I just love a great genealogy hunt and last night I had another chance to go on one! This past weekend, while visiting a local antique store, I found a picture of a man identified as Lt. William L. Quinn. It was taken at the Stanley Paulger studio in Montgomery, Alabama.
The picture included this handwritten caption about him.
With this information, I sought out to see if I could identify him as I wanted to add his picture to any online genealogy profiles about him. And found him In did! Here’s how.
1) Google search – when searching for someone, I generally try a few Google searches to see if anything that looks potentially relevant pops up. In this case, I did not find apparent matches, though I did veer off-track and learned quite a bit about William Wilson Quinn, a high-ranking military official who served the US national intelligence community. Not my guy though.
2) Searching military records – since I knew my guy was in the military, I searched the US Military Collection at Ancestry. A search of his exact name yielded about 200 results so that was manageable. After reviewing them, I found a record of interest – a National Guard register that gave a service history for a William L. Quinn of Alabama.
The record included the date of January 20, 1943 as the date on which he became a 2nd Lieutenant. This matches exactly to the date included in the caption on my guy’s picture. Furthermore, I knew the picture was taken in Alabama. What a great clue that this may be him!
3) US Army Enlistment Records -the National Guard record also included his enlistment date (date here), so I next decided to search a specific subset of the military records on Ancestry – the WWII US Army Enlistment Records as I knew my guy was in the Army. I found a match and learned my guy was born in 1913 in Alabama. He was from Autauga County and enlisted at the now-closed Ft. McClellan in Anniston, AL. Autauga County is just Northwest of Montgomery, AL where the photo studio was located, so this is yet another great clue.
4) Public Member Trees – now that I had a birth year, I was interested in finding out if anyone had the William Quinn I found, in an online family tree. Ancestry Public Member Trees are often the first place I search when looking for family trees and I quickly found him in multiple trees. From this search, I learned that his middle name was Lester and that he was specifically from Prattville, a town in Autauga County. I also learned that he passed away in 1973.
5) Find-A-Grave – sources in the family trees led me to his Find-A-Grave memorial page. His page had a photo of his headstone, but no picture of him.
Cool! I’d learned all of this information but I still needed more confirmation. While all the info I collected so far led me to believe that the William Lester Quinn I found was my guy, I still needed documentation that this specific William Lester Quinn served in the location mentioned in the caption with my guy’s picture – Fairfield, Ohio. For this, I decided to investigate newspapers.
6) Newspapers.com– Lo and behold! It turns out that newspapers.com includes more than 130+ year time span of the Prattville Progress, a newspaper of Prattville, AL! A few searches later, I was able to quickly confirm that the William Lester Quinn I’d found was the one and the same as my guy as I located several news stories about his service, including one that specifically mentions his time in Fairfield and another with this guy’s picture. In fact, it couldn’t get more perfect! I found a notice saying that the orders had come in to promote him to the 2nd Lieutenant Rank as specifically noted in the picture caption that was published July 15, 1943 – just 5 days before he was promoted. The actual article says his rank would be 1st Lieutenant, but given the US military register information and the caption on the photo, I think the 1st Lieutenant designation in the article may be a mistake.
These definitely confirmed the William L. Quinn I found in searching, was in fact, the same William L. Quinn whose picture I now have. Yay!
So, now what to do? Well, because I want to ensure that anyone who is interested in him can find this photo, I have added his picture to his Find-A-Grave page and his FamilySearch Family Tree profile.
How did his picture ended up here in Nashville? Who knows? But hopefully, I can get it back into the family’s hands. At least though, his picture is out there for any future discovery of anyone interested in him. Now on to the next hunt!
SOCIAL MEDIA IMAGE
