This framed portrait of a man in old-fashioned clothes was in the china cabinet my parents inherited from my dad’s mother. I think, however, the small portrait was from my mom’s side of the family — I vaguely remember it being at my Grandma Green’s house somewhere.

It’s been sitting on an antique secretary in our guest room for years and for years I have wondered who he was. At some point I accidently scratched a small hole in the backing and numbers appeared which intrigued me even further — maybe someone had written information about the man on the back of the photo. I planned, some day, to remove the backing to see what was written there, but doing that involved pulling back dozens of sharp bits of metal so I put it off indefinitely.

The other day I decided to get to the bottom of the mystery of the man in the portrait so I disassembled the frame by prying back the metal bits holding the photo and backing in place. What I assumed was a date written on the back of the photo was instead a series of calculations on (both sides of) an oval piece of card behind the photo. There was also another piece of card before that. Only then did I get to the photo which turned out to not be a photo at all, but an intricate drawing.

Nowhere in the writing on the paper behind the photo indicated who the man was but based on what I know about my mother’s side of the family I was able to make an educated guess that the image is not of any of my grandmother’s family. My grandmother’s family were all from a poorer part of Germany (now Poland) and they became farmers and wood workers when they moved to Northern Wisconsin. My grandfather’s family, on the other hand, were mostly college educated and from Scotland and England. In addition, the man in the portrait has a nose that resembles my grandfather’s — long and narrow with a bit of a ball on the end.

The style of clothing in the portrait, according to Google AI, could be from the regency period — 1830s. The man in the portrait looks like he is maybe in his thirties or forties so based on my family trees it could be a Tyler or a McCornack.

One other clue that I had not noticed until this morning is the decoration on the frame hanger. It seems to be of a thistle, rose, and three leaf clover. Since the Tylers came from England, I’m going to make a guess that the portrait of of a Tyler (or DeWolf) but after that I have no idea. After all, it could have simply been something someone thought nice enough to hang on their wall.