Dr. Charles Henry DeWan

Way back when I first started researching my grandfather's Irish ancestry, I asked my grandmother what she knew about his family.  One of the things she told me was that her mother-in-law, Kathryn DeWan Fagan, had a brother who was a pathologist.  This was Dr. Charles Henry DeWan, as my research would uncover.  

The youngest DeWan sibling, Charles was born 18 August 1892 in Herrick, Pennsylvania.  Their father, Patrick, had come from Ireland sometime before 1862 and their mother, Anna McGovern, had family roots in Counties Armagh and Longford.  Charles graduated from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, where his brother-in-law Dr. Peter Edward Fagan had also earned his MD, and returned home to Bradford County as an intern in 1917 to join the staff of the Robert Packer Hospital.  During a 45 year medical career, Dr. DeWan was a deputy coroner for Bradford County and director of the pathology department at Robert Packer Hospital in Sayre, Pennsylvania.  Under his supervision the pathology lab grew from one room to an entire hospital floor, and his death in 1963 garnered a front page headline in the local paper (plus an additional page).  The following photograph is of Dr. DeWan.

Dr. Charles Henry DeWan
Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine

It is my belief that the image above, being created prior to 1977, is likely in the public domain as classified for works created between 1923 and 1977 as laid out here and additionally that fair use applies, as I have provided a commentary on it by adding details on the life of its subject which were not published with the image.

The USGA's "Photo" Pietzcker

While not a household name today, a number of iconic images of the country's most famous golfers of the 1920s and 1930s were photographed by my 2nd cousin 3x removed, George Sealy Pietzcker.   George was born in Sour Lake, Hardin County, Texas on 18 January 1885.  His father, Ezra James Pietzcker, was from Massillon, Ohio and was the son of Mary Ann Biedermann/Bitterman (sister of my 3x great-grandfather Levi) and Dr. August Pietzcker, a Moscow-born Prussian who family tradition said had been taken from Moscow to St. Petersburg as an infant to escape Napoleon's invading army in 1812.  Family tradition also held that Mary Ann and Levi's father, Joseph Biedermann, had been a member of that invading French army and was one of a small fraction to survive the Russian winter and make it back alive.

George's mother, Veturia Elizabeth Merchant, came from a family that had resided at Sour Lake since at least the 1840s.  Possibly not entirely coincidentally, some of her husband Ezra's Bitterman cousins had also been born in Sour Lake, and he may have ended up there while on the trail of his missing uncle Levi in Texas, a Herculean task given him by the family back in Ohio.  Ezra traveled a lot for his work, including stints in Houston which allowed him to stay in touch with his Texas Bitterman cousins (once he succeeded in finding them!), and we all probably owe cousin Ezra a great deal in particular for a letter, now part of the pension file of Esilla Bitterman in the Texas State Archives, which details to his cousins some of the history of the Bitterman family as he knew it.

Eventually the entire Pietzcker family relocated to St. Louis, Missouri.  George started a photography studio while they resided there and although golf photography was his chosen specialization, he also on occasion photographed other events.  A collection of photographs he took in 1910 documenting an aviation meet feature photos of Wright planes and Theodore Roosevelt, and are now part of a special collection at Duke University.  Throughout the next couple of decades, George traveled the country working as a photographer for the USGA.  His original photos are extremely rare now and sell for thousands when they come up for auction.  A selection of reproductions of some of his most famous subjects are available through the USGA Museum, and many are republished in the book Golf's Golden Age.  George appears on the US Census records with the rest of the Pietzcker family through 1930.  During the next decade, George relocated to Miami, Florida, with wife Julia and retired there.  He died in Miami on 1 December 1971.  

Bitterman Family Portrait, ca. 1903

Three generations of Bitterman descendants are depicted in this photograph, dating from around 1903 (based on the ages of the infants in the photo).  From the groupings in the photo I've been able to reconstruct a pretty good idea of who everyone is.  The white-haired man near the center of the photo is Levi Bitterman, with daughter Mary Ann and wife Esilla (Rachal) sitting to either side of him.  On Esilla's other side, wearing a plaid dress, is their daughter Emma with husband William Woodson Wright Jr. and their children seated and standing around them.  At far left in the center row is Levi and Esilla's son Fred, with wife Mary Susan (Elliff) and their daughters.  On the other side of Mary Susan is Milus Polk Wright, Mary Ann's husband and brother of Emma's husband W. W., and the four boys sitting on the ground and the girl behind them belong to M. P. and Mary Ann.  At the back row is Lee Bitterman with wife Hester (Clark), married about a year at the time this was taken, and the identities of the next two young men in the photo would be either Ulyses or Edgar Bitterman (but I'm not certain which one is which).  On their other side is their niece Mabel Wright, her brother Earl, and sister Ghaskye.  Their brothers Will and Harry are seated on the ground in front of their parents, The small girl with her hair in ribbons, immediately behind Harry and being held onto by their father, is my great-grandmother Pearl Anais, who was around three years old.