Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on my Family Tree photo site. I’ve been sprucing up the place and adding new photos from recently found relatives. All that housekeeping renewed my interest in solving some of the mysteries among the photos.

Like, who were these fine fellows? Most of the photos had no writing on them and I was left with notations on the album pages to serve as identifications, or simply clues. I couldn’t even be sure that all the photos were in their original spots.

I decided that the man on the right is the same as this one, Sylvester Selvin K. Or was it just Selvin K, or maybe simply Silvester. There are lots of mysteries to work on and this past week my older sister got the bug and decided to start searching for answers with me. I opened up an account on Ancestry.com and we started looking for old documents that can help us identify all the family branches. One of my sister’s best finds has been the Army enlistment record for ole’ Sylvester Selvin K / Selvin K / Silvester. We learned that his name is actually Silvester, and from an obituary that I found we confirmed that his middle initial is K and that his nickname was Sell. His enlistment record lets us know that he served from 1895 to 1898. This is cool stuff for us fruitcakes that like to dig into the family roots.

While I was up at 2am letting the cat out, battling scorpions to the death, and searching out strange thumping noises in the dark back yard, I got to thinking about good ole’ Sell. I wondered what life was like in the Army back then. What Fort Omaha looked like and what he must have looked like in uniform. I found some photos online of the fort but none of the 2nd Regiment, Company B, that he belonged to. I did find a picture from 1898 of a young fellow who was in the 22nd Regiment, Company B.

Funny little tie, isn’t it? Well, what the heck, it’s 2am and I’m wide awake so…….

Now I know what Silvester must have looked like in uniform, and you know what I do when insomnia gets a hold of me.