…Thanks to my grandparents. I love old family photos just as much as the next family historian but I prefer the people in the photos to have been living and breathing at the time. So, you can imagine, when my grandparents pulled out four photos of people posing around caskets I was pretty creeped out. At the time we didn’t even know who was in the photos or why they were significant, just that they were kept and passed down. Since then, however, we’ve been able to identify them thanks to a wedding photo and also a photo of my great grandpa with his full-blood siblings—the only known surviving photo of Nikola and Josephina’s four children. Well, the only one where they’re all living, at least.

The photo I have featured at the top is from the funeral of Nikola and Josephina’s oldest daughter Marija. Nikola is holding his youngest, John, Josephine in front of them, and my great grandpa George in front of her. Marija, who lived August 15, 1907 until February 7, 1916. Notice: Josephina isn’t in this photo. Marija and her family are flanked by Josephina’s sister and brother-in-law Marija and Jakob Kher. Josephina is absent from this photo because less than a year before the family was taking another family casket photo, only Josephina was still not standing because she was the one they were mourning.

In a way, the more I know about the Salayj who came before me the sadder I feel. There was so much tragedy that hit them. The misfortune I’ll talk about this time is the series of deaths that hit the Salajs. As I’ve said, Nikola and Josephina came over to America with their two daughters in October of 1912. by April 1915, Josephina had caught tuberculosis and died from it. The following February, their daughter Marija died due to complications from tonsillitis and pneumonia and then that May John, the youngest Salay, died from pneumonia.

Nikola would remarry in between Marija and John dying to widow Anna Kiefer, who had three children of her own. According to notes my grandparents took, Nikola’s son George said his dad drank frequently. He also said that after the remarriage Nikola’s relationship changed with his daughter Josephine. George said that Anna and Nikola took care of the basic needs of the children but there was no love or nurturing in that house. Josephine would go to live with Marija and Jakob Kher because they did not believe Nikola and Anna were raising her the right way. One could imagine the rifts something like that could cause but apparently things ended up okay because Nikola would build the house Josephine and her husband, Steve Obermiyer, would live in.

Unfortunately, the remainding family would not all live happily ever after. In 1934 at the age of 24 Josephine would contract tuberculosis and die from the disease. With her, her unborn child also passed away. The two were buried together. While there was no family photo with her casket there is a photo of her in her casket surrounded by flowers.

Nikola and Josephina’s surviving son, George, and Nikola and Anna’s son Louis both lived long lives and had families of their own, as did Anna’s daughters Mary and Kate.

Because I don’t want to end this on quite so sad of a note, I’m going to go over who my grandparents and I went identifying the people in these photos. Now, this might get a little confusing. The only photo I don’t have digitized is Josephine’s. Here are Josephina’s and John’s:

We knew what Nikola looked like from his wedding photo with his first wife Josephina. Nikola is in all the photos, so that made it easier to narrow down which side of the family they came from.

John’s was obvious. My grandparents had heard that there was maybe one or two babies that came after my great-grandpa before his mother passed away but the baby’s name was nowhere to be found in their notes. But, we figured, this had to be that baby because we knew when the other three children died. Later, we would find a crude map of a cemetery drawn with the name “John Salay” on it.

Marija’s was easy as well because, again, we knew when she died and there was just no other option.

We knew the photo of Josephina in her casket to be either the photo of the adult woman outside in a casket or the one inside. From my grandparents notes, Josephine’s viewing was at her Auntie and Uncle Kher’s house. So, we determined, Josephine had to be the woman in the inside photo because there was a big portrait of Jakob Kher on the wall (we knew what he looked like from his naturalization application). The only problem now is that we can’t identify most of the people in the photos with them. We know Marija and Jakob Kher, we know Josephina’s brother, Franz, is in them along with Nikola’s brother Ivan. We’re pretty sure in John’s baby photo, Anna is on the end with her three children: Katie, Mary, and Mike.

The rest are a mystery. For now, at least.