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.