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Picture - Pfeffer Family
Who are these people? The photo was received from a Pfeffer family descendant. (Charles Butt > Lucy Butt Viet > Helen Viet Pfeffer)
The man standing looks like the man identified as Charles Butt Sr. Charles is known to have lived
with his daughter Caroline and her husband Carl Murphy in 1920 (per the 1920 census). Carl was nine years older than Caroline and that difference fits the appearance of the seated couple. But who is the boy? Caroline had an illegitimate son named Ernest who was ten years old in 1912. Ernest is not listed with the Murphy’s in 1910 and 1920 census records. Obviously he grew up somewhere and perhaps his
mother kept in touch with him.
If it’s 1912 and this is the Murphy family then Charles is 63, Carl is 34, Caroline is 25 and Ernest is 10. These ages all agree with the apparent ages of the people in the photo. The photo was taken in Bay City and the Murphy’s lived in Bay City. That may be the right answer, but …
Check out Caroline in this photo compared to the clearly identified photo of Caroline in the “Charles Butt Sr Family” photo. You can’t go so far as to say they aren’t the same woman, but they don’t exactly look like the same person either. If it isn’t Caroline then who else could these folks be?
Since the picture came from descendants of Lucy Butt it could be her. Lucy had a son, but she also had three daughters and it is odd to sit for a picture with only one child. Since the standing man looks like John Butt, it could be him. John had five children, including three sons. Again it seems odd to sit with only one of your five children and then who would the other man be? Amelia didn’t have children and Mariah had a daughter.
Helen Viet Pffeffer and her husband Art Pfeffer had two children, Arthur and Lemoyne. Helen is Charles’s grand-daughter, Lucy Butt Viet’s daughter. Their son Arthur was ten in 1925. Daughter Lemoyne was much younger than her older brother and wasn’t born until 1929. So, this family makes for a possible fit. It’s not clear why Charles would sit for a portrait with his grand-daughter, but in 1925 he would be 76. The age of Art Pfeffer the elder is unknown, but probably similar to that of his wife Helen Viet Pfeffer, who was 28 in 1925. In 1925 the Pfeffer family fit the requirements of consisting of twenty-something parents and one ten year old boy. The Pfeffers lived in Detroit in the 1920 census, but Charles Sr lived in Bay City with Helen’s Aunt Caroline. The woman being Helen Viet would explain the Butt family resemblance, but not clearly being Caroline. The photo could have been taken on a visit. Probably the strongest evidence for this family being the Pfeffers is that it was in the possession of Helen’s Viet Pfeffer’s daughter.
The photo could be of the Pfeffer family or the Murphy family. The Pfeffer family probably fits the details the best.
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