The Image of Livas
The image of Livas “Joseph” Anderson, center left, measures nine and a half by thirteen inches and is printed on linen paper with his eyes lined in ink within a dove grey cardboard folio stamped with the words Napa, California. It is beautiful! But there is no evidence that the man in the picture ever returned to the United States. How did his image come to be reproduced in California?
Ava Speese Day’s 1977 Christmas Letter included a brief passage about Hester Freeman Meehan’s brother, Robert. She wrote that “Mom’s uncle Robert Freeman used to live in Fresno. We never heard any more from or about him after a big flood hit there about 1924.” It is possible that Robert had the old tintype reproduced, but Fresno is about 200 miles from Napa Valley, so the search continued for someone closer to Napa Valley.
The answer came in 2017 when FamilySearch added newly digitized California Transcription records. Hester’s nephew, Solon Pericles Thomas, pictured center with Livas, died in Napa on December 5, 1926, at 48. Records indicate that Solon was only in Napa for a few years. Still, during that time, he may have commissioned the preservation of the image of Livas, the oldest known Anderson ancestor.