wow! You can tell you’re Phil’s granddaughter!” whenever I shared a picture of him. That was news to me! I never thought I looked like my grandfather. None of my family members ever remarked on the resemblance, and when I told my mom, she said, “No you don’t – you look like your father.” I decided to do a side-by-side of our senior pictures – his taken in 1943 and mine in 1994 – and yeah, my friends were right! I do look like him. Even my mom sees it now.
Because it’s fun, I decided to do some more side-by-sides to see what other doppelgangers exist in my family.
For her entire life, my mom has been told that she looks just like her grandmother, Bernadette (Barr) Laviolette. She doesn’t see it, even though on his deathbed, her grandfather called, her “Dette,” his nickname for his long-deceased wife. I sent this to her, and she still doesn’t see it, even though they look like they could be sisters or mother and daughter. The resemblance is uncanny.
My dad looked just like his mom, Helen (Ladd) Turner, only with lighter hair. I don’t see his dad in him at all. If his hair was styled differently, you'd see that he even had the same hairline.
The LaViolet/Laviolette men have a certain look – long faces, bushy eyebrows. We were surprised when we realized that a man in a wedding photo mistakenly labeled as the brother of the groom (a Laviolette) was in fact the father of the bride (a Duchesne). That look we thought of for years as the “Laviolette look” is actually a Duchesne look. When I shared the original wedding picture, several of my cousins piped up that David Duchesne looked like our grandfather, one of our uncles, and I see a bit of my cousin Ryan in him too. I put together this collage. The man on the top right is my 3rd great-grandfather, David Duchesne with his Laviolette descendants – my great-grandfather, William, my grandfather Phil, and my uncle. Out of all of them, I think my grandfather looks the most like David, his great-grandfather.
When my father-in-law scanned his family photos, I was shocked to see such a strong resemblance between my daughter and my husband’s family. I knew she looked like her dad, and my husband looks a lot like his dad, but until that point, I had never seen pictures of the extended family. Like the Duchesnes, there is a certain “look” that passed down through my husband’s family – in this case, big, beautiful eyes, and gigantic heads. I’m not knocking their melon heads; they’re all far more intelligent than I am, so maybe they legitimately need more room for their brains. Anyway, there is a picture of my husband and daughter as infants where they look almost identical, which isn’t too surprising given their relationship. What struck me was how much she looks like other members of his family. I came across a picture of a cute little boy who turned out to be my father-in-law’s much older first cousin. He and my daughter are by no means identical, but you can tell they’re related. She looks more like her grandfather’s cousin than she looks like me!
I’ll wrap this up with one last picture, that’s obviously not related to genetics, but it makes me laugh. This picture of my great-grandparents, Blanche and Dana Ladd, reminds me of the old couple from UP! – especially Dana. He looks like Carl, and the resemblance makes me smile.
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