52 Ancestors in 2018 - Week 45: Bearded

It’s no-shave November, and the word of the week is ‘Bearded’! Though I have many living bearded relatives, after scouring my photo collection, I could only come up of ONE photo of an ancestor with a beard. Several had mustaches, but only one beard! Below is that picture.

I believe the man pictured is a great-greatgrandfather; Sylvanus H. DeBee. The portrait is actually a very old and somewhat fragile 16x10-inch painting/drawing. On the back of the picture there is handwriting that says ’S. L. DeBee Sr. It appears someone started to write ’Grandpa’ before writing ove it, though I can only make out the G-r-a for sure. However, a portrait found with is says ‘Grandma DeBee’ on the written on the back, which is important for context. Because other portraits in the stack name other DeBee ancestors, and are probably created at the same time, I believe that ‘Grandma’ is the wife of Sylvanus H. Debee, and that the man identified as Sylvanus L. Sr is actually Sylvanus H. DeBee.

To my knowledge there were only two men in the family named Sylvanus DeBee; Sylvanus H. DeBee (1841-1915) and his  grandson of Sylvanus L. DeBee (1897-1958). The handwriting on the back appears to be that of a granddaughter of Sylvanus L. Debee. It may be that she did not realize that his middle initial was ‘H’ and just assumed that the two Sylvanuses were father and son.

Sylvanus H. was a Civil War veteran. I feel like I’ve seen a photo of him in a Union uniform, sporting the long beard often seen in photos of Union soldiers, however, the photo has not turned up in either a search through my many boxes of photos or online. I may have imagined seeing the photo.

To learn more about my 52 Ancestors in 2018 project, read my introductory blog post.