In 1972 when I was 19 and lived in Birmingham, Alabama, my dad, James O. Ogle, died unexpectedly at the age of 47. After the funeral, a buddy of his handed me a shoebox that my dad had entrusted to him to deliver to me in case of his death. Inside was a big pile of loose photos from the early 1900’s to the late 1940’s. Most of the photos are not annotated — no names, places, or dates. Some of them appeared to have been pulled out of photo albums. I think these were photos that my dad’s parents Nell Fagan and Orlando Ogle had collected. Nell died in 1950, and when my grandfather Orlando remarried a couple of years later, he may have passed the old photos on to my dad, the oldest child.
Orlando’s parents were William Henry Ogle and Mary Elizabeth “Eliza” Pearson, who were tenant farmers. William died in 1901, leaving Eliza a widow at age 33 with 8 children, the youngest of whom was born a few months after William died. The oldest photos I inherited were taken of Eliza and her 8 children a few years after William’s death. It was common around the turn of the century for itinerant photographers to visit rural communities to take photos. and many of them are on postcards.
In 2002, I connected with some descendants of Eliza Pearson’s family, Brandy Pearson Bigley and Barry Eiland in Georgia, who have done extensive work on the Pearson side. Barry has many old photos of Mary Elizabeth Pearson and her children, including some of the same ones I have. Barry’s photos were often annotated on the back because Eliza had sent pictures of her children back home to her family in Georgia. This helped me identify many of the people in my photos. Barry was kind enough to send me copies and scans of his photos which I’ll be adding to this website soon.
In 2021, I began to put the family tree together on Ancestry.com under “Christopher/Ogle Family Tree” (click the link to view the tree) I have DNA on both Ancestry and 23andme so look me up!
And contact me if you have photos you’d like to share on this website or you have any questions or comments. I answer email pretty quickly.
Ginger Ogle, November 2021