I really think my daughter bears a strong resemblance to my paternal grandmother, Ida (Trautvetter) Neill (1910-1994). Others may not agree and I’m not the only person who has a picture of an ancestor that they thinks look like another relative or one of their children.
You may not see the similarities that a relative sees between two pictures. Sometimes if we have a strong emotional connection to the people in the two pictures, seeing a resemblance between them may partially be due to our connection to the individuals and our desire to connect them.
That’s ok and, because of the similarities that I see between these two pictures, I completely understand it.
That does not mean that we rely on “that old picture of that woman kinda looks like my daughter, so it must my great-grandma” or other facial characteristics as proof of parentage or ancestry. It also does not mean that we reject a series of documents that consistently provide one date of birth when we “think they have to be wrong” because our gut says so.
If seeing a facial similarity between two identified people helps your relative to connect with their own past and to see their part in it, that’s ok–even if you don’t see the similarities.
One response
From the moment my first daughter was born, I could see the resemblance to my own mother…after my mother’s nose job. She’s in her 30’s now with kids of her own; I still see the resemblance to my mother.